Does Retaking a Class Help Your Law School Chances?

The Tuition Waste

You are a Pre-Law student, and you just got a 'D' in Constitutional History.

You panic. You know that law schools are obsessed with GPAs. You immediately register to retake the class over the summer, paying $1,200 in tuition, assuming that if you get an 'A', the 'D' will vanish from your record.

This is a massive mistake. Retaking classes for Law School applications is almost entirely mathematically useless.

The LSAC Averaging Rule

Unlike your university registrar, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) refuses to honor grade replacement.

If you get a 'D' (1.0 weight) and retake the class for an 'A' (4.0 weight), LSAC will combine both attempts.

Attempt 1: 3 credits x 1.0 = 3 Grade Points

Attempt 2: 3 credits x 4.0 = 12 Grade Points

Total: 15 Grade Points / 6 Attempted Credits = 2.5 GPA (A 'C+' average).

You just spent 15 weeks of your summer and $1,200 to raise a 'D' to a 'C+'.

The Dilution Problem

Worse, because LSAC counts both attempts, you have just artificially inflated your Total Attempted Credits (the denominator).

The larger your denominator gets, the harder it is to move your Cumulative GPA in the future. By retaking a class, you are actually making your GPA more resistant to upward movement.

What Should You Do Instead?

If you get a 'C' or a 'D' in a class, do not retake it. Accept the bad grade and move on.

Instead of burning $1,200 and a summer retaking Constitutional History, take a completely different, upper-level class (like Advanced Political Theory).

If you get an 'A' in the new class, you are injecting a pure 4.0 into your LSAC calculation without carrying the dead weight of a previous attempt. Furthermore, law school admissions committees vastly prefer to see a student fail, dust themselves off, and conquer a harder class, rather than seeing a student retake the exact same material they already saw once.