So, I graduate in May with a BS in the useless degree of sociology.
My GPA is about a 3.0.
I am considering just finishing up my coursework, but NOT applying for graduation. That way I can take some community college classes for a year. Increase my GPA. Then apply.
What kind of improvement are we talking about? It might be worth it to go from a 2.95 to a 3.02 or something, but from 3.0 to 3.1? Probably not gonna do much. That said, if you are going to wait a year to apply anyway (always a good idea) and it won’t cost much to do this then you might as well go for it. Whatever happens you’ll need to score very highly on the LSAT to make law school worthwhile.
LSN seems to suggest that at a number of schools, even some outside the T-14 (BU and Emory fit the bill, among others), a fairly hard floor exists at 3.0. This makes intuitive sense given that 3.0 is a nice round number and our minds tend to see 3.05 and 3.15 and being fairly similar while seeing 2.95 as something different entirely. By no means is this true in every case and there are some schools where going from 3.1 to 3.2 could make a real difference, but from the data I’ve seen I don’t think it’s worth a lot of time, effort, and opportunity cost to bring a GPA up in this situation unless the OP is just short of a 3.0.
But again, every extra hundredth of a point helps and if the GPA can be improved rather easily and cheaply then I’m all for it. I certainly wish I would have done something like the OP is considering.