LSAT score vs GPA: which one matters more, and what splitters do

These are the two numbers on every application, and the practical difference between them is not which counts for more. It is that by the time most people ask, the GPA is finished and the LSAT is not.

A GPA is four years of accumulated record; a few more courses move it slightly. An LSAT score is a single sitting that can be prepared for and retaken within LSAC's limits. So the question "which matters more" is usually less useful than "which can I still change", and for most applicants that has one answer.

Why schools care about medians

Law schools report their admitted students' median LSAT and median GPA, and those medians are public and closely watched. That reporting shapes behavior: a school protecting a median has a strong reason to admit applicants at or above it, which is why being above a school's median helps disproportionately and being below it hurts more than the raw gap suggests.

It also means the same score plays differently at different schools. There is no universal "good enough" — there is only good relative to the class a particular school is assembling. Look up the medians for the schools you actually care about rather than reasoning about a national average.

Splitters

A splitter has a high LSAT and a low GPA; a reverse splitter has the opposite. Both are common, both get admitted, and the two are not symmetric — because of the median dynamic above, a strong LSAT with a weak GPA tends to travel further than the reverse.

If you are a splitter, the LSAT is doing most of the work and is worth the preparation. If you are a reverse splitter, the LSAT is the number holding you back and is also the one you can still move, which is the same conclusion by a different route.

Addenda explain; they do not argue

Where a number has a real explanation — a documented illness, a family situation, a semester with a clear cause — an addendum is the place for it. The convention is brief and factual: what happened, when, and what changed afterward.

What does not work is using it to argue that the number misrepresents you. Admissions readers have seen that, and it reads as a complaint rather than context. If there is no genuine explanation, no addendum is the better choice.