Hi all,

Thank you for any advice or insight you may have. My first choice in LLM program is at Lund University for the International Human Rights LLM. I am American and graduated with a BA from a top 50 university in the US with a 3.38 double major and a JD from an American law school ranked just outside the top 100 (i.e., not so great). I received two graduate certificates in international law areas during law school. Unfortunately, my law GPA is horrible - 2.91. And it's all because of a D my first semester of my 1L year in Criminal Law - a heavily weighted course. For the next 2.5 years, I saw the ghost of that D no matter what I did. After that point, I received As and Bs along with a few, but not too many, Cs in courses that were not my area of interest. In all humanitarian and international law courses, I received at least a B. I worked really hard and salvaged my GPA as best I could, but still could not get it to a 3. My law school has a particularly very harsh curve due to it trying to get itself back in the ranking it was several years ago (within the top 50). I had a tremendously difficult time in law school outside of studying, including a fellow student assaulting and stalking me. I'm not complaining here, and I take full responsibility for my GPA, it just was a difficult time in my life.

Anyway, since graduation, I have published several articles and work for the United Nations. I have worked my way up at my UN department from being accepted into the internship program. I have given several lectures in different countries on my area of expertise. None of that seems to matter, though, in LLM admissions.

My dream is to get a LLM and then a PhD in law. I worked with someone at the UN that was a PhD candidate at Lund and the way she described it made me investigate. This program seems exactly what I'm looking for in a human rights law program along with the culture of the university in general.

My questions are -- are my chances completely zero of getting accepted to this program? And how can I improve my chances? Is there a way to explain that this is not reflective of my work?

I'm optimistic, but nervous.

Thanks!

I think you should ask the school directly if they think you should apply or not. 

I would say that this school won't be as competitive as other, better-ranked or well-known schools, so there may be some flexibility there. My gut feeling is that, even though your GPA is sub 3, they will probably be relatively willing to overlook this somewhat, given your internship / publication experience.