Hello everyone I am a new member, currently on the Law BA Part 1A (1st year hehe) at Cambridge. I was just wondering how the admissions process for LLM in America at places like Harvard works. They require you to have a transcript of all your marks? At Cambridge, no overall degree mark is awarded, so you get graded on each year thats all. Do universities require you to have done well in every of the three years? For example, if you do bad in the first year and then come top in the second and last year?

Regards

When applying to US law schools, they generally prefer that you send your transcripts to the Law School Admission Council LL.M. Credential Assembly Service. It's a mouthful, but LCAS for short. They put together a report on your marks that the institutions can make sense of, and it presumably makes it easy to compare students from around the world.

Most universities say that you don't have to use it. I have mixed feelings on it - it's expensive, slow and you have to stay on top of them to make sure they represent your marks accurately because they impose value judgements on them like "above average" and "superior". On the other hand, you only have to send in your transcripts once and LCAS forwards the report to up to five law schools (and then you pay more to send them to further schools). I would say that coming from a well known place like Cambridge, top schools would know how to assess marks without the LCAS report.

As for your other question, obviously good marks are important, and they will look at all your marks - but the quality of your letters of recommendation and personal statement probably get equal weight and attention. But as you are still a fresher I would say aim high!