Hi, i am currently in my 3rd year at GNLU, one of the top 7 national law universities in india, and i want to do an LLM from the US,so far, i have a GPA of 4.5 on 7 and i have 5 more semesters to go,so hopefully i'll be able to bring that up to close to 5 by the time i graduate. I have been to Manfred Lachs moot in my first year, and this time I am going to VIS Vienna, hoping to do well. I have 3 publications in domestic journals so far and i have applied to the cornell summer program in paris.I dont have any work experience by i have done an internship at Amarchand Mangadas for 2 months which is widely known as the best law firm in india and also another internship for 2 months at DSK legal, another law firm ..i want to know if all this will be enough for any one of the following :
upenn, NYU, columbia, georgetown, harvard, cornell

also if someone can tell me if going for a summer program has any positive bearing on the application since it is quite expensive and i want to know if its worth the money, also its course on arbitration interests me but the fees are a bit too high.

Thanks!

My dear friend,
you are on the right track and with your current pace you will most certainly get into these law schools, however it is advisable to have a minimum of 1 to 2 years of work ex if you wish to join Columbia as they strongly suggest it. For Harvard should work for 2 to 3 years ( there is no straight jacked formula for top 4 schools) it may happen and may not happen. Someone I knew stood top of his class(amongst top 5%), top 10 law schools in India, had interned with Amarchand, AZB etc. participated in international moots, wrote a book on Cyber laws and information technology (published by well know publisher, widely circulated) etc., all of that but still failed to get through Harvard, Yale and Stanford but was admitted to Columbia.
However, I am curious to find out since when have the Indian universities started grading students in terms of GPA. As far as I know Indian universities grade students on CPI and It's not at all possible to convert your grades into GPA. The method of calculating GPA will not apply to your grading system something you will learn when attempting to fill in applications for your LLM.
Interning with law firms do not count for much when your LLM application is concerned. The admission committees don't give much flake to Amarchand Mangaldas ( in reality they don't give a jack shit to supposedly the best law firm), however it would really matter if you have worked as an attorney and have been exposed to the practice of law with such a firm.
I would also suggest that you should not straightaway join the bandwagon of fellow students who want to rush for an LLM straight after school. I hope your objectives are clear and If you need to discuss something, PM me and we can discuss it amongst ourselves.
hope it helps