Howdy all. I’m a first year law student at the University of Arizona, and I was just talking to some friends of mine about what type of grades would be necessary to make law review.
We’re on a rather strict grade scheme here: Every class has to give 25% A’s, 50% B’s, and 25% C’s and lower (within 5%).
This means that in any given class, no more than 35-40 kids can get an A. But the question is, how many got A’s in all 4 classes?
Straight math won’t help: if the odds of getting a certain grade in a class are completely random and unrelated, then we can figure that the odds of straight A’s are (1/4)^4 = 1/256, or not even one student.
But of course this is nonsense; students who get A’s in one class are more likely to get A’s in their other classes. The $64,000 question is how much more likely? A friend of mine guessed that somewhere between 15-20 kids might have gotten straight A’s. I think that’s way to high and the likely number is more around 5-6.
I didn’t put this in GQ because I figure there’s no real way to know the degree of correlation between A’s in one class and A’s in another. Instead, I though I’d survey the SD cogniscenti to get their opinions.
Any teachers, administrators, deans, admissions officers, etc. who can use their experience to make a decent guestimate on this? Much thanks.
Using a completely arbitrary algorithm (hey, it’s IMHO) I get 3 students.
I decided for no particular reason that if 25% of students get an A in class, a student who gets an A in one class has a 25% greater chance than his classmates of getting an A in another class. A student getting A’s in two classes would have an addition 25% greater chance of having an A in a third class, and so on.
In class 1, 25% of students get an A. About 37
In class 2, 25% of students get an A. .25 * (.25 * 1.25), or .25 * .3125, or 7.8% get A’s in class 1 and 2. About 11 students.
In class 3, 25% of students get an A. .25 * (.25 * 1.25) * (.25 * 1.25 * 1.25), or 3.8% get A’s in class 1, 2 and 3. About 5 or 6 students.
In class 4, 25% of students get an A. .25 * (.25 * 1.25) * (.25 * 1.25 * 1.25) * (.25 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.25), or 1.9% get A’s in all 4 classes. About 3 students.
I repeat, completely arbitrary, and I may have done the math wrong anyway, but there you are.
Thats INSANE!!! (And this is IMHO, so I’m stating my opinion!). This is like that “staircase grading scheme” story that everyone hears about - where the prof tosses the papers onto the stairs and assigns a grade based on what step it fell onto. It has nothing to do with what the students did or didnt do, or what effort the put in, or whether they showed up to all the classes, or anything at all! Its totally arbitrary! Id hate to be that poor kid who is in line to get an A, but because 25 people already have one, he cant. That’s just bloody stupid!
I say the answer to your question is 0%, because the profs ought to be shot and therefore they can’t assign bloody grades to ANYONE!
It’s called the curve. At my school, they usually use it when the grades are too low (ex., a 65% might be a C in some class, and an 80% might be an A). This assumes that the teacher is curving, of course. Some don’t.
“Kodachrome” was one of Paul Simon’s solo works. (The good news is, the spelling error doesn’t count against you).
What might be a decent way to estimate the number of students getting a certain grade across classes is to develop some scale (like GPA) and figure that all students will have relatively little variation across it. In other words, some students will all have A’s, some will be at A-/B+, some solid B, etc. This probably leads to more calculation than you care for, but if you really want to I’d head in that direction. On the other hand, you’d have to make a completely arbitrary choice as to the variation, so it wouldn’t count for much.
Since your question is about law review, you might ask some of the upperclassmen what the qualifications for law review are (or at least get a feel for what the people on law review are like). The specifics are typically confidential, but they may be after a combination of grades, your writing ability, and other factors (your personality, extracurriculars, etc.). Or, the school administration might just REALLY like someone and insist that they make the cut. Or, there might be an affirmative action policy that favors minority or female students (it happens, seriously). The point being that while grades are typically a heavy factor in the process, you don’t necessarily have to dismiss yourself from the running based on grades alone.
Oh, and first semester grades don’t matter…much. If your school is like mine, they factor into your final grade, and they might even be a good prediction of how you’ll do overall…but it’s the finals that count.
As for numbers…I’d guess between 10 and 25 people (the higher numbers being less and less likely).
