Recently I’ve been applying to different law schools and I’m continually amused by how the guidebook descriptions of many schools mention that “this school is not marked by excessive grade inflation.” Now, if NO school is marked by grade inflation (as the Princeton Review would have me believe) then what’s the point and the brouhaha. My question is…
Does anyone know of a decent law school that does inflate its grades? I’m curious.
For the purposes of your question, what are you defining as grade inflation? (Most first-year classes that I know of are strictly curved, which would seem to leave no room for inflation of any kind.)
I feel like this is my first AA meeting or something. Hi, my name is so-and-so and this is my first post on the SDMB. I’ve been lurking here for quite some time and thought I’d try and answer your question. As a third year law student I can tell you that no law school worth attending is going to have grade inflation across the board. Ahhh, law school. Finishing school for liberal arts grads who don’t know what they want to do with the rest of their lives.
At my law school, the University of Kentucky, first year GPAs are STRICTLY curved at 2.3-2.7 (C+ to B-). Second and third year grades generally fall in the 2.7-3.0 range (B- to B). I would say any comparable law school to ours would have similar curves. Harvard we ain’t, but we’re ranked in the top third nationally.
However, I will say that in one group of classes at UK the grades ARE inflated. These are the seminar classes. Each student here is required to take one of these classes in order to fulfill his or her substantial writing requirement (a 25-page scholarly paper) in order to graduate. Grades in these classes, which are worth two credit hours, fall in the 3.3-4.0 range (B+ to A).
I’m sorry that I’ve rambled, and I hope I’ve answered your question.
Grade inflation in law school is largely irrelevant anyway. It’s class rank that counts.
One way to measure this is to inquire if the law school in question participates in the Order of the Coif, which is sort of like an honours fraternity for law schools. There are some prestigious schools that do not participate in the Coif, and the buzz was that those schools did not meet the bell curve profile that the Order required.
On the other hand, the one school that I am personally familiar with that did not praticipate in the Coif said that because the incoming grade level of their students was above average, they did not see the need to mark on the curve required by the Coif.
That was all a long time ago, so I’d be interested to hear from others.
Yes, I was thinking of this infamous “grading curve.” Most of the first year comments for many schools centred on how the grades all seemed to fall within a C range or something. However, all the little biographies talked in a sneering manner of “unlike other schools that inflate their grades…at Wake Forest [or whatever] the grading curve ensures that…,” but IT SEEMS TO BE EVERY SINGLE BIO that says this. So where are the easy schools at if every damn school seems to “not inflate” its grades. Grrr. 
What I’m confused about (I don’t want to go to an easy school, this is sort of pure curiosity) is how Scott Turow managed to get an A and a B+ in his first semester grades at Harvard in One L. Where was the grading curve then!
BTW Ignatius-that is my favourite book (“don’t you have a muscatel baking in the oven mother?”) and I’m applying to Tulane.
I had no idea that the curve had anything to do with a school having Coif status. All I know is that we have it and that most other schools do as well. BTW, I’m glad someone caught my Confederacy of Dunces reference.
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as I did when Santa Battaglia dances in the kitchen or the correspondance between Myrna Minkoff and Ignatius…the Rebellion against the Pants Factory.
Miss Trixie. 'Nuff said.
I was always under the impression that it was kind of widely read-hmmm, maybe it has cult status or something. BTW I was in the bookstore and there is a new bio on him called “Ignatius Rising.”
Ooops, I just hijaacked my own thread.
In the end it’s all basically a function of:
– The prestige of the school you attend;
– Your class rank; law review membership; etc.
– How good an interview you make.
Even schools with horrendous grade inflation can have good reputations, i.e., Harvard College (undergrad) where reportedly 90% of the class graduates with honors.
Anu, you’d be surprised at who hasn’t read that book. What a crying shame.
At N.Y.U. Law, all lecture classes were graded on a “B” curve, in which (IIRC):
No more than 4% of the class got an A
No more than 8% of the class got an A-
No more than 20% of the class got a B+
No more than 10% of the class got a B- or below
Everyone else got a B.
So the curve was so incredibly compressed as to render class rank meaningless, unless you were Order of the Coif (I think the top 10% or so - or maybe it was the top 30 graduates? I, obviously, didn’t make that! :)). Indeed, N.Y.U. does not issue an official rank; unless you’re Coif, the most you ever get is a very rough estimate from the law school’s placement office. (“Placement” meaning employment office.)
What was much more relevant was your journal. Now, the journals did include grades as part of their admission mix - but only part. The rest was a writing sample. So, you could have that magic N.Y.U. Law Review on your resume and not have a fabulous G.P.A.; your job prospects might be better than one who didn’t do a journal but missed Coif by two slots.
I actually thought the system entirely reasonable. Most people who go to law school are bright and can handle the work. There are a few outliers at either end - the preternaturally gifted (or hard-working) at one and the how-the-hell’d-he-get-heres at the other. The rest fall in very broad middle. Many of the my professors reported that the most difficult thing was assigning grades when the results were so similar. I think they’d have been happier giving just the 4% As, 10% B- or below, and then all Bs.
Ditto what Oxymoron says. At the Univesity of Texas Law School (my alma mater), grading was done on a strict curve; your grade depended entirely on how your exam essay compared to the rest of the class. The best guy got an A+, the worst guy got a D (F’s were saved for really extreme cases – of the 500 or so people in my class, I know of only one person who got an F in any class), and everyone else lined up in between. As **Oxymoron[\b] notes, the real challenge is to not get a B.
With the exception of the outliers (those few at the end of the bell curve who are really, really incompetent), it’s hard to do badly in law school (it’s also, of course, hard to to really well). At least at fairly competitive schools, admission is the real challenge: once you’re in, it’s hard not to graduate. Landing a job might be tricky if your grades are less than stellar, but actually getting the degree isn’t that tough.
Of course, law school tends to attract hypercompetitive, hardoworking types, so my perception on this topic may just be a function of anal retentiveness…
I went to Brooklyn Law School (the Harvard of Brooklyn), and unlike OxyMoron’s experience at hoighty-toighty NYU, grading was harsh, and did matter.
The reason is that BLS and (from what I’ve been told) other second-tier law schools, grading is harsh (we had a B- curve) and people do drop out due to grades because the schools are trying to improve their academic reputation - “we are strict here and we get rid of those students who don’t have the capacity to do well.”
Sua
Just to echo what’s being said, “grade inflation” is pretty common at higher-ranked law schools.
I went to a higher-ranked school where it was rare to get anything less than a “B.”
At lower-ranked schools, grade inflation is less common. One of my best buddies from high school went to Quinnipiac Law, and he told me that grading was absolutely brutal there.
Grading at the University of Montana School of Law was (and AFAIK still is) on a strict curve for lecture classes, at the instructor’s discretion for seminars. What this means as a practical matter is that as a first year (all lectures) you’re going to get a B or a C (hopefully a B) in every class unless you are either a genius or a dunce – because by definition most people are going to get a C.
Second and third year seminars may have only one-half as many people (sometimes considerably less, as few as, say, six) and the teacher can give every one of you an “A” if he or she chooses. So that’s where you can pick up your good grades. Some professors, knowing this, will flat-out say at the beginning that they grade tough for seminars and that you can’t expect to do better there than you would in a lecture. That said, I don’t recall any professor who graded a seminar on a strict curb, though they could have if they wanted to.
I have no problem with this system. First year was in my experience an exercise in adjusting to law school and in learning the bare bones of how to think and write like a lawyer, with all the atttendant necessities, like how to find, read, and use legal resource materials. It’s like the start of a race, and everyone is flailing along in a big pack, so it’s not surprising to me that most would finish that “leg” of the race at about the same place. Second and third year you get to stretch out and make your own class choices and stand on your own performance, and the discretion in grading reflects that.
At my school most classes curved such that the bulk of the class was given either a B or B+. The top quartile got an A or A-, and you had to have scored in the lower quarter to get a B- or lower. (And if you had participated in class, you would be given a straight B even if you didn’t quite make the cut on your exam.) I never heard of anyone ever getting a D; if you couldn’t be bothered to work hard enough to land even a C-, you didn’t deserve to pass.
I don’t consider this scheme particularly inflated; my impression was that this is a typical professional-school curve. It takes into account that, even if you’re not in a particularly prestigious law school, you still had to prove yourself in undergrad to just get there. Plus, as noted above, schools (such as mine) often publish the G.P.A. cut-offs to be in the Top 10%, Top 25% and Top Third of the class, which eliminates the hazard of inflation.
To be eligible for election to the Order of the Coif, you must graduate within the Top 10% of your class. Many schools elect everyone in the Top 10% (unless they’ve had significant disciplinary or ethical problems), but the school can choose to elect fewer students if it wishes.
–Cliffy, Esq.
I find the terminology of a “lecture” class rather amusing. Where I come from, with VERY few exceptions, it’s Socratic method all the way. I’m sure all the other lawyer types on the SDMB have had similar experiences.
IGNATIUS, “lecture” may then be a misnomer, though I can’t think of a better one. “Survey” doesn’t work, either. The distinction I’m trying to draw is between a large auditorium-style class where everyone in the class (75 of us, in my class) is present, and a seminar-type class. I certainly did not mean to imply that the method of instruction was not Socratic. Some classes were not but the vast majority were.
Grade inflation? How about entire degree inflation? There is no difference between the Canadian Bachelor of Laws and the American Jurum Doctor. Yer all overinflated. 
(Ah, OK, I’m just jealous.)
Harvard still has massive grade inflation, but it has revised its honors system. I think it’s the top 30% of the class that gets cum laude, and the top 10% who gets summa. Magna cum laudes have been rare all along - many classes have none.