Eugene has some interesting thoughts on UCLA Law’s grading curve over at the VC, and I thought I would add some thoughts based on my experience with GW’s curve.
In the 2002-03 school year, I was on a faculty committee at GW Law that looked into whether GW’s grading curve was out of sync with other comparable schools. We assembled information on the top 25 or so schools, and found that GW was indeed out of sync: We were still using a 3.0 mean curve, and our curve mandated that at least 15% of students in all large classes received a C+ or below. At the time, only GW and UCLA were still using that kind of curve; almost every other school had already moved up to a 3.2 or 3.3 mean curve. (I’m excluding schools like Chicago and Yale that have their own grading systems.)
The unfairness of using a lower curve was made particularly clear by the experience of one of my colleagues who covered a class at Georgetown one semester, and ended up giving the same exam to Georgetown and GW students at the same time. According to him, the raw scores of the GW students were slightly higher than the raw scores of the Georgetown students. But because Georgetown used a 3.3 curve and GW used a 3.0 curve, he was required to give GW students lower grades than the Georgetown students for the same raw score.
GW ended up adopting a curve that is right in the middle of the curves used by other Top 25 schools. Based on Eugene’s post, it looks like UCLA has done much the same thing.
As far as I know, the highest law school curve is used at Stanford Law School. Stanford has a 3.4 curve, which is a notch higher than the 3.2 or 3.3 curve most Top 25 schools use. According to the Fall 2001 issue of The Stanford Lawyer at page 8, Stanford raised its curve in 2001 from a 3.2 to a 3.4: the reason for the change, according to the article, was “to express more accurately the quality of student performance in upper-level courses” and to “enhance students’ job opportunities.”
Fordham changed their curve to a 3.2-3.3 curve about 3 years ago, for essentially the same reasons that Stanford details in their magazine.
What this experience suggests is that to avoid pressures to keep grade profiles comparable to those of peer institutions (typically by adjusting upwards to match), it makes sense to have an idiosyncratic system. Chicago and Yale have grading schemes that cannot really be reliably mapped to an A-F scale. The downside of such systems is that you run a different risk that those evaluating your students’ applications will refuse to learn how your idiosyncratic system works.
It would be interesting to track the rise in grade inflation against the relative importance employers put on grades v. class rank.
At both of the firms I worked for, GPA was essentially irrelevant, because everyone knew about GPA inflation and mandatory curves. What mattered was class rank.
It would be interesting to know if there are any firms out there that still treat GPA seriously, or who would give an offer to one student over another (from different schools, obviously) because one has a higher GPA.
A significant limitation to an idiosyncratic grading system is that it can probably only be used by highly reputable schools, where grades don’t matter quite as much.
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Another point about law school grading curves is the way that they can be used by Universities to get rid of scholarship students. My former neighbor decided to go to a 3rd or 4th teir private law privatschool in New Jersey on a full scholarship as opposed to a top tier school in New York. Her scholarship required that she maintain a 3.0 GPA. For her first year, the law school put all of the scholarship students in the same section, so they took all the same classes together. The school imposed a 3.0 (or lower) curve. Thus, because all of the scholarship students were competing against each other, at least half of them (including my neighbor) lost their scholarships after the first year. Then they had to decide whether to drop out of law school (their lower grades prevented transferring), or pay the high cost of tuition at a private law school.
I guess this is what I get for going to a low ranked school. My school (Golden Gate) still uses a 2.3 curve for first year classes. Trying to compete in the Bay Area is incredibly difficult. We are getting compared to students from Hastings, Boalt and Stanford that have GPA’s that are half to a full point higher.
Prof. you mentioned Yale and Chicago’s grading system. How are they different?
Doug: What law school is that? That sounds like a scandal to me.
I remember being very frustrated when my law school changed its curve from a 3.1 to a 3.3 median at the end of my 1L year. The school does not rank its students, so most of us relied on past distributions & stories of what grades made law review the previous year to estimate just how well we were doing. Over many years of using the same curve, a plugged in student could have a very good sense of just how good their grades were, and just how likely they were to get a job offer, law review invite, clerkship, etc.
When the curve changed, every grade was a mystery, and I still don’t know what my last two year’s grades mean.
There are only three law schools in New Jersey.
Having attended GW when the curve was upped, I was of a mixed mind. Of course, I appreciated the higher grades. But since I spent one year under the old regime, I felt a bit of resentment toward the classes below me, who I might be competing against someday, because they would have, as a whole, better grades their first year than my classmates and I would.
Of course, we all hated Yale with their lack of grades.
It’s not just New Jersey. The “put all the scholarships in the same section” method is used at Pepperdine, in Los Angeles, as well.
I have to applaud Orin for actually speaking about this openly. Curves (especially at private schools) are hardly ever discussed, and when they are people refuse to admit that they put some students at a disadvantage.
So, let’s be honest: one of the prime reasons to go to highly-ranked school is so that mediocre performance will be rewarded with higher grades, and gradation is guaranteed. Any undergrad that doesn’t know this has no business in law school.
Only some schools print their curves on their transcript (sometimes on the back.) This would be a great help if the information were widely available (perhaps with comparisons to peer institutions) and all employers were aware of this.
The “put all the scholarships in the same section” method is used at Pepperdine, in Los Angeles, as well.
Really? They must have changed things, then, as I thought we were well-dispersed throughout the three sections.
If you have evidence to the contrary, please share it. I consider putting all the scholarship students into the same section to be a scandal; and if Pepperdine is doing this, then I will draw attention to it.
I didn’t realize that top tier schools had such high medians. My law school has a 2.8 median. The administration said that they picked 2.8 because that’s what the ABA pressured them to choose in order to obtain ABA accreditation so quickly (I went to a relatively new school). It sounds like whatever benefit I received from going to an ABA accredited school is going to be trumped by what appears to be a low GPA.
I don’t know why all law schools don’t get together and choose a universal grading system. Giving students a grade isn’t very meaningful to employers unless the employer can use grades to compare potential associates who most likely went to different law schools.
One of my recent-graduate friends told me that some firms (and some HR recruiters) use a “bright line rule” of a minimum 3.0 GPA.
By inflating GPAs, top ranked schools help the bottom 50% of their classes overcome this hurdle.
Of course, this 3.0 rule is waived, if a candidate has positive attributes like “nice looking” or can bring business to the firm. Whatever the case, law students should be aware of this rule BEFORE they enroll, and should know what their statistical chances of getting a GPA above that number are.
I attend a 4th tier school that has a C- (or C) curve for 1L. I suspect it applies to subsequent years as well. The school provides virtually no information on its grading policies. The size of my class has decreased from 136 to 97. I had a debate with fellow students about the curve recently. They adamantly believe the curve is necessary to maintain the school’s accreditation. Also, they argued to was necessary to explain any potential bar failures. There’s another argument that the harsh curve is imposed to make our top students more credible against students from higher ranked schools. I don’t agree with any of these arguments.
The curve is so low it is very tough to get scholarships, honors, or internships. Also, the curve makes it incredibly hard to get honest interviews as if the legal market isn’t tough enough. People will interview with no intent of hiring. It’s hard to explain a GPA in the low 2.0 range when other schools are giving out B’s like candy.
I don’t buy the argument that 4th Tier students aren’t intelligent enough to merit a higher curve. It seems the ABA would rather protect the employment prospects of the older and more prestigous law schools rather than help the less affluent practice law. They have succeeded in inculcating a sense of inferiority in our students relative to our higher ranked neighbors. There was even a joke that our students may know more law but students at the neighboring school would still get more jobs.
I don’t understand why 90% of the class is sacrificed for the one or two people who get BIG LAW jobs each year. It seems no one is willing to make the curve more reasonable and use class rank as a predictor of bar passage. The reason accreditation is an issue is because the ABA is a whore for entrance numbers. The lower the LSAT and GPAs the lower the curve will be.
Our bar passage rate is at 70% probably because we have so many required courses that appear on the State bar. I believe the bar passage rate would be higher if the legal writing instruction were better. No one really teaches legal writing or analysis instead they just hand out assignments and instruct retroactively.
Honestly, if the school is so concerned with accreditation then it should make admissions tougher rather than severely limit employment prospects. Although, I don’t like that alternative because some of the better students were admitted through performance based admissions.
It’s insane our every + or – is significant. In the past year, I asked a Professor if my grade was correct, because I improved my writing and the exam was open book. So I expected something better than a C. He got so sensitive and told me I deserved a D. Now, I’m pretty sure he didn’t remember what I had written out of all those exams because the exams were anonymous. Also, I know I didn’t deserve a D as much as I studied for that class and I had worked on writing. The school is very passive aggressive. There is the appearance of congenality until grades are distributed and job offers are granted.
I have no idea what other dubious things are going on. Although, I think it is unfair how the conditional admissions students start school with exposure to certain professors’ exams.