Mediocrity

Grades came back. I have two above where I think the median is and two below. Once I get my exams back I'll know what I need to work on.

I need to find an internship in San Diego.

Grades, The Curve and UCSD

Grades come out next week so I feel like I should make a post about the curve without knowing what my grades are.

I do not like the curve at California Western.

The curve forces about a quarter of the class to fail out. This happens even if all the students perform well. The negative effect on students is two fold. First, those in the bottom quarter are left in an enormous amount of debt. Second, it reflects poorly on the school if they are admitting such a large volume of students that are doomed to fail.

I've heard the argument that California Western drops these students to improve their bar passage rate. After all, there is no point in going through 3 years of law school piling on debt if a student is incapable of passing the bar. The school could still maintain a high bar passage rate by simply raising the standards (gpa/lsat) of admission. This would cause the rank of the school to rise and maintain the bar passage rate.

Some posit an argument along the lines that some students are poor test takers on the lsat or slept through undergrad and still deserve a shot at becoming a lawyer. I would be O.K. with this if the school did a better job of informing the incoming class of the exact nature of a law school curve. I really think there is a 'failure to warn' on the part of the school. This could be ameliorated by publishing the curve and where each student's lsat score from the previous years lined up with where they landed on the curve. This information does not exist (as far as I know, feel free to correct me with a link).

This leaves me wondering why the school admits so many students it will simply fail out or ask to leave. The only rationale for this behavior that I can think of is to collect tuition.

Curves exist at law schools around the country and I'm rather opposed to systems that force good students completely out of the school or limit the number of As that can be given. I would suggest moving to an undergraduate grading system where displaying knowledge of the law and lawyer-like thinking gives you an A regardless of some irrelevant detail the professor is forced to use to differentiate between an A and a B.

My own grades:

I'm not really sure how I did. I studied hard and hopefully that pays off. I'll probably post my grades here so incoming students can see what I did and how well I did. My only concern is that I've revealed enough about myself that someone from my section will find it, realize who I am, and take the information the wrong way.

My impression of the tests is they're pretty standard law school exams. You spend much of the semester studying how to do well on a law school exam and the students to figure that out first will likely get the As.

I have a feeling I probably didn't do as well as I wanted which means I will have to change some things after talking to professors/ tutors. So far I've kept on track this semester. I started outlining this weekend and so far things look good. I'll adjust when grades are released on Friday.

UCSD Rumors:

A few faculty members at UCSD talk about a merger between the schools as if it is already a done deal. The rumor buzzing around the school is the next edition of the school news paper will be released when the committee to discuss a possible merger/ buyout/ whatever comes to a decision. A few of my professors keep having to cancel their office hours to serve on the committee. These are all rumors, so who knows. Hopefully we become UCSD. That would make me happy.