How Law School Curves Work
As a law school student, your grades likely count for much. They could determine your class rank, whether or not you make law review and whether certain schools allow scholarships for you to remain.
Law school classes typically rely heavily on exams for grades. To stay competitive, most law schools also impose a grading curve that impacts your grades.
First Year
Law school can be one of the most challenging academic experiences ever for any student, pitting you against some of the smartest, hardest working and dedicated individuals in your class – you will likely spend more hours studying than ever before!
Most schools grade 1L classes on a curve. Ideally, students should aim to achieve between A and B grades on average; some will achieve significantly better or worse scores; however, most will come close.
As average grades are used to assess students for other academic and professional opportunities (like being invited onto Law Review or maintaining scholarships at certain schools), maintaining a high GPA during their first year is essential to keeping scholarships. Thus it is imperative for law students to understand how law school curves work so they can excel in their courses and succeed with success.
Many students will discover during their 1L year that their grades don’t directly reflect how well they know the material or perform on exams, which may be especially unnerving if they come from fields like science and math where grading systems tend to be more standardized – if you do well, an A will follow, while any subpar performance will result in B or lower grades.
Law school grade distributions are predetermined by individual law schools and you can visit Wikipedia’s list of grading policies for more details.
One of the primary factors contributing to grades falling in the middle are skipping class, failing to submit assignments and failing to participate in discussions. Although most professors will not hold these issues against students, regularly missing classes can impede your chances of obtaining A’s at other law schools later on.
Second Year
Prospective law students frequently express worry that they won’t gain admission into one of the top-ranked law schools, though that is certainly possible. Once in law school there may be multiple factors at work which prevent you from performing up to your potential during your initial year of studies.
One of the primary sources of anxiety among first year law students is the grading curve. Most schools follow a normal distribution model when assigning grades, meaning most students will fall within a median grade range. While this might sound negative, this can actually help ease stress caused by performing poorly on exams or not meeting assignment requirements.
But this system also makes it hard for students to distinguish themselves. If you fall somewhere in the middle of your class, finding employment with top law firms might prove challenging due to most firms only accepting candidates whose GPA puts them within the top 10% – especially stressful for lower-ranked schools whose grades can often be affected by grading curves.
As a result, many first year lawyers start off the year in the lower half of their class. Luckily, much of this stress can be alleviated once entering second or third year: you’ll have more control over choosing courses and professors won’t be as authoritarian and psychotic as they were during first year classes; and most non-1L classes feature much lenient curves or none at all!
No matter your class size, it’s crucial to understand how the grading curve operates so that you can maximize your GPA. While this may seem frustrating at times, there are various effective strategies you can employ in order to receive high marks regardless of what the law school curves entail. By understanding how law school curves function you can work hard towards earning maximum marks; additionally understanding law school curves may reduce some stress related to attending law school and help ensure success!
Third Year
Law school curriculums can be highly competitive environments. Your grades not only affect whether or not you make law review or receive scholarships at some schools, but also determine what kinds of jobs and internships will be available during and post graduation. Many students find the grading system stressful as it pits high-achieving, intelligent students against each other for limited top grades.
Law schools commonly utilize a bell curve grading system, in which your grade is determined by where you fall on a bell curve in relation to other students in your course. This system strives to level the playing field for all participants while encouraging students to strive harder since their GPA impacts employment opportunities post-law school.
Law school curves work like this: on each exam or paper, your professor compares your performance against that of all students in your class and adjusts grades until they match a pre-determined distribution (usually bell curve) which ensures most students attain median grades on exams and papers while others may do better or worse than expected. This results in most students earning median grades on these assignments with only some performing significantly above or below this mark.
Understanding how law school curves operate can help alleviate some of the stress and anxiety of first year law students as they enter classes. While some students will excel regardless of an unpleasant professor or challenging material, most will need to put forth effort into studying hard and striving for excellence to earn good grades.
Additionally, some schools may employ other grading systems, including pass/fail grading for legal research or writing classes, or seminars with small numbers of students – like the seminar classes you take during your 2L and 3L years – are generally not curve graded because there are too few students for proper comparison against each other. It’s important to keep this in mind when taking non-curved seminar courses – your classmates may often outperform you!
Final Year
Students entering their final year of law school may be taken by surprise when they learn their professors continue using a curve system for grading courses. While some schools use pre-set curves across all courses, other schools only set one for classes over certain sizes or first-year (“1L”) classes.
Simply stated, a curve is designed to ensure that most students achieve grades above or close to the median of the class. How this curve is created varies by school and sometimes there may even be rules around when teachers can deviate from this distribution by adding or subtracting grades from initial range of grades.
Students can get an early indication of whether a course will use curve grading by speaking to the faculty member who oversees that class. If it does use curve grading, this information will be listed in either their syllabus or course handbook.
Students struggling to keep up with the requirements of law school can employ numerous effective strategies in order to overcome its curve, including studying well in advance for exams, joining study groups where peers discuss case briefs and reading assignments with them, creating effective course outlines, and remembering that test-taking doesn’t need to be perfect; all they need is the ability to master broad courses material while conducting logical analyses under pressure.
While law school grading systems are designed to ensure all students meet equal academic standards, it can sometimes cause stress for students. One source of this tension lies in pitting A-range undergraduate students against each other in a highly competitive environment that can have serious ramifications on class rank, chances for making law review, internship and job opportunities after graduation, with GPA becoming a crucial criterion in some prestigious law schools when applying for jobs and law review positions.
