1L Fall Grade Waiting Thread Forum

[gdane]

My school is waiting until the day after students can claim 100% tuition reimbursement to release grades. Thats a huge prick move.

[BlueDiamond]

just checked for grades.. my "Course Grades" tab is currently leading to a blank page whereas it let to a "Missing Grade" page before.. update coming? SPECULATE NOW

it's preparing you for the utter emptiness you'll feel when you receive your real grades.

Law school is getting conceptual with how they give out grades nowadays.

is it meant to build on the utter emptiness that we feel after taking a three hour exam for 15 weeks worth of work?

[brickman]

just checked for grades.. my "Course Grades" tab is currently leading to a blank page whereas it let to a "Missing Grade" page before.. update coming? SPECULATE NOW

it's preparing you for the utter emptiness you'll feel when you receive your real grades.

Law school is getting conceptual with how they give out grades nowadays.

is it meant to build on the utter emptiness that we feel after taking a three hour exam for 15 weeks worth of work?

yes, it is meant to be an echo chamber of despair.

[Sandro]

I wish I could have chosen my school based on how they do exams . Closed book/note exams are garbage, wish I would have known studying for them throughout the semester was completely different then what I was doing. I know people say open book/note exams are just outline dumps but is that any better than a memorization contest on standard issue spotter exams ?

I'd argue for closed book/note exams because if you understand the material memorizing would be easier and you should get a better grade.

But In a class where there are 100s of cases, you could understand the theories/rules very well and still lose out to someone who could just spit out every case name. On an exam where the professor literally just doles out checks galore for anything coherent, a good essay will lose to a case bomb with minimal analysis.

Varies by professor, and I will definitely be studying a lot differently with a focus towards pure memorization now.

[bdubs]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

[ilovesf]

I did the worst on my only closed book exam. I thought I preferred closed books because you have less time to breeze through the material and people can't just copy out of the book, but I guess open is better. My tests this semester are 1) Con law closed book, 2) open EVERYTHING, even supplements for Ks, 3) 72 hour take home, and 4) no idea because this class doesn't even have a syllabus, but I think he does closed books for crim

[Flips88]

Grades posted right before my 6-9 pm night class. hard to focus.

[piccolittle]

Bah. B+ in torts. It's all downhill from here!

[ilovesf]

Grades posted right before my 6-9 pm night class. hard to focus.

6-9? That really sucks. I thought my 5-7 was bad.

[D'Angelo]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

I must be the only person who correctly pegged their relative performances on tests. Not sure whether this is a good thing or not yet.



I will say that after having 3 open-note tests, if you have no time pressure, there's no actual curve, which just turns the entire exercise into a crapshoot. Open-note tests with enough time pressure ideally should end with you not referring to your notes often anyway - although I haven't taken a closed-note test, I can imagine that they'd be nerve-wracking as fuck.

I believe our tests this semester are 2 open book and one limited open-book (we can only bring in 10 pages of notes), so my theory could be blown to bits after spring finals. We'll see, I guess.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

At my school the curve is a B+ or a 3.3 in each class, but because it isn't a fixed curve if you have a 3.3 at the end of the semester you are below median.

Profs don't like to give bad marks so the median always ends up like a 3.37.

Is this common?

[Magnolia]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

I must be the only person who correctly pegged their relative performances on tests. Not sure whether this is a good thing or not yet.



I will say that after having 3 open-note tests, if you have no time pressure, there's no actual curve, which just turns the entire exercise into a crapshoot. Open-note tests with enough time pressure ideally should end with you not referring to your notes often anyway - although I haven't taken a closed-note test, I can imagine that they'd be nerve-wracking as fuck.

I believe our tests this semester are 2 open book and one limited open-book (we can only bring in 10 pages of notes), so my theory could be blown to bits after spring finals. We'll see, I guess.

Personally, I thought my open-book, time pressured exam was a lot harder than my closed-book, non-time pressured exam with a word count. At least with the closed book exam it was about how much I knew and the challenge was not blanking on some key doctrine during the test. But I felt like the biggest (only?) challenge on the open book exam was the clock/my typing speed.

Of course all that may change when I have all my grades.

[merc280]

so the general consensus on the study plan for closed book exams is to prepare super well for every class and memorize everything, while also learning how to type it out super fast and coherently?

[HWS08]

so the general consensus on the study plan for closed book exams is to prepare super well for every class and memorize everything, while also learning how to type it out super fast and coherently?

Seems that way.


I'd love to hear more about the best way to prep for closed book/close note exams since I have my first one this semester. Any good threads floating around out there?

[crossarmant]

I wish I could have chosen my school based on how they do exams . Closed book/note exams are garbage, wish I would have known studying for them throughout the semester was completely different then what I was doing. I know people say open book/note exams are just outline dumps but is that any better than a memorization contest on standard issue spotter exams ?

I'd argue for closed book/note exams because if you understand the material memorizing would be easier and you should get a better grade.

+1

I much prefer closed book exams because it rewards those who truly understand the subject matter front and back, not merely who can throw their outlines on paper or run down a checklist of key terms to include.

[bostonlawchick]

Okay this may not be the place for this, but I have a stupid Crim question for those of you who've taken it. Our assignment for tomorrow is to carefully read the General part and skim the Special part of the Model Penal Code in our casebook. The prof gave no page numbers and I can't see a general part/special part distinction.

[D'Angelo]

Okay this may not be the place for this, but I have a stupid Crim question for those of you who've taken it. Our assignment for tomorrow is to carefully read the General part and skim the Special part of the Model Penal Code in our casebook. The prof gave no page numbers and I can't see a general part/special part distinction.

My guess would be that the General refers to the first section (MPC§1-7 or whatever) and that the Special would be for specific crimes (MPC§210-whatever)? Best I could figure it.

[homestyle28]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

Reasonably happy...it's nuts that the post exam feelings have almost no correlation to the actual grades.

[Flips88]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

Reasonably happy...it's nuts that the post exam feelings have almost no correlation to the actual grades.

+1. My best grades was in the class I thought I did worst in.

[$peppercorn]

so the general consensus on the study plan for closed book exams is to prepare super well for every class and memorize everything, while also learning how to type it out super fast and coherently?

Seems that way.


I'd love to hear more about the best way to prep for closed book/close note exams since I have my first one this semester. Any good threads floating around out there?

I studied the same way for all my classes. I had one closed book exam and didn't even realize it was closed book until I walked into the test. But I made a 4.3 on the final. So I don't think preparing should differ that much. Even if it's open book you should just try to memorize as much as you can.

[Icculus]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

Reasonably happy...it's nuts that the post exam feelings have almost no correlation to the actual grades.

+1. My best grades was in the class I thought I did worst in.

Are we counting CLR in this. I fucking hate CLR more now than ever. Other than that, pleasantly surprised. And I can't really say I was surprised by that one.

[alicrimson]

Open book v. Closed book. Really, I don't see a difference. I prepped the same way for all of my classes, got the same grade in everything (minus LRW which can SMD), and found that I really didn't use/have time to use my outlines and multi-tabbed sources that I was so secure with. I think I'm weird because in my mind, I thought I failed (well, C'd) every class. Atleast my gut feeling was consistent? More importantly, it was incorrect.

[bostonlawchick]

Okay this may not be the place for this, but I have a stupid Crim question for those of you who've taken it. Our assignment for tomorrow is to carefully read the General part and skim the Special part of the Model Penal Code in our casebook. The prof gave no page numbers and I can't see a general part/special part distinction.

My guess would be that the General refers to the first section (MPC§1-7 or whatever) and that the Special would be for specific crimes (MPC§210-whatever)? Best I could figure it.

Thanks! That's what I was figuring, but I couldn't help but wonder if I was missing something.

[homestyle28]

Grades were just released at Northwestern. Pleasantly surprised, although my lowest grade was one that I thought I did best in. Guess what everyone says is true.

Reasonably happy...it's nuts that the post exam feelings have almost no correlation to the actual grades.

+1. My best grades was in the class I thought I did worst in.

Are we counting CLR in this. I fucking hate CLR more now than ever. Other than that, pleasantly surprised. And I can't really say I was surprised by that one.

CLR shouldn't count for anything. ever. But I guess as I was sincerely anticipating a D there, it could've been worse

[AlexanderSupertramp]

I guess I can quit refreshing- my last grade probably isn't going to be posted at 10 pm.