WUSTL Recent Grad (and others) Taking Questions Forum

[TatteredDignity]

gotta love how the attendance sheets come out as soon as the ABA shows up

I actually have more attendance sheets this semester than 1st semester last year.

Which is patently ridiculous.

It makes perfect sense, though. 1st semester 1L year, fear keeps the butts in the seats. Now everyone knows class is silly. Gotta keep us coming somehow.

[Birdnals]

Anybody here have Drobak (civ pro)/ Dinner (prop) before and recommend a good supplement for either?

[lukertin]

the friedenthal civ pro is tcr no matter who you have

[dietcoke0]

Anybody here have Drobak (civ pro)/ Dinner (prop) before and recommend a good supplement for either?

Somebody is in F

[Birdnals]

the friedenthal civ pro is tcr no matter who you have

Yeah, we have to have that for the class. I was thinking along the lines of E&E's or specific hornbook or something

[Oban]

pro tip: friedenthal makes a hornbook as well as the suplement.

[Birdnals]

pro tip: friedenthal makes a hornbook as well as the suplement.

Thanks!

[roaringeagle]

Drobak is the bomb. He said the following at the end of class one day: If you are a state judge, you're probably from SLU. But if you're a circuit judge you're more likely a WUSTL grad. lmao. He also has this great enthusiasm for teaching.

[punkyg0608]

With 3 weeks left of school, is it worth studying for the Legal Research midterm or just focus on the big exams? I feel myself running out of time and it's hard to care about an exam that's worth half a credit...

[TatteredDignity]

It's not worth it. Maybe give it one solid night of cramming. The maximum amount it can move your gpa one way or another is like .05.

[notedgarfigaro]

It's not worth it. Maybe give it one solid night of cramming. The maximum amount it can move your gpa one way or another is like .05.

I wouldn't even give it a solid night of cramming.

[stratocophic]

With 3 weeks left of school, is it worth studying for the Legal Research midterm or just focus on the big exams? I feel myself running out of time and it's hard to care about an exam that's worth half a credit...

Don't sweat it, it counts for next to nothing. I ended up with like an 83 in the class and it barely affected my overall GPA, I think hitting a 90 would have changed my GPA by like 0.20. Spend one night looking stuff over and then get back to those practice tests.

[JCougar]

With 3 weeks left of school, is it worth studying for the Legal Research midterm or just focus on the big exams? I feel myself running out of time and it's hard to care about an exam that's worth half a credit...

Don't sweat it, it counts for next to nothing. I ended up with like an 83 in the class and it barely affected my overall GPA, I think hitting a 90 would have changed my GPA by like 0.20. Spend one night looking stuff over and then get back to those practice tests.

On the other hand, our #2 student after 1L would have been #1 if he hadn't totally blown the fall LR exam. Possibly cost him a transfer to Y. He's doing fine, regardless. But you never know!

All it really takes is one night of studying, though.

[TatteredDignity]

With 3 weeks left of school, is it worth studying for the Legal Research midterm or just focus on the big exams? I feel myself running out of time and it's hard to care about an exam that's worth half a credit...

Don't sweat it, it counts for next to nothing. I ended up with like an 83 in the class and it barely affected my overall GPA, I think hitting a 90 would have changed my GPA by like 0.20. Spend one night looking stuff over and then get back to those practice tests.

On the other hand, our #2 student after 1L would have been #1 if he hadn't totally blown the fall LR exam. Possibly cost him a transfer to Y. He's doing fine, regardless. But you never know!

All it really takes is one night of studying, though.

some lulzy speculation there.

[RoseVI]

With 3 weeks left of school, is it worth studying for the Legal Research midterm or just focus on the big exams? I feel myself running out of time and it's hard to care about an exam that's worth half a credit...

Don't sweat it, it counts for next to nothing. I ended up with like an 83 in the class and it barely affected my overall GPA, I think hitting a 90 would have changed my GPA by like 0.20. Spend one night looking stuff over and then get back to those practice tests.

On the other hand, our #2 student after 1L would have been #1 if he hadn't totally blown the fall LR exam. Possibly cost him a transfer to Y. He's doing fine, regardless. But you never know!

All it really takes is one night of studying, though.

some lulzy speculation there.

A different way to look at it would be that you don't want to be that person who misses top 10%/15%/20%/25% by <.1 of your GPA

[TatteredDignity]

A different way to look at it would be that you don't want to be that person who misses top 10%/15%/20%/25% by <.1 of your GPA

true, but I don't think anyone is saying the class doesn't matter. but there's an opportunity cost to spending time studying for that exam, and you're trading off time that could be better invested in the 4 credit classes.

[JCougar]

some lulzy speculation there.

Not really too "lulzy" of speculation, as the person who got #1 instead eventually did go to Y.

[timeandspace11]

Thank you for doing this.

Where would you say most students live?

Is it possible to live in St. Louis without a car? Is the public transportation acceptable?

[TatteredDignity]

some lulzy speculation there.

Not really too "lulzy" of speculation, as the person who got #1 instead eventually did go to Y.

I called it lulzy with the benefit of knowing the transfer apps/outcomes for most of the top ten students this year. To say that any individual student would have had a different outcome with +/- 1 rank position misunderstands the chaotic nature of transfer admissions.

But this is irrelevant.

/derail

[dietcoke0]

Thank you for doing this.

Where would you say most students live?

Is it possible to live in St. Louis without a car? Is the public transportation acceptable?

Most students live in the Loop and Central West End. The Loop is more undergrady, a little more seedy, but super close to the school. CWE is nicer, much more expensive, a bit safer, and more professional. Few others migrate to wherever is cheap, or suits them, but I would say 80-85% live in those two areas, with maybe an edge to the CWE (at least from what I feel)

I don't use a car, and I live in the CWE. I have a car, but cheaped out and use metro. It's plenty suitable. There are buses, and if you live in the Loop, chances are you may be able to walk.

[JCougar]

some lulzy speculation there.

Not really too "lulzy" of speculation, as the person who got #1 instead eventually did go to Y.

I called it lulzy with the benefit of knowing the transfer apps/outcomes for most of the top ten students this year. To say that any individual student would have had a different outcome with +/- 1 rank position misunderstands the chaotic nature of transfer admissions.

But this is irrelevant.

/derail

I don't know about your year, but ours was rather predictable by individual rank. #1 went to Y, #2 went to H, and I believe a pair in the top 10 went to NYU. A few others in the top 5% went to Penn and UVA, and (surprisingly) some just within the top third went to Northwestern. One that was close to top third went to UCLA.

I don't think it's irrelevant. Sometimes a third of a GPA point means a lot. Some firms are very strict about their cutoffs. The point is, in LR, you can fuck off the entire semester, and with about 4-6 hours of studying on one night only basically get a small boost to your GPA. Other classes might take you 15 hours of studying to move your GPA up the same amount, if it moves at all. I'd argue that on a hour-per-gpa point basis, LR is well worth the effort.

Plus, if you're not going to get a job through OCI where all they look at is your overall GPA, simply having an extra grade in the 90s makes your transcript look better while glancing over it--especially since non-OCI employers care more about practical skills like research and writing, rather than the number of words you can invent in order to explain a rather simple legal issue.

[TheZoid]

JCougar, are LRM grades totally random as well?

[JCougar]

JCougar, are LRM grades totally random as well?

Not really. It actually matters how effectively you study for this class. The exam is all multiple choice, and the questions are taken directly from the text, so either you know the stuff or you don't. There's no word count premium to obfuscate things or "guessing what the professor thinks is good legal sophistry" matters to deal with. There's also a surprising number of people who blow the class off, so simply being through in your studying and understanding the material pays a small dividend.

And by "thorough" I don't mean gunning for the class and making a 50 page outline like some people did. You don't need any outline or notes at all. I did nothing but Facebook chat while being hungover for the class, but the night before the exam I gave the assigned readings in the textbook my first and only (albeit thorough) reading. I did pretty well. That's all you really need.

[Oban]

While I don't really regret spending most of my time studying for doctrinal exams instead of LRM, I do regret having one of the highest grades in LP and one of the lowest grades in LRM, which Made for some pretty lulzy interviews.

If I spent a an hour to two more I could have done a lot better.

[fl0w]

While I don't really regret spending most of my time studying for doctrinal exams instead of LRM, I do regret having one of the highest grades in LP and one of the lowest grades in LRM, which Made for some pretty lulzy interviews.

If I spent a an hour to two more I could have done a lot better.

I've literally never had anyone ask me about individual grades in any interview. The only grade related question I've ever gotten is "what do all of these numbers on your transcript mean?" Because they don't understand WUSTL's grading system since it's not 4.0 or HP/P/LP/F