WUSTL Recent Grad (and others) Taking Questions Forum

[chuckbass]

When do loan disbursements occur? If I go to WUSTL, I'd want to move into an apartment at the beginning of August to get settled, and I'd love to be able to actually pay for that.

Usually the week after summer welcome week. So you will have a week or so of "classes" before you get your loan disbursements. Plan accordingly.

Ok perfect, thanks!

[Michael Bluth]

Is St. Louis the type of place you have to visit to see if you could live there? Since it's the middle of the semester, I don't think I have a couple days where I could fly over. Plus, it's hundreds of dollars. Deposit for me is April 1st I believe. So I'll need a decision by then.

I've done research and it seems like it'd be a fine place to live. Thoughts?

From someone that's lived in a number large, cosmopolitan cities before, and been to pretty much every one in the United States and Canada, I can say that St. Louis as at the very least passable for any reasonable person. The nightlife isn't great in the NYC sense, but there's at least 5-7 neighborhoods where you can hang out late and have fun (in addition to the typical Loop, CWE, Downtown, Dogtown, and Clayton areas, there's also The Grove, Soulard, Cherokee St., Grand Center, and South Grand which are often overlooked by WUSTL students). The bars in the city are open to 3am. There's a great symphony orchestra that has $10 student tickets, some beautiful theaters (the Fox is amazing). There's Forest Park, which is right next to campus and is 50% larger than Central Park in NYC, and it has 36 holes of golf, a free zoo, a free art museum, a free history museum, miles of running/biking trails, an outdoor theater, a boathouse/lake, and every sport field you can think of. To top it all off, rent is very cheap.

Then you have the Cardinals/Blues/Rams, and while I'll admit that the Rams aren't much of an attraction, the other two teams are a huge draw.

The music scene is really hit or miss on any given night, but there'll be enough hits over the course of the month to keep you entertained. It's not like NYC/Chicago/Austin, etc. where you'll have to chose between like five good acts on the weekend nights. Some Friday nights there will be absolutely nothing going on and you'll just have to wing it. The club scene is also pretty weak if you're into that. The food scene is pretty mediocre overall, but after living there a year or so, you'll figure out where the gems are. The one exception is The Hill, an Italian neighborhood with about a dozen mostly fantastic Italian options. Otherwise, the Chinese/Mexican/Indian/Mediterranean/Thai options certainly leave something to be desired. Although I did find at least one fantastic option for each scattered throughout the city. If anyone wants details, let me know.

Great summary.

I agree with everything else you say in the post, but I do think that St. Louis has a very good (and well-regarded) food scene. It gets a decent amount of national recognition as well. A lot of really great established chefs and plenty of up-and-comers. Just off the top of my head, there's Gerard Craft, Josh Galliano, Anthony Devoti, Ben Poremba, Kevin Nashan, Dave Bailey, Kevin Willmann, etc.

I do agree that you have to do a little research to find the good stuff, but I'd bristle at the description of "mediocre." It's certainly not San Francisco, Chicago, or NYC, but it's at least on par with, say, Minneapolis and it's >> Nashville, Indy, KC.

edit: I'll also concede that I haven't found a GREAT Chinese place, and ethnic restaurants as a whole aren't the scene's best facet.

[JCougar]

edit: I'll also concede that I haven't found a GREAT Chinese place, and ethnic restaurants as a whole aren't the scene's best facet.

That's probably why we disagree. Ethnic food is my favorite, so that's what I'm most focused on. It took me like 10 very Americanized and bland Mexican restaurants before I found La Vallesana. Try out those two Chinese restaurants I mentioned. Asiana Garden or Lu Lu Seafood. They're both in the Chinatown strip of Olive if you take it west from University City.

I agree that Dave Bailey's restaurants are pretty frickin' good, though. He's putting up a new one on South Grand.

Some other ones I'll throw in here. Mr. Curry's is fantastic Indian if you're downtown for lunch, but it's only open from like 11-1:30 M-F for the business lunch crowd (it's cheap, too). Porter's has some of the best fried chicken I've ever had--especially if you get the hot n' spicy version. It's south on Big Bend close to Webster Groves. But totally worth it. Pappy's Smokehouse is fantastic BBQ, but most people know about that already.

Other than those spots and a few places in The Hill for Italian, though, I wasn't impressed. I don't think there's a single great restaurant in the Loop or the CWE. It's a lot of chain restaurants, and the ones that aren't are mediocre and overpriced.

[Cellar-door]

edit: I'll also concede that I haven't found a GREAT Chinese place, and ethnic restaurants as a whole aren't the scene's best facet.

That's probably why we disagree. Ethnic food is my favorite, so that's what I'm most focused on. It took me like 10 very Americanized and bland Mexican restaurants before I found La Vallesana. Try out those two Chinese restaurants I mentioned. Asiana Garden or Lu Lu Seafood. They're both in the Chinatown strip of Olive if you take it west from University City.

I agree that Dave Bailey's restaurants are pretty frickin' good, though. He's putting up a new one on South Grand.

Some other ones I'll throw in here. Mr. Curry's is fantastic Indian if you're downtown for lunch, but it's only open from like 11-1:30 M-F for the business lunch crowd (it's cheap, too). Porter's has some of the best fried chicken I've ever had--especially if you get the hot n' spicy version. It's south on Big Bend close to Webster Groves. But totally worth it. Pappy's Smokehouse is fantastic BBQ, but most people know about that already.

Other than those spots and a few places in The Hill for Italian, though, I wasn't impressed. I don't think there's a single great restaurant in the Loop or the CWE. It's a lot of chain restaurants, and the ones that aren't are mediocre and overpriced.

Mai Lee in Brentwood is excellent for Vietnamese, and I'd say Fork and Stix off Delmar is a very good Northern Thai place.

[TatteredDignity]

It's impossible to gun for clerkships unless you get into Yale. The amount of randomness and uncertainty that comes with trying to force subjectively-determined grades onto a bell curve where the students are already near-perfect in their LSAT and/or uGPA pretty much destroys any sort of predictability in regard to whether you will finish in the top 5% of any class...which is what you need to gun for clerkships

Really, you're back with this shtick again? I thought we resolved this like 100 pages ago. Is it hard to predict what grades any particular person will get? Yes. Are they random and arbitrary? No.

But your broader point stands--planning to finish in the top 5% is silly.

[Spikedude]

It's impossible to gun for clerkships unless you get into Yale. The amount of randomness and uncertainty that comes with trying to force subjectively-determined grades onto a bell curve where the students are already near-perfect in their LSAT and/or uGPA pretty much destroys any sort of predictability in regard to whether you will finish in the top 5% of any class...which is what you need to gun for clerkships

Really, you're back with this shtick again? I thought we resolved this like 100 pages ago. Is it hard to predict what grades any particular person will get? Yes. Are they random and arbitrary? No.

But your broader point stands--planning to finish in the top 5% is silly.

I will add my support to TD's statements that for the large part, grades are not random and arbitrary. You may not agree with THEY WAY professor's grade, but it's to your benefit to figure out HOW THEY GRADE so that you can give yourself a decent shot at doing well on the exam.

The trick to doing well in every class is to approach each exam INDEPENDENTLY.

[JCougar]

It's impossible to gun for clerkships unless you get into Yale. The amount of randomness and uncertainty that comes with trying to force subjectively-determined grades onto a bell curve where the students are already near-perfect in their LSAT and/or uGPA pretty much destroys any sort of predictability in regard to whether you will finish in the top 5% of any class...which is what you need to gun for clerkships

Really, you're back with this shtick again? I thought we resolved this like 100 pages ago. Is it hard to predict what grades any particular person will get? Yes. Are they random and arbitrary? No.

But your broader point stands--planning to finish in the top 5% is silly.

I wasn't trying to rehash this debate. Law school grades aren't totally random, but they're not totally predictable, either. Nor are they very reliable. It's not very controversial at all to suggest that the element of randomness is large enough to destroy any predictability as to whether you'd finish in the top 5% or not. Top 50% maybe, but when getting as finite as top 5%, definitely random noise is at play--you might not have to get lucky to be in the top 5%, but you at least have to avoid being unlucky.

[patogordo]

forget arbitrariness of the output, how about the complete impossibility of evaluating the input? nobody knows whether they're "good at law school exams" until it's too late.

[hoos89]

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[TatteredDignity]

1. Like fatduck said, evaluating the input is difficult (I wouldn't say impossible, but whatever). That's why I generally agreed with coug that planing to be in the top 5% is silly.

2. That's different from random/arbitrary. If, theoretically, you could run multiple iterations of the same incoming 1L class, I bet that the top 10% of the class would generally be the same people over and over again. I agree that there would be a lot more variation within the top 5%, but that just makes sense statistically.

[patogordo]

1. Like fatduck said, evaluating the input is difficult (I wouldn't say impossible, but whatever). That's why I generally agreed with coug that planing to be in the top 5% is silly.

2. That's different from random/arbitrary. If, theoretically, you could run multiple iterations of the same incoming 1L class, I bet that the top 10% of the class would generally be the same people over and over again. I agree that there would be a lot more variation within the top 5%, but that just makes sense statistically.

but that's exactly what people mean when they say grades are random/arbitrary. no one comes on tls worrying "oh man will my 1L grades be properly commensurate with my exam-taking ability??" they want to know "i'm smart/a hard worker/got good grades in UG/did good on my LSAT/my mom's a lawyer, does that mean i'll be above median??" and for that purpose, it may as well be random. and even if it was possible to evaluate someone's potential success prior to 1L, it's like 100x more unreasonable to expect an applicant to be able to accurately evaluate themselves in that respect.

[JCougar]

Well, now that the cat's already back out of the bag...

Some would say that the ability to cater the exam answer to your professor's ego is more of a conflating factor than anything else. As in, this facet is highly determinative of your grade, but it's essentially a confounding variable as it relates to knowing the law inside and out, and knowing how to apply it. "What your professor wants" is exactly the kind of subjectivity that makes law exams so frustrating and essentially useless from the validity and reliability standpoint. It's impossible to predict your ability to adapt your answer to a professor's style before going to law school, and your outcome will vary based on each individual exam in relation to how well you are able to do this. If "adapting your response to a professor's ego" is a skill that law school exams actually intend to measure, than I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they weren't designed to measure such a variable.

[PepperJack]

This reeks of sour grapes, and isn't really based in reality. Law school grading is more objective than any other system. I bet you if there were no blind grading, you would be seeing blatant unfairness.

[JCougar]

This reeks of sour grapes, and isn't really based in reality. Law school grading is more objective than any other system. I bet you if there were no blind grading, you would be seeing blatant unfairness.

It would definitely be worse if there were no blind grading. But the current process is still far, far from objective.

[PepperJack]

This reeks of sour grapes, and isn't really based in reality. Law school grading is more objective than any other system. I bet you if there were no blind grading, you would be seeing blatant unfairness.

It would definitely be worse if there were no blind grading. But the current process is still far, far from objective.

Again, sour grapes. You see a lot of consistency across different professors. IDK. For instance, once in college our professor had an atypical political opinion and would show us films about her opinion. I took issue with it, because that opinion was close to me (had relatives die in it, etc.) I sent a very disciplined e-mail stating I was a little offended, and brought up a comment in class. I got a C in the class with what I was confident was A level work. I never experienced anything like that in law school. You can't expect 100% objectivity (if so, then I suppose even grammar and writing ability would have 0% impact on grades), but it's really not an unfair system.

[JCougar]

Again, sour grapes. You see a lot of consistency across different professors. IDK. For instance, once in college our professor had an atypical political opinion and would show us films about her opinion. I took issue with it, because that opinion was close to me (had relatives die in it, etc.) I sent a very disciplined e-mail stating I was a little offended, and brought up a comment in class. I got a C in the class with what I was confident was A level work. I never experienced anything like that in law school. You can't expect 100% objectivity (if so, then I suppose even grammar and writing ability would have 0% impact on grades), but it's really not an unfair system.

I don't think you understand what the definition of "objective" is. It's not "slightly less subjective." Just because you have eliminated one source of professor bias via blind grading doesn't mean you have eliminated all subjective bias. The bottom line is that it's impossible to quantify what a "good" law exam answer is--beyond just counting up the raw number of issues you spot and to some extent using each relevant fact to argue for/against the law that relates to that issue. And spotting issues, most professors have said, is only worth like 20% of your grade or so. Most points are awarded in the "analysis," and deciding what is good vs. bad analysis is inherently subjective--although there will be a rough consensus among some professors.

Objective means something like multiple choice, or a question that requires deductive reasoning. Law is mostly inductive reasoning, and there's a fair amount of subjective discretion involved with judging that, even if the law professor is 100% unbiased, which they certainly are not. Otherwise, why would the #1 piece of advice on TLS as far as succeeding at exams be "figure out what your professor wants."

It's not sour grapes. A prospective student brought it up, and he or she is entitled to a candid assessment of what goes into law school exam grading when making one of the biggest financial decisions of his/her life.

To say that the exams he or she will face are "objective" is simply dishonest.

[hoos89]

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[JCougar]

2. That's different from random/arbitrary. If, theoretically, you could run multiple iterations of the same incoming 1L class, I bet that the top 10% of the class would generally be the same people over and over again. I agree that there would be a lot more variation within the top 5%, but that just makes sense statistically.

This actually depends on what you're trying to measure. If you're trying to measure only understanding and application of the law to the facts, then this would be arbitrary. But if adapting your answer to each individual professor is something a law exam actually intends to measure, then it wouldn't be arbitrary.

The ability to do this is not all that random, so maybe the top third of the class would look pretty similar over and over again if it were the same professors grading students adapting their answers to those professors' grades.

But if it were a double-blind grading system, where professors didn't know which student wrote the exam, and students had no idea which professor was going to grade each subject...you'd probably see a decent number of people formerly in the top 20% or so somewhere around median, and vice versa.

[JCougar]

Eh, to be fair multiple choice exams can be pretty subjective for law school where there isn't necessarily a 100% "right" answer. Plenty of questions have multiple answers that are technically correct but it comes down to picking the one the professor thinks is most correct.

That's more of a problem with either the subject matter or the way the question was written. You're right though, multiple choice is no guarantee of objectivity.

I don't think that, in general, professors are really that idiosyncratic in how you score points on their exams (with perhaps a few exceptions). There are some very obvious things that professors will tell you, like whether you should cite cases, that might have a significant impact on your grade if you ignore them. Other than that "what the professor wants" is generally just good, well-founded analysis of the issues on the exam.

And that is, by definition, subjective. There's no standard for how each professor counts up the points they award for "good" analysis. Some have no standards at all, and just give you points if they like something. Others have tally sheets where they have pre-determined the arguments they want you to make, and give you points only if you hit on those arguments. But whether or not an argument makes it onto that tally sheet is, in and of itself, a subjective decision. People who have a good understanding of the law are more likely to hit on more of those pre-determined arguments, but it's still hard to figure out before you get your grade which ones your professor wants you exactly to touch on, elaborate more on, etc.

The other thing is that at schools where most of the people are smart enough to spot most of the issues and make most of the arguments necessary to analyze the issue, these more objective measures end up mostly canceling each other out in the grading process because of the curve. If 50% of the class gets the most objective elements right, the only way to differentiate them along a forced curve is to resort to more subjective criteria.

I mean obviously there are underlying skills involved helping you, but I don't think making the argument--that their predictive value as to whether you will finish in the top 5% or not is very weak--is all that controversial of a statement. It doesn't take a very large amount of random error, nor does it take very significant unforeseen confounding variables, to make my statement true.

[hoos89]

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[TatteredDignity]

1. Like fatduck said, evaluating the input is difficult (I wouldn't say impossible, but whatever). That's why I generally agreed with coug that planing to be in the top 5% is silly.

2. That's different from random/arbitrary. If, theoretically, you could run multiple iterations of the same incoming 1L class, I bet that the top 10% of the class would generally be the same people over and over again. I agree that there would be a lot more variation within the top 5%, but that just makes sense statistically.

but that's exactly what people mean when they say grades are random/arbitrary. no one comes on tls worrying "oh man will my 1L grades be properly commensurate with my exam-taking ability??" they want to know "i'm smart/a hard worker/got good grades in UG/did good on my LSAT/my mom's a lawyer, does that mean i'll be above median??" and for that purpose, it may as well be random. and even if it was possible to evaluate someone's potential success prior to 1L, it's like 100x more unreasonable to expect an applicant to be able to accurately evaluate themselves in that respect.

100% agree. We can't answer the question that most 0Ls want an answer to, which is whether grades are arbitrary ex ante.

But arguing about ex post "subjectivity" and "randomness" and "confounding factors" is fun, even if not practical. Mostly because jcoug usually tries to convince everyone that people with good grades just happen to have an unquantifiable and useless skill. It makes me wonder whether he's ever read a batch of exam answers. There is a clear difference between a great, good, mediocre, and poor answer.

[patogordo]

1. Like fatduck said, evaluating the input is difficult (I wouldn't say impossible, but whatever). That's why I generally agreed with coug that planing to be in the top 5% is silly.

2. That's different from random/arbitrary. If, theoretically, you could run multiple iterations of the same incoming 1L class, I bet that the top 10% of the class would generally be the same people over and over again. I agree that there would be a lot more variation within the top 5%, but that just makes sense statistically.

but that's exactly what people mean when they say grades are random/arbitrary. no one comes on tls worrying "oh man will my 1L grades be properly commensurate with my exam-taking ability??" they want to know "i'm smart/a hard worker/got good grades in UG/did good on my LSAT/my mom's a lawyer, does that mean i'll be above median??" and for that purpose, it may as well be random. and even if it was possible to evaluate someone's potential success prior to 1L, it's like 100x more unreasonable to expect an applicant to be able to accurately evaluate themselves in that respect.

100% agree. We can't answer the question that most 0Ls want an answer to, which is whether grades are arbitrary ex ante.

But arguing about ex post "subjectivity" and "randomness" and "confounding factors" is fun, even if not practical. Mostly because jcoug usually tries to convince everyone that people with good grades just happen to have an unquantifiable and useless skill. It makes me wonder whether he's ever read a batch of exam answers. There is a clear difference between a great, good, mediocre, and poor answer.

i see. carry on.

[JCougar]

That really doesn't explain why there are people who do consistently well to excellent in classes with several different professors. I guess your theory is that they are somehow experts at figuring out which arguments the professor wants, but I would argue that they are just better at putting forth arguments in general. Also I think you might be overestimating how many issues most exams pick up on; there really is a pretty sizeable difference in terms of raw points (in most classes) between the CALI(s) and the median.

I think most of that difference is driven not by issue spotting, but by "analysis" points, which are driven by typing speed/word count, etc., as well as the subjective criteria I was talking about above.

I'm kind of surprised that this is all that controversial. My career before law school was developing reliable and valid talent and skill assessment tests. If I would have come up with something as crude, unreliable, and invalid as a law exam, I would have been fired instantly. I'm not the only one that has brought this up.

http://www.nesl.edu/userfiles/file/lawr ... /crane.PDF

In 1976, the Law School Admission Council published the results of a study by Stephen P. Klein and Frederick M. Hart supporting the idea that factors other than substantive knowledge affect essay grades. One factor that correlated highly with success on law school essay examinations was legible handwriting. Another leading indicator of higher grades was length. Longer answers were viewed by law professors as better.

Law schools have an obligation to use the most accurate and internally consistent, or reliable examination methods. The essay exam is inherently capricious not only because of the number of subjective factors used in scoring that influence the student's overall grade; but also because they compare law students based on too few samples of each student's knowledge of a given domain of material to be reliable or statistically valid.

The traditional law school essay exam is mathematically unsound and unable to consistently measure the law student's proficiencies within the law school's curriculum. This is due to an inability to either accurately sample the same amount of material or to render the same number of samples of a given domain of material as an objective exam can within a comparable time period. Therefore, single-shot essay exams used to measure numerous domains of information within each larger law school subject are notoriously subjective and unreliable. Accordingly, they are also invalid for their intended purpose. This is especially true given the enormous importance placed on the results of law school essay examinations and because those results are used to compare students' performances.

The essay exam format is inherently incapable of affording law students an adequate opportunity to demonstrate proficiency in an entire subject. It is infeasible for the professor to draft an essay exam that is capable of sampling a sufficient quantity of information from various the domains of a complex subject. If the professor were to draft successfully an essay examination that was lengthy enough to contain enough questions for the examination to be considered valid, it would be impossible for the student to actually complete the examination within normal time constraints; and various physical and psychological phenomenon would hinder the students ability to perform well during the course of completing such an arduous task. Critics of essay examinations doubt that their unreliability can be lowered to a level that makes them valid.

I can't seem to find a copy of the actual Klein and Hart study anywhere online, but their analysis was done on issue-spotter essay exams that were essentially the same as the exams we see today in law school. Obviously, handwriting as a confounding variable has been eliminated due to SoftTest--but this has probably only exacerbated a different confounding variable: word count (which is largely a function of typing speed).

I'm not going to hijack this thread any further, and I've made my points clear by now. I didn't even mean to respark this contentious debate. I just though I made a fairly obvious and innocuous comment that's pretty much in line with the conventional TLS wisdom. I just don't like my view on this matter dismissed as "sour grapes." That's an ad hom attack lacking any logos-based value. I ended up getting the job I always wanted out of law school anyway, so I have no reason to be bitter. I like to speak up on this issue because it's an area where I have a lot of particular expertise and work experience--and if an 0L asks for honest advice regarding the realities of going to law school, this is the most honest advice I can think of.

The flip side of the "sour grapes" argument is that there's no doubt an inclination for people to defend a system they are so deeply invested in, and there's doubly an incentive to defend that system if it tells you you are much better than others--despite objective evidence showing that system isn't worth much in the empirical sense. It's possible that I am biased myself, but everything I've read suggests that I'm not far off.

[aesth24]

So are any of you friends with the med school students, or intertwine with them at all? Or are you the two schools pretty segregated in the social scene?

[sublime]

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