Top Law Schools

I'm going to be applying this upcoming cycle (taking the June LSAT) and had a question about the varying curves of the different law schools. My question is, during OCI, do firms that are conducting interviews place more emphasis on class rank or GPA from law school? It seems the lower down the totem pole, the grading curves get more and more strict. I guess the hypothetical situation is if a school has a curve of 2.6, and you're in the top quarter with a 3.0, however someone from a different school has a 3.3 at exactly median, are those discrepancies going to play a major role in judging potential candidates? Or does the interviewer mainly look at class rank due to different schools having different curves for grade distributions?

Any light anyone can shed on this would be greatly appreciated. And an extra thank you to anyone who can answer why higher ranked institutions have more lenient grading scales

Absolutely class rank. They know every school grades differently. Usually schools give them a ranking guide at OCI so they know where each GPA falls.

e: As far as your question about why lower ranked law schools have lower curves, the only explanation I can think of is that so when they say your scholarship stipulation is a 2.7 or whatever you think "oh hey that's easy I can get at least a C+ average!" and they hope you don't bother to look up that 2.7 is like top 10% or some shit. No clue if that's the real reason, but sounds plausible

Repartee16 wrote:I'm going to be applying this upcoming cycle (taking the June LSAT) and had a question about the varying curves of the different law schools. My question is, during OCI, do firms that are conducting interviews place more emphasis on class rank or GPA from law school? It seems the lower down the totem pole, the grading curves get more and more strict. I guess the hypothetical situation is if a school has a curve of 2.6, and you're in the top quarter with a 3.0, however someone from a different school has a 3.3 at exactly median, are those discrepancies going to play a major role in judging potential candidates? Or does the interviewer mainly look at class rank due to different schools having different curves for grade distributions?

Any light anyone can shed on this would be greatly appreciated. And an extra thank you to anyone who can answer why higher ranked institutions have more lenient grading scales

Firms typically have a GPA cutoff that varies for each individual school from which they recruit regularly, so it is effectively done by class rank. For example, it was leaked last year that the Sullivan & Cromwell GPA cutoff for Michigan is 3.7. That's an extreme example though because S&C is one of the most grade obsessed firms around.

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/09/an-insid ... g-process/

I should add that there is usually a single GPA cutoff for all of the schools that the firm does not typically recruit from. So, generally speaking, most big firms have individualized GPA cutoffs for every school in tier 1, and then also every school in market. And then all other schools will have a single GPA cutoff (which is quite high).

I know this because I know people in recruiting. Firms pretty much never publicly release their cutoffs.

As Ludovico said, it will all be done based on rank, not grades. Top 10% is top 10%, regardless of what the actual GPA is. Firms that come to your school will probably know how the school grades. If you plan on applying to firms that do not come, then it needs to say on your resume, right next to your GPA, what your rank is, perhaps the relevant cutoffs as well.

For instance, mine looks something like this: GPA 3.000 (Top 33% —3.015, Top 50% — 2.910).

That way, firms get a sense of what your GPA actually means at your school.

I think I might have double posted, not sure if TLS is lagging or not...

That's good to hear. My target schools are SMU/Houston - Alabama - LSU. I wouldn't mind working in either of the markets. Food from Texas and Louisiana are very suitable to my taste buds Alabama has a pretty generous curve but I guess having a 3.0 from there is bottom quarter it seems and top quarter at LSU haha.

Thank you everyone for all of your responses, they were very helpful!

The only time I can think of when having a lower median curve hurts is when a job/internship position requires a minimum 3.0 GPA threshold (or some random GPA) across the board. This obviously helps out those with 3.3 medians vs those with 2.7 medians.