How much more challenging is law school compared to UG? Forum

[keg411]

Considering I did about 0 work in undergrad... . However, I think the material is easier than say, reading Ulysses.

Really the hardest part about lawl skool is the curve and the helpless feeling of having no idea how you are doing as compared to everyone else.

[A'nold]

Speaking of General Tso's chicken, I had some from Safeway the other day and it was pretty dang good.

[General Tso]

Speaking of General Tso's chicken, I had some from Safeway the other day and it was pretty dang good.

yes but how did it compare to restaurant quality General Tso's?

No comparison. Safeway chicken is 10x better.
Much better
Somewhat better
Same
Worse

[Ploof]

1. Law school is not about memorization. If you are at a T14 school, you're going to have to synthesize a lot of material to get even a B+.

2. Even though there may be a couple of counterexamples, most often you will get the grade that correlates with your work input. The people who slack are the people who end up with the Bs.

3. The concepts are easy but thats not the hard part of law school. Its easy to read someone else's reasoning and understand it. Its the application that you are graded on and the application is always much more difficult.

4. If you want to be competitive you have to do time-consuming extra curricular activities such as a journal or moot court. Every hour you have to spend on that is an hour of relaxation that you lose.

Law school is definitely more rigorous than undergrad.

[Veyron]

Undergrad = madness
Law school = Sparta

[Cupidity]

Law School is harder because there is one exam per class, which is different from many undergrads. The sad thing is, your exam will cover 10-15% of the knowledge taught in the course. You need to know everything amazingly well, or you'll end up with an essay worth 1/3 of your grade on a closed book torts exam that requires you remember the seven part dawson test for product liability.

[FalafelWaffle]

Law School is harder because there is one exam per class, which is different from many undergrads. The sad thing is, your exam will cover 10-15% of the knowledge taught in the course. You need to know everything amazingly well, or you'll end up with an essay worth 1/3 of your grade on a closed book torts exam that requires you remember the seven part dawson test for product liability.

Jesus.

[edcrane]

Law School is harder because there is one exam per class, which is different from many undergrads. The sad thing is, your exam will cover 10-15% of the knowledge taught in the course. You need to know everything amazingly well, or you'll end up with an essay worth 1/3 of your grade on a closed book torts exam that requires you remember the seven part dawson test for product liability.

To be fair, your experiences sound unusual. While exam coverage is seldom 100%, in all but one of my classes, the exam has covered at least 70% of the material discussed in class.

[Gatriel]

The work isn't all that challenging. What is different is everyone here cares, whereas back in UG 2/3rds of the class could care less, and they filled out the B's and C's. Making As back in the day was easy. Not you have to kill yourself, and good grades aren't guaranteed.

I always sort of figured that there are at least a handful of morons in every school who either have very well-connected families (i.e. daddy owns a firm or they have a family business fallback a la the Bluth family), and people who just want another 3 years of student discounts. I'm sure those people aren't nearly as prevalent at the T14s, but maybe it means you won't end up on the bottom unless...

No, even the well connected people care.

[FalafelWaffle]

The work isn't all that challenging. What is different is everyone here cares, whereas back in UG 2/3rds of the class could care less, and they filled out the B's and C's. Making As back in the day was easy. Not you have to kill yourself, and good grades aren't guaranteed.

I always sort of figured that there are at least a handful of morons in every school who either have very well-connected families (i.e. daddy owns a firm or they have a family business fallback a la the Bluth family), and people who just want another 3 years of student discounts. I'm sure those people aren't nearly as prevalent at the T14s, but maybe it means you won't end up on the bottom unless...

No, even the well connected people care.

That's sort of unfair. They should...meh

[General Tso]

in my experience, most people care enough to try hard. but I have met a handful who don't give a crap about their grades. those kind of people probably make up less than 10% of the class.

[prezidentv8]

2. Even though there may be a couple of counterexamples, most often you will get the grade that correlates with your work input. The people who slack are the people who end up with the Bs.

This has not been my experience.

Law School is harder because there is one exam per class, which is different from many undergrads. The sad thing is, your exam will cover 10-15% of the knowledge taught in the course. You need to know everything amazingly well, or you'll end up with an essay worth 1/3 of your grade on a closed book torts exam that requires you remember the seven part dawson test for product liability.

To be fair, your experiences sound unusual. While exam coverage is seldom 100%, in all but one of my classes, the exam has covered at least 70% of the material discussed in class.

70% seems on the high end; most of my classes have been something in between each of your marks. I think TCR is that it varies by class/professor.

[cornellbeez]

Students at certain undergraduate schools (e.g. Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, Cal-Tech, Northwestern, Princeton, Chicago,etc.) probably will find law school to be similiar in work & time demands as might some engineering & pre-med majors at other demanding undergraduate schools. The key difference, however, is the thought process which does not necessarily reward hard work as much as one is accustomed to in undergraduate studies. Many bright, life-long straight "A" students struggle during their first semester &/or first year of law school because the correct answers are not found in the study materials or may not exist and this can be frustrating to those used to hard work & regurgitation of the material on exams.

LOL @ John Hopkins, Northwestern, Princeton, Chicago being demanding. If you didn't major in engineering or a hard science/a major that requires a lot of math, undergrad at these schools is probably comparably a lot easier, and somewhat of a joke, compared to law school.