how does XX% of your final grade only end up being so little Forum

[sangr]

hey guys,

so im sure for a lot of us our assignments or midterm accounts for somwhere around 10%-20% of our final grade

yet upperclassmen and profs say that realistically it accounts for maybe 1-3 points on our final exam grade

does anyone know the mechanics of this

[midwesTT]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentages

[Gorki]

Profs get lazy, do not want to figure all of it out, and know deep down that most grading methods in LS are subjective.

[KidStuddi]

It's really not complicated...

Say your midterm is 10% of your overall grade. You bomb the exam and get a C and someone else does well and gets an A.
To make it simple, we'll say it's a 100 point exam. You got 75 points he got 95. All that means is you have 7.5/10% and he has 9.5/10% determined. Your final grade will still be out of a 100% and the final will determine the other 90%.

Even though the gap between an C and an A is as big as it gets in law school, at the end of the semester the difference between you is 2 percentage points. And because grades are given only in bands of letter grades, the chances are that 2% is not going to change you from an B to a B+. If you narrow the gap on the midterm and compare someone who get a B+ to someone who got an A-, the difference in their final grades is really negligible.