Top Law Schools

Does anyone know if the top 20% is based on the entire class or, does the school take a specific percentage from every section to include in the top 20%?

Im not really sure how other schools are but in mine, 1L is divided into A B and C and each has 3 small sections.

I am curious if i am just competing with my section for the top percentage, or the entire class?

jimmycricket wrote:Does anyone know if the top 20% is based on the entire class or, does the school take a specific percentage from every section to include in the top 20%?

Im not really sure how other schools are but in mine, 1L is divided into A B and C and each has 3 small sections.

I am curious if i am just competing with my section for the top percentage, or the entire class?

In general you are competing with the entire class, not your section.

For me, the curve is by section, so the top 20% should in theory be made up of people from every section if professors are applying similar curves.

At my school, the classes have to be curved between 3.0 and 3.3

For class rank, whatever GPA I end up with is compared to my entire class, not just my section.

Nova wrote:At my school, the classes have to be curved between 3.0 and 3.3

For class rank, whatever GPA I end up with is compared to my entire class, not just my section.

SUPPOSEDLY they took "how professors make their curves" into consideration when assigning different professors to different sections... It would only seem fair that way

maybe I've always oversimplified this, but I thought all teachers tried to stick to a relatively strict curve, i.e. an oversimplified scheme would be:

~20% = A
~60% = B
~20 % = C

and since all professors stick to the same curve you can compare GPAs across sections/professors.

But yes, for sure, at least at every school I know of, your rank is determined comparing your GPA to other sections. Sometimes this can be unfair. For example, imagine only the top 10% get As in a given class and there are 50 students in a section. If in one section there are 7 "super smart" students that are pretty much equally competitive and go back and forth in terms of beating each other for the top grade in the class, then you can expect that they are all going to have a ~3.85 GPA. On the other hand, if in the other section there are only 3-4 "super smart" students, then they should be able to all consistently get As in each of their classes, so all three or four of them will end up with a 4.0. When it comes time for ranking, all of the "super smart" students from one section will be ranked higher than the "super smart" students from the other section even though they maybe equally capable, since 4.0> 3.85. It is this logic that belies the theory that some schools engage in section stacking, putting the most promising students all in one section so that fewer of them are able to transfer out at the end of the year.

Yet another reason lawschool is a bad gamble, in case anyone was looking for more reasons.

InGoodFaith wrote:For me, the curve is by section, so the top 20% should in theory be made up of people from every section if professors are applying similar curves.

http://static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Stoned_e16f74_512585.gif

Lawquacious wrote:

InGoodFaith wrote:For me, the curve is by section, so the top 20% should in theory be made up of people from every section if professors are applying similar curves.

http://static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Stoned_e16f74_512585.gif

Confused about numbers brah? Luckily the post above yours explains exactly what I was talking about.