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I ended up getting all B's, which I guess is below median. How much can spring semester grades improve one's rank? Is there still hope?

Does anyone have any stories of how much their rank improved after spring semester?

swtlilsoni wrote:I ended up getting all B's, which I guess is below median. How much can spring semester grades improve one's rank? Is there still hope?

Does anyone have any experiences of how spring semester improved their rank?

Of course people have such stories. I did much better spring semester, for example.
There are lots of threads with good advice. The first thing that you should do is go back to the professors and go over the exams with them. See if they'll give you, or if you can get, better exams, and compare the things that others did with the things that you didn't. People like to say that exams are random, but you need to expel that thought from your head if you are going to get better at them.
Next semester, be finished outlining when reading week begins, and take the hell out of practice exams, preferably ones with sample answers available. Go over them very critically, and then put the samples away and rewrite your answer incorporating everything that you missed. It can also help to do it in a group, so each person calls attention to the parts that he is more proficient at. In almost every course, the same issues come up again and again, and you'll notice that when you're taking your third Crim Pro exam after rewriting two other answers to be perfect.
Good luck!

Do you know how much improvement is possible though? I'm not sure how to calculate it...just take the fall and spring GPAs and average it?

Also, I was confused about something ..
Each class is curved separately. So sure 10% of the people get As...but that is only in that individual class. Thus, the class curves wouldn't translate to the entire curve? Because some people who got As will get Bs in other classes..etc. So just because 10% of the CLASS gets As, doesn't mean 10% gets a 4.0. So......doesn't this mean that where you stand relative to the class may not be where you stand overall? So median class by class may not be median overall? WHo knows, maybe no one ended up getting all As?

swtlilsoni wrote:Do you know how much improvement is possible though? I'm not sure how to calculate it...

GPA= ((FallGPA * #ofFallCredits) + (SpringGPA * #ofSpringCredits))/TotalCredits

Realistically your goal should be to get to the gray area range where you're just lumped in as median. That means about A- average for spring (assuming you have around a 3.3 median). Tough but possible.

To improve: practice tests, outline bank, supplements, and meeting with profs. to see what you did wrong.

Regarding your math Q: class distribution is different than overall distribution. The curve is set such that the median is the nearly always the same but the cutoffs vary.

swtlilsoni wrote:Do you know how much improvement is possible though? I'm not sure how to calculate it...just take the fall and spring GPAs and average it?

Really? Yes, that will be correct if you're taking the same number of credits both semesters. If you're taking more (or fewer) credits in the Spring, it'll be more complicated. (Really though, no offense intended, but... you don't how to calculate a GPA by this point?)

Also, I was confused about something ..
Each class is curved separately. So sure 10% of the people get As...but that is only in that individual class. Thus, the class curves wouldn't translate to the entire curve? Because some people who got As will get Bs in other classes..etc. So just because 10% of the CLASS gets As, doesn't mean 10% gets a 4.0. So......doesn't this mean that where you stand relative to the class may not be where you stand overall? So median class by class may not be median overall? WHo knows, maybe no one ended up getting all As?

Yes, most people will get a mix of grades in their various classes. Some, like me, will be all over the place (B, A-, and A+), but there will likely be at least some degree of clustering (that is, some people will just be very good at exams or very bad at exams, and thus tend to get all high(ish) or all low(ish) grades). The result is that there will be quite a variety of GPAs throughout the class. More people will have an overall GPA at any point in the middle of the range than will have that "GPA" in any individual class, and fewer people will have an overall GPA at any point near the upper and lower ends of the range than will have that "GPA" in any individual class (that is, your curve may call for 2% A+ in each class, but there's no way in hell that 2% of students will have an overall GPA of 4.33; the curve may call for 30% B+, but it's likely that more than 30% of students will end up with a GPA in the general vicinity of 3.33).

Don't forget that A can students improve too.

So...since the overall distribution is completely different than the class distributions....doesn't that mean that a 3.0 might not be below median overall? It is below median in the individual classes, but maybe it's not overall?

One of my peers had straight Ds after first semester. He didn't give up. Instead he went to a psychologist and got ADD. With 1.5 hours extra per exam he was able to get straight As. Not really an improvement of legal skills per se, just a grade improvement.

shepdawg wrote:One of my peers had straight Ds after first semester. He didn't give up. Instead he went to a psychologist and got ADD. With 1.5 hours extra per exam he was able to get straight As. Not really an improvement of legal skills per se, just a grade improvement.

"Don't give up, get ADD" seems like valid advice.

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I started off a bit below median 1st semester 1L year. Got depressed, talked to professors, then turned it all around second semester right before OCI.

First semester and second semester everyone will, on average, perform exactly the same - at the school's median.

Every GPA point a person gains is equally and exactly offset by GPA loss elsewhere.

So you can theoretically recover from a 3.0 to a 4.0 and wind up with a 3.5; but for every person who does somebody else is going from a 4.0 to a 3.0 (or more probably, several people are dropping a smaller amount, but the point is that it all nets out).

It's a cage match.

conversely, what are the prospects for continued success of people that did well? in other words, is there truly a skill in law school exams? or do things just line up well by chance. i am still confused as to what makes things good or bad.

stillwater wrote:conversely, what are the prospects for continued success of people that did well? in other words, is there truly a skill in law school exams? or do things just line up well by chance. i am still confused as to what makes things good or bad.

It varies a lot. Strong performance is maintainable but hardly guaranteed; mediocre performance is fairly likely to repeat but not certain. Reversion to the mean is probably the most likely no matter what the performance.

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