Top Law Schools

So my school provides semester rankings in addition to our cumulative rankings and although the general advice on this board seems to be that posting spring semester grades on your resume is probably a mistake, there are some compelling circumstances in my case that complicate the situation a bit. First, as you might have guessed, I did a lot better my second semester than I did in the fall. I ended up ranking #9 out of ~250 students this semester. Although my cumulative ranking is now somewhat respectable at 19%, most of the halfway decent firms at my school's OCI apparently have a cutoff of top 15%. Do you think it would benefit me to list my spring semester ranking (maybe in parenthesis? e.g. 9/250) alongside my cumulative ranking, or would this just highlight how mediocre my first semester was?

law110 wrote:So my school provides semester rankings in addition to our cumulative rankings and although the general advice on this board seems to be that posting spring semester grades on your resume is probably a mistake, there are some compelling circumstances in my case that complicate the situation a bit. First, as you might have guessed, I did a lot better my second semester than I did in the fall. I ended up ranking #9 out of ~250 students this semester. Although my cumulative ranking is now somewhat respectable at 19%, most of the halfway decent firms at my school's OCI apparently have a cutoff of top 15%. Do you think it would benefit me to list my spring semester ranking (maybe in parenthesis? e.g. 9/250) alongside my cumulative ranking, or would this just highlight how mediocre my first semester was?

I think that highlighting your rank for one semester would look desperate.

Don't do it. But do put on your résumé that you were on the deans list for the spring semester (I'm assuming you were).