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So I went to class all semester obviously and legitimately tried to understand the lectures but whenever I’d first hear the content, civ pro honestly sounded like a foreign language to me at first. I read most of the cases but towards the middle of the semester I was overwhelmed and also had heard that for civ pro, reading the cases themselves is sometimes not as important as understanding the content and how it all fits together. I made an outline and knew and understand every cases and why it was important, I watched the Quimbee video series 2x, I read and worked through the crunch time book and most of e and e, read old outlines from the class and tried to basically memorize case holdings/FRCP, tests, etc and I listened to the Freer series.
On my test, I felt terrible. Most people barely had time to finish but I was able to, which makes me feel like I didn’t go as in depth as I should have. I felt like a lot of my answers may have been right but were also surface level. Also since talking to my classmates I’ve realized I made at least one stupid mistake:we were given a quote from the Rules Enabling Act and asked what document it came from and I got that one wrong at least.
If I go to a T50 school, how screwed am I? Next semester, I’m definitely going to change my studying habits but am just praying it’s not too late; i know this would be my fault if I do fail or get a bad grade but it’s irritating though because if I fail, it won’t be because I was slacking off or didn’t care enough to try, I was just so overwhelmed. I feel like by the time I had finally mentally adjusted to being in law school, it was finals before I knew it:/

No one knows, because no one can possibly know how well you did on an exam relative to your classmates.

Find something else to do with your time over the break. No good can come of you revisiting your exams.

Don't worry. If you made a good-faith effort and did everything you said you did then you will be fine. Honestly, I believe if you put in a reasonable amount of work and go to a decent school you are guaranteed at least a B- unless you missed a lot of classes and were docked.

The beginning of your post resonated with me a ton. When I took civ pro, I literally just did not understand it to the degree I felt that others did. Specifically, The big-picture stuff, simple and obvious as it seems now, was just not sufficiently communicated to me. As you mentioned, I just didn’t get how it all fit together. I felt similarly to you after the exam. I got a B. In my experience, when one comes out of an exam feeling that way, one ends up with a B or a b+ best case scenario (but maybe that’s just me).

Anyway, I went onto fedclerk, publish several articles on civ pro topics, and work as a (now) biglaw midlevel lit associate using different civ pro doctrines, avenues, etc. to craft arguments on a daily basis.

And I didn’t go to a t14 either.

So short version is that even if it went less than ideally, it’s not the end of the world and you shouldn’t stress about it. You will have a ton of opportunities to distinguish yourself as you progress, and it’s conceivable that your civ pro exam just wasn’t one of them.

objctnyrhnr wrote:The beginning of your post resonated with me a ton. When I took civ pro, I literally just did not understand it to the degree I felt that others did. Specifically, The big-picture stuff, simple and obvious as it seems now, was just not sufficiently communicated to me. As you mentioned, I just didn’t get how it all fit together. I felt similarly to you after the exam. I got a B. In my experience, when one comes out of an exam feeling that way, one ends up with a B or a b+ best case scenario (but maybe that’s just me).

Anyway, I went onto fedclerk, publish several articles on civ pro topics, and work as a (now) biglaw midlevel lit associate using different civ pro doctrines, avenues, etc. to craft arguments on a daily basis.

And I didn’t go to a t14 either.

So short version is that even if it went less than ideally, it’s not the end of the world and you shouldn’t stress about it. You will have a ton of opportunities to distinguish yourself as you progress, and it’s conceivable that your civ pro exam just wasn’t one of them.

Well said, and seconded. Civ pro didn’t resonate with me either - I barely understood it and, honestly, had a lousy professor. I wish I could say I put in even nearly half as much work as you to really understand it. Even after the exam, I found out one of my answers was almost completely wrong. I ended up with a B (in a 5 credit class, ouch). I’m at a T50, and still landed an awesome big law job. As the above said, you’ll have other opportunities to shine, and you also have no idea how you did yet. You may be pleasantly surprised. Enjoy your break!

Only a 2L but I second what others say. I actually thought I did really well, relatively understood the material, had a tremendous prof, and ended up getting a mediocre grade. And I still summered 1L at a lit boutique and got a 2L offer to one of the firms people on this site Are constantly ogling. So don’t think about your grade over break, and when it comes in just focus on how you could improve if you are unhappy with it (or what you did right if you are happy with it).

Libya wrote:Only a 2L but I second what others say. I actually thought I did really well, relatively understood the material, had a tremendous prof, and ended up getting a mediocre grade. And I still summered 1L at a lit boutique and got a 2L offer to one of the firms people on this site Are constantly ogling. So don’t think about your grade over break, and when it comes in just focus on how you could improve if you are unhappy with it (or what you did right if you are happy with it).

What's a mediocre grade? I thought I did decently when I finished. The material really wasn't that confusing to me during the semester. I found out today I got a C. I'm pissed!

Qwertieyiez wrote:

Libya wrote:Only a 2L but I second what others say. I actually thought I did really well, relatively understood the material, had a tremendous prof, and ended up getting a mediocre grade. And I still summered 1L at a lit boutique and got a 2L offer to one of the firms people on this site Are constantly ogling. So don’t think about your grade over break, and when it comes in just focus on how you could improve if you are unhappy with it (or what you did right if you are happy with it).

What's a mediocre grade? I thought I did decently when I finished. The material really wasn't that confusing to me during the semester. I found out today I got a C. I'm pissed!

That's the breaks when it comes to law school exams, and it's the reason that everyone told the OP not to focus on whether they "felt good" about their performance. You can feel great about an exam walking out of the room and still end up with a bottom-of-the-curve grade.

As for what counts as a mediocre grade, it depends on your institution's curve. It also somewhat depends on what you want to do after school. If you want to get a summer offer at a biglaw firm, Cs can be a problem, even if you're at a top school.

Qwertieyiez wrote:

Libya wrote:Only a 2L but I second what others say. I actually thought I did really well, relatively understood the material, had a tremendous prof, and ended up getting a mediocre grade. And I still summered 1L at a lit boutique and got a 2L offer to one of the firms people on this site Are constantly ogling. So don’t think about your grade over break, and when it comes in just focus on how you could improve if you are unhappy with it (or what you did right if you are happy with it).

What's a mediocre grade? I thought I did decently when I finished. The material really wasn't that confusing to me during the semester. I found out today I got a C. I'm pissed!

The problem when material doesn’t feel confusing is that either 1) you didn’t realize what you don’t know, or 2) the material was easy for everyone and so it was hard to distinguish yourself on the exam. When you’re graded on a curve, it doesn’t matter how well you understand material in a vacuum, it matters how well you understand it compared to your classmates.

Anyway, how mediocre a C is depends on your school’s curve, like cav said. At some schools a C is absolutely bottom of the barrel, and at others it’s median. Median is much better than bottom of the barrel, but we can’t tell you which it is.

cavalier1138 wrote:

Qwertieyiez wrote:

Libya wrote:Only a 2L but I second what others say. I actually thought I did really well, relatively understood the material, had a tremendous prof, and ended up getting a mediocre grade. And I still summered 1L at a lit boutique and got a 2L offer to one of the firms people on this site Are constantly ogling. So don’t think about your grade over break, and when it comes in just focus on how you could improve if you are unhappy with it (or what you did right if you are happy with it).

What's a mediocre grade? I thought I did decently when I finished. The material really wasn't that confusing to me during the semester. I found out today I got a C. I'm pissed!

That's the breaks when it comes to law school exams, and it's the reason that everyone told the OP not to focus on whether they "felt good" about their performance. You can feel great about an exam walking out of the room and still end up with a bottom-of-the-curve grade.

As for what counts as a mediocre grade, it depends on your institution's curve. It also somewhat depends on what you want to do after school. If you want to get a summer offer at a biglaw firm, Cs can be a problem, even if you're at a top school.

I'm more worried about my scholarship than anything. I was thinking about transfering after my first year to the other law school in my city too, but this might have ruined that. I'm working full time and doing an evening program to pay most of the tuition in cash. My ultimate goal is to have my own practice so I might try to work in the govt or at a private practice before then, but I have student loan forgiveness and almost have a vested pension at my current job so I'm not leaving that for at least a couple of years after I graduate, lord willing. My prof has some specific things you had to mention and you only got points if you mentioned the exact things from that list. I went to every class and session with his assistant but I missed the 2nd exam review session. My other class grades are in line with my expectations following the exam. I hope this is my only C and I'm definitely avoiding this professor's classes for the rest of my time at this school.

nixy wrote:The problem when material doesn’t feel confusing is that either 1) you didn’t realize what you don’t know, or 2) the material was easy for everyone and so it was hard to distinguish yourself on the exam. When you’re graded on a curve, it doesn’t matter how well you understand material in a vacuum, it matters how well you understand it compared to your classmates.

2) is why I grew to abhor and dread "easy" law school exams. An "easy" exam pretty much guaranteed a mediocre or worse grade for me, because I never did figure out how to distinguish myself on an "easy" exam where most of the class spotted all the issues correctly.

QContinuum wrote:

nixy wrote:The problem when material doesn’t feel confusing is that either 1) you didn’t realize what you don’t know, or 2) the material was easy for everyone and so it was hard to distinguish yourself on the exam. When you’re graded on a curve, it doesn’t matter how well you understand material in a vacuum, it matters how well you understand it compared to your classmates.

2) is why I grew to abhor and dread "easy" law school exams. An "easy" exam pretty much guaranteed a mediocre or worse grade for me, because I never did figure out how to distinguish myself on an "easy" exam where most of the class spotted all the issues correctly.

Absolutely. I don't say this to suggest I'm particularly smart or anything (I'm not), but I always did much better on "hard" exams than easy ones. It makes no sense that I could learn enough to stand out on hard exams but not enough to stand out on easy ones, but there you go.