Grades at Penn Forum

(Seek and share information about clerkship applications, clerkship hiring timelines, and post-clerkship employment opportunities)
Forum rules
Anonymous Posting

Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about clerkship applications and clerkship hiring. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.

Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned."
Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:00 pm

For those complaining about Columbia, I googled it and it seems like they're fixing their system for the class of 2025: https://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/ ... ces/honors

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:24 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:00 pm
For those complaining about Columbia, I googled it and it seems like they're fixing their system for the class of 2025: https://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/ ... ces/honors
CLS grad here. I think the change is a step in the right direction, but still dumb overall. My main complaint with the Stone/Kent system was that the school’s insistence on filtering outcomes data (clerkships, OCI stuff) through that lens stripped most of the value and nuance from the published information. Knowing that S&C is giving 90% of its offers to Stone/Kent people isn’t nearly as helpful as knowing the average 1L GPA of an offeree was 3.6. The new system probably won’t be much better since the school will inevitably just lump the data into “honors” and “no honors” buckets.

Why the school didn’t simply move to a system of graduation honors like all of its peers is beyond me. The new system still requires a judge/clerk/employer to make an educated guess at where a given student’s combination of honors puts them in terms of class rank.
Last edited by Anonymous User on Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:27 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:00 pm
For those complaining about Columbia, I googled it and it seems like they're fixing their system for the class of 2025: https://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/ ... ces/honors
It's still not cumulative though so it only tells you if your GPA was within the top 2/10/40% of the year. Would make more sense if they would give awards by year and cumulative like NYU does.

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:35 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:27 am
Anonymous User wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:00 pm
For those complaining about Columbia, I googled it and it seems like they're fixing their system for the class of 2025: https://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/ ... ces/honors
It's still not cumulative though so it only tells you if your GPA was within the top 2/10/40% of the year. Would make more sense if they would give awards by year and cumulative like NYU does.
LMAO as someone at Penn I wish I had any sense of where I was at any time, that would be a massive improvement over our current system.

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Apr 29, 2023 10:20 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:18 pm
Anonymous User wrote:
Tue Jan 24, 2023 4:21 pm
So, the more pressing question: What is the 2L GPA around which you have a reasonable shot at clerking? As we all know, Fritton is useless.
I don’t know how A+s are calculated but I got multiple COA interviews with ~3.75 GPA after 2L. I took mainly black letters, I think like 12 credits of them each semester. No special recommenders or connections.
A+s are weighed more than As.

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 7:31 pm
Guys I’m a Penn 3L and there really isn’t grade inflation. People get Bs in seminars and the black letters by and large have tough curves. We’re not that much better than NYU and Columbia in this regard.
Tons of grade inflation here. Are you kidding? People getting Bs here are the ones who'd be getting Cs anywhere else.

Classes following the 1L elective curve... give ~47% As/A-s. And most are more generous than that.

Want to continue reading?

Register now to search topics and post comments!

Absolutely FREE!


Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Apr 29, 2023 10:58 am

IME on the hiring side Yale, CLS, Penn, and Northwestern seemed to be the most inflated and Chicago the least. Chicago seemed to be the only school where you could graduate #1 with some Bs. I don’t remember anything remarkable at NYU. NYU students above 3.9 tended to have the top-ten awards. It’s pretty easy to see in the pile even without seeing the curve; there are just a suspicious number of apps with really high GPAs from the inflated schools.

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Sat May 13, 2023 8:31 am

Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 11:12 pm
Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 11:00 pm
Anonymous User wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2023 7:31 pm
Guys I’m a Penn 3L and there really isn’t grade inflation. People get Bs in seminars and the black letters by and large have tough curves. We’re not that much better than NYU and Columbia in this regard.
Also a Penn 3L and I agree. I think people are really overestimating the grade inflation. Most black letters have curves similar to the Penn 1L curve but there are a couple outliers. The past grade distributions are available for any Penn student to view. Seminars are a bit murkier because the past grade distributions aren’t available for many of them.
Another penn 3L. I think there is inflation. All of us on here should post GPAs and honors in a few months to document
Any data points for cum laude?

Anonymous User
Posts: 428106
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:32 am

Re: Grades at Penn

Post by Anonymous User » Sun May 14, 2023 10:43 am

For posterity, some folks posted GPAs with results here viewtopic.php?f=23&t=313429 but I'm hoping people will add more data points - maybe post graduation people will feel more willing to post their stats?

Want to continue reading?

Register for access!

Did I mention it was FREE ?


Post Reply Post Anonymous Reply  

Return to “Judicial Clerkships”