Berkeley Clerkship/Coif Discussion Forum

[Anonymous User]

Creating an anon thread for berkeley people to discuss grades and clerkships

Starting the thread with a post from the law school forum where anon comments aren't allowed:

As a public service, I'd like to spread some information re. coif at berkeley

* Boalt has changed the gpa formula from before. It used to be: HH = 5 grade points; H = 3; P = 2. (As one professor has said, that was back "when we valued excellence.") Now, it is HH = 4 grade points, H = 3, P = 2.

Now, for the numbers:

* Registrar herself told someone in class of 2023 that 3.33 would "likely" make coif.
* In the class of 2023, a GPA of 3.30 did indeed make coif, according to another administrator.
* In the class of 2020—a year when the minimum 64-graded unit requirement was suspended—a 3.31 made coif. This means that you needed a higher GPA than normal in 2020 to make coif-- and yet, a 3.31 still made it.

Hope this helps. What would add to this information?
* someone who made coif who got below a 3.30. (Please include graduating year!)
* someone who got between 3.0 and 3.3, who did not make coif.

These would help establish the minimum GPA necessary for coif.

[Anonymous User]

I don't have a useful data point, but I find the 2-3-4 change so funny. I always complained about how 2-3-5 didn't make any sense because Berkeley said that an H is like an A and then made it a closer to a P than an HH. (Like, do what you want, Berk, but why does someone who got a P in WOA and an HH in Contracts have a higher GPA than someone who got an HH in WOA and an H in Contracts--it's significantly harder to avoid getting any Ps than it is to get one HH.) But I wanted them to increase the value for an H (like, make it a 4), not decrease the HH.

I think that if I were looking at Berkeley grades without having actually gone to Berkeley, I would assume that someone who got pretty much all H/HH grades (and was therefore in the top 40% of every class they took) is ranked higher than someone who got a bunch of Ps. That's not actually true--if John gets a P/H/HH and Sally gets an H/H/HH, John is ranked higher as long as his P and Sally's HH are both in their lowest unit classes. To take an example: someone who gets a P in WOA, H in Contracts, and HH in Civil Procedure is ranked above someone who gets an HH in WOA, H in Contracts, and H in Civil Procedure.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I just find it all so strange. If I'm hiring for a clerkship--which is the only time anyone can see a Berkeley ranking--I would generally prefer the HH/H/H student to the P/H/HH student, and in the abstract, I'd take the HH/H/H student (especially if the P is in WOA or another writing skills class, which are, ironically, always low-unit classes). But I nevertheless reject the HH/H/H student when I see a top 15% rank, even though I'd happily hire the same person at top 10%. That's because if I'm not familiar with Berkeley grades, I take top 15% with no Ps to mean that Hs are sort of easy to get (because I'm assuming the 15% of students above this one have grades I would actually think of as "better"), not that Berkeley's (undisclosed and nonpublic) grading scale puts this student below a bunch of students I personally would not think of as having better grades.

[Anonymous User]

At the end of the day I always just looked at and viewed Berkely transcripts as subsuming Bs and B+s together into a P. And then an A- was an H and then an A was an HH. I honestly didn't even know HH was worth that extra bit. From an outsider, this change feels more appropriat.e

[Anonymous User]

Don't have too many coif data points other than the obvious that a 3.82 is good for coif, but for those curious about BLS, you can get 1-2 Hs and still win it. Taking a 14-18 person gunner class (iykyk) and being one of the top 2 students is ridiculously hard and you're bound to get a few casualties (H/P).

[Anonymous User]

Don't have too many coif data points other than the obvious that a 3.82 is good for coif, but for those curious about BLS, you can get 1-2 Hs and still win it. Taking a 14-18 person gunner class (iykyk) and being one of the top 2 students is ridiculously hard and you're bound to get a few casualties (H/P).

Yeah, FWIW, I know someone who got BLS with a P (4 unit) and an H. I also know someone that didn't get it with two Hs and the rest HHs. Obviously depends on how your units shake out and how everyone else does.

[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

I don't have a useful data point, but I find the 2-3-4 change so funny. I always complained about how 2-3-5 didn't make any sense because Berkeley said that an H is like an A and then made it a closer to a P than an HH. (Like, do what you want, Berk, but why does someone who got a P in WOA and an HH in Contracts have a higher GPA than someone who got an HH in WOA and an H in Contracts--it's significantly harder to avoid getting any Ps than it is to get one HH.) But I wanted them to increase the value for an H (like, make it a 4), not decrease the HH.

I think that if I were looking at Berkeley grades without having actually gone to Berkeley, I would assume that someone who got pretty much all H/HH grades (and was therefore in the top 40% of every class they took) is ranked higher than someone who got a bunch of Ps. That's not actually true--if John gets a P/H/HH and Sally gets an H/H/HH, John is ranked higher as long as his P and Sally's HH are both in their lowest unit classes. To take an example: someone who gets a P in WOA, H in Contracts, and HH in Civil Procedure is ranked above someone who gets an HH in WOA, H in Contracts, and H in Civil Procedure.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I just find it all so strange. If I'm hiring for a clerkship--which is the only time anyone can see a Berkeley ranking--I would generally prefer the HH/H/H student to the P/H/HH student, and in the abstract, I'd take the HH/H/H student (especially if the P is in WOA or another writing skills class, which are, ironically, always low-unit classes). But I nevertheless reject the HH/H/H student when I see a top 15% rank, even though I'd happily hire the same person at top 10%. That's because if I'm not familiar with Berkeley grades, I take top 15% with no Ps to mean that Hs are sort of easy to get (because I'm assuming the 15% of students above this one have grades I would actually think of as "better"), not that Berkeley's (undisclosed and nonpublic) grading scale puts this student below a bunch of students I personally would not think of as having better grades.

I think I would disagree with this.

Especially in 2L/3L, I think the average student can achieve an H in a class with a modest effort, but an HH generally requires much more time, effort, and mastery of the subject. A large percentage of students "give up" (for lack of a better phrase) after 1L—maybe because they've already secured their jobs—and students "give up" even more in 3L. Let's say 40% of a 100-person class has given up. To achieve an H, you need to be in the top 45, which means you need to beat 15 kids in a class of 100 who are "trying." But to get an HH, you need to beat 30 kids who are "trying."

True, there probably isn't much difference between the 90th percentile performer and 80th percentile performer—or the AmJur and 90th percentile—but there's probably a significant difference between the highest H and the lowest H.

[Anonymous User]

I don't have a useful data point, but I find the 2-3-4 change so funny. I always complained about how 2-3-5 didn't make any sense because Berkeley said that an H is like an A and then made it a closer to a P than an HH. (Like, do what you want, Berk, but why does someone who got a P in WOA and an HH in Contracts have a higher GPA than someone who got an HH in WOA and an H in Contracts--it's significantly harder to avoid getting any Ps than it is to get one HH.) But I wanted them to increase the value for an H (like, make it a 4), not decrease the HH.

I think that if I were looking at Berkeley grades without having actually gone to Berkeley, I would assume that someone who got pretty much all H/HH grades (and was therefore in the top 40% of every class they took) is ranked higher than someone who got a bunch of Ps. That's not actually true--if John gets a P/H/HH and Sally gets an H/H/HH, John is ranked higher as long as his P and Sally's HH are both in their lowest unit classes. To take an example: someone who gets a P in WOA, H in Contracts, and HH in Civil Procedure is ranked above someone who gets an HH in WOA, H in Contracts, and H in Civil Procedure.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I just find it all so strange. If I'm hiring for a clerkship--which is the only time anyone can see a Berkeley ranking--I would generally prefer the HH/H/H student to the P/H/HH student, and in the abstract, I'd take the HH/H/H student (especially if the P is in WOA or another writing skills class, which are, ironically, always low-unit classes). But I nevertheless reject the HH/H/H student when I see a top 15% rank, even though I'd happily hire the same person at top 10%. That's because if I'm not familiar with Berkeley grades, I take top 15% with no Ps to mean that Hs are sort of easy to get (because I'm assuming the 15% of students above this one have grades I would actually think of as "better"), not that Berkeley's (undisclosed and nonpublic) grading scale puts this student below a bunch of students I personally would not think of as having better grades.

I think I would disagree with this.

Especially in 2L/3L, I think the average student can achieve an H in a class with a modest effort, but an HH generally requires much more time, effort, and mastery of the subject. A large percentage of students "give up" (for lack of a better phrase) after 1L—maybe because they've already secured their jobs—and students "give up" even more in 3L. Let's say 40% of a 100-person class has given up. To achieve an H, you need to be in the top 45, which means you need to beat 15 kids in a class of 100 who are "trying." But to get an HH, you need to beat 30 kids who are "trying."

True, there probably isn't much difference between the 90th percentile performer and 80th percentile performer—or the AmJur and 90th percentile—but there's probably a significant difference between the highest H and the lowest H.

That's an argument for more granularity, though. Obviously someone who got the bottom cutoff H and was the 45th best exam in the class is in a different position than someone who got the top cutoff H and was the 11th best exam in the class. But if you're getting straight Hs, you're at least putting moderate effort into every class, which IMO is harder than putting a ton of effort in one to get an HH, especially if someone is taking clerkship (gunner) classes like admin or fed courts. I knew people in law school who tried to game the rankings by not studying at all for some classes and then going really hard in others. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but I wouldn't say they're better students than the people who tried for HHs in every class and then got Hs in half of them. I just don't think assigning numbers really makes sense given how much the H and P grades cover--maybe it should be like P-2, H-4, HH-7 or something (don't come at me if that doesn't make sense, I don't do math).

FWIW, the no-P transcript goes a long way as long as it isn't just straight Hs. If you're looking at someone who split H/HH, you assume they're towards the top of the curve in their H classes and generally a great student, even if they didn't make the top 10ish exams in every single doctrinal or the top 1-2 papers in their writing classes. If you're looking at someone with a bunch of P/H/HH, you don't really know how to interpret their Ps or Hs. So when I do hiring, I'm not necessarily taking the P/H/HH student even if their percentile is higher. Sometimes it's strange to compare the transcripts knowing the percentiles, though.

[Anonymous User]

I don't have a useful data point, but I find the 2-3-4 change so funny. I always complained about how 2-3-5 didn't make any sense because Berkeley said that an H is like an A and then made it a closer to a P than an HH. (Like, do what you want, Berk, but why does someone who got a P in WOA and an HH in Contracts have a higher GPA than someone who got an HH in WOA and an H in Contracts--it's significantly harder to avoid getting any Ps than it is to get one HH.) But I wanted them to increase the value for an H (like, make it a 4), not decrease the HH.

I think that if I were looking at Berkeley grades without having actually gone to Berkeley, I would assume that someone who got pretty much all H/HH grades (and was therefore in the top 40% of every class they took) is ranked higher than someone who got a bunch of Ps. That's not actually true--if John gets a P/H/HH and Sally gets an H/H/HH, John is ranked higher as long as his P and Sally's HH are both in their lowest unit classes. To take an example: someone who gets a P in WOA, H in Contracts, and HH in Civil Procedure is ranked above someone who gets an HH in WOA, H in Contracts, and H in Civil Procedure.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I just find it all so strange. If I'm hiring for a clerkship--which is the only time anyone can see a Berkeley ranking--I would generally prefer the HH/H/H student to the P/H/HH student, and in the abstract, I'd take the HH/H/H student (especially if the P is in WOA or another writing skills class, which are, ironically, always low-unit classes). But I nevertheless reject the HH/H/H student when I see a top 15% rank, even though I'd happily hire the same person at top 10%. That's because if I'm not familiar with Berkeley grades, I take top 15% with no Ps to mean that Hs are sort of easy to get (because I'm assuming the 15% of students above this one have grades I would actually think of as "better"), not that Berkeley's (undisclosed and nonpublic) grading scale puts this student below a bunch of students I personally would not think of as having better grades.

I think I would disagree with this.

Especially in 2L/3L, I think the average student can achieve an H in a class with a modest effort, but an HH generally requires much more time, effort, and mastery of the subject. A large percentage of students "give up" (for lack of a better phrase) after 1L—maybe because they've already secured their jobs—and students "give up" even more in 3L. Let's say 40% of a 100-person class has given up. To achieve an H, you need to be in the top 45, which means you need to beat 15 kids in a class of 100 who are "trying." But to get an HH, you need to beat 30 kids who are "trying."

True, there probably isn't much difference between the 90th percentile performer and 80th percentile performer—or the AmJur and 90th percentile—but there's probably a significant difference between the highest H and the lowest H.

That's an argument for more granularity, though. Obviously someone who got the bottom cutoff H and was the 45th best exam in the class is in a different position than someone who got the top cutoff H and was the 11th best exam in the class. But if you're getting straight Hs, you're at least putting moderate effort into every class, which IMO is harder than putting a ton of effort in one to get an HH, especially if someone is taking clerkship (gunner) classes like admin or fed courts. I knew people in law school who tried to game the rankings by not studying at all for some classes and then going really hard in others. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but I wouldn't say they're better students than the people who tried for HHs in every class and then got Hs in half of them. I just don't think assigning numbers really makes sense given how much the H and P grades cover--maybe it should be like P-2, H-4, HH-7 or something (don't come at me if that doesn't make sense, I don't do math).

FWIW, the no-P transcript goes a long way as long as it isn't just straight Hs. If you're looking at someone who split H/HH, you assume they're towards the top of the curve in their H classes and generally a great student, even if they didn't make the top 10ish exams in every single doctrinal or the top 1-2 papers in their writing classes. If you're looking at someone with a bunch of P/H/HH, you don't really know how to interpret their Ps or Hs. So when I do hiring, I'm not necessarily taking the P/H/HH student even if their percentile is higher. Sometimes it's strange to compare the transcripts knowing the percentiles, though.

New poster here. Don't have much to add in regards to the HH v P debate - I think there's merit to what you're both saying. But I strongly disagree with this notion that a large percentage or 40% of students 'give up' after 1L. It's only a loud vocal minority of trust fund loser kids or people insecure about their 1L grades. They're just trying to cope by shaming the other silent majority of students who care about their craft and personal dignity. It's deeply cynical and gross.

And even if we do factor in these students (imo maybe 10% of each class), they're certainly not the type of students who would take gunner classes like fed courts or supreme court seminar. Most of them don't even take half the doctrinal classes. They're taking something like wine law or sports law. Trust me - I've tried to target taking classes with people like this and it just never works out lol.

[Anonymous User]

Agree with the sentiment that getting an HH is much harder that you'd expect during 2L/3L. The students who care about grades and clerkships self-select into the same classes—Advanced Legal Writing (specifically with Saffouri), Appellate Advocacy, Fed Courts, Supreme Court Seminar, etc. The type of people who take those classes just aren't going to be taking Wine Law or Law & Film.

Any Berkeley student knows the difference between a seminar taught by Tyler vs one-off practitioners. When there's at most only 1-2 HHs to give out in a class where virtually everyone is gunning for a LOR (or least trying to make a very good impression), the curve is inherently very unforgiving.

[Anonymous User]

Agree with the sentiment that getting an HH is much harder that you'd expect during 2L/3L. The students who care about grades and clerkships self-select into the same classes—Advanced Legal Writing (specifically with Saffouri), Appellate Advocacy, Fed Courts, Supreme Court Seminar, etc. The type of people who take those classes just aren't going to be taking Wine Law or Law & Film.

Any Berkeley student knows the difference between a seminar taught by Tyler vs one-off practitioners. When there's at most only 1-2 HHs to give out in a class where virtually everyone is gunning for a LOR (or least trying to make a very good impression), the curve is inherently very unforgiving.

I also think it's important to remember that 30-40% of the class gets an H/A-class grade at most (all?) of the T14 (except Yale, where everyone gets an H). So, theoretically, someone at Berkeley getting an HH is either an A+ or A student at another school, and someone getting an H is an A, A-, or B+ student. But I've generally heard people say they think of a Berkeley H like a B.

After looking at a lot of inscrutable T14 transcripts this week for clerk hiring, I think Berkeley's grades really do make it harder for students who fall somewhere in the top 20-30 percent of many classes. At another school (Stanford or Harvard), that transcript is straight Hs. At others (Chicago, etc.), it's a lot of 180s or A-/A grades. What I cannot figure out is if the percentile rank being included helps or hurts--we assume a lot of Harvard students, for example, are much higher ranked than they really are because we can't really tell where one DS plus seventeen Hs plus three Ps puts you. So maybe the kid I think is top 20% is actually top 40%--unless there's a HLS clerk in my chambers, I don't know. Berkeley just comes out and says, but I think I (as a Berk grad) would often predict the H-heavy transcripts to be ranked somewhat higher than they sometimes are. I don't know if a non-Berkeley grad would do the same thing, though.

[Anonymous User]

Agree with the sentiment that getting an HH is much harder that you'd expect during 2L/3L. The students who care about grades and clerkships self-select into the same classes—Advanced Legal Writing (specifically with Saffouri), Appellate Advocacy, Fed Courts, Supreme Court Seminar, etc. The type of people who take those classes just aren't going to be taking Wine Law or Law & Film.

Any Berkeley student knows the difference between a seminar taught by Tyler vs one-off practitioners. When there's at most only 1-2 HHs to give out in a class where virtually everyone is gunning for a LOR (or least trying to make a very good impression), the curve is inherently very unforgiving.

I also think it's important to remember that 30-40% of the class gets an H/A-class grade at most (all?) of the T14 (except Yale, where everyone gets an H). So, theoretically, someone at Berkeley getting an HH is either an A+ or A student at another school, and someone getting an H is an A, A-, or B+ student. But I've generally heard people say they think of a Berkeley H like a B.

After looking at a lot of inscrutable T14 transcripts this week for clerk hiring, I think Berkeley's grades really do make it harder for students who fall somewhere in the top 20-30 percent of many classes. At another school (Stanford or Harvard), that transcript is straight Hs. At others (Chicago, etc.), it's a lot of 180s or A-/A grades. What I cannot figure out is if the percentile rank being included helps or hurts--we assume a lot of Harvard students, for example, are much higher ranked than they really are because we can't really tell where one DS plus seventeen Hs plus three Ps puts you. So maybe the kid I think is top 20% is actually top 40%--unless there's a HLS clerk in my chambers, I don't know. Berkeley just comes out and says, but I think I (as a Berk grad) would often predict the H-heavy transcripts to be ranked somewhat higher than they sometimes are. I don't know if a non-Berkeley grad would do the same thing, though.

I agree Berkeley makes it harder for students in the top 15-33 percentile range for the reasons you listed. I'll add two more reasons/suggestions if any Berkeley admin is reading this (lol):

My biggest grip is not having a traditional latin honors system like summa, magna, and cum laude BUT still having coif. It hurts people who just miss top 10% but otherwise would've gotten cum laude. It also hurts the people who would've gotten summa too.

Secondly, I wish there was better education about hard HH's are to get. They're effectively equivalent to a DS at Harvard, which imo is another level above just the regular ABC letter grading scale. But yet, because of similar taxonomy, they get treated as an 'A' and H's get treated as B's. No other school has a grading scale where their equivalent version of an 'A' is only given to the top 10% of a class (sometimes just 1-2 students). And subsequently, no other school has a version of a 'B' given to the student in the 15 percentile.

The equivocation of HH to A and H to B in some people's minds is probably the most damaging thing for clerkship success at Berkeley. Just go to a regular ABC grading scale at this point.

[Anonymous User]

While we’re on the topic of Berkeley admin…it makes zero sense to me why the law school is capable of releasing rankings to the 2Ls just in time for the federal clerkship plan opening, but NOT for 3Ls.

It really shows that the administration is unaware of, or at least really devalues, clerkships. The reality is that many recent grad are applying, and it seriously hurts their applications when recent grads from other T-14 schools have their ranking/coif/latin honors info. Instead, Berkeley has made students wait for WEEKS in the past after the plan opened such that recent grads had no info they could list on their clerkship applications.

Getting virtually all HHs should make you a shoe-in for BLS or top 5% but you’re not allowed to say that until after you get ranking info—long after the plan has opened and the most competitive judges who care about those things have hired. Instead, the absence of the ranking info makes it look like you didn’t get anything at all. And most chambers just aren’t going to be aware that the school didn’t provide that info, even though they did for the 2Ls.

[Anonymous User]

Coif data points: 3.46 for c/o 2024 made coif. anonymized (not exact gpa)

Coif was emailed on June 14

[Anonymous User]

2024 coif came out today. 3.40 on HH = 4 scale was good.