178 is definitely below top 1/4. It might be closer to top 1/3 but could potentially be below that. You can look at the graduation honors to get some sense of markers, but because those are percentiles at graduation they aren't super helpful for 1L, and keep in mind that when they say ~20% get regular honors, they aren't saying TOP 20%, they are saying 20% of the class. So you have to add the 7-8% who get High and Highest honors, meaning that 179 is somewhere closer to top 30% at graduation.redbullvodka wrote:Do we have any GPA mile markers that are as predictive as, for example, "Stone" or "Kent" is for Columbia?Emma. wrote:It is hard to call those cut offs year to year. Top 10% after 1L could be anywhere between 179.5 and 180.5 (it was closer to the high end of that my year) 179 could be top 25%, could be top 30%.redbullvodka wrote:So obviously 1L grades haven't come back yet, but this question is going to get asked at an individual level once they do come out, so I figured rising 2Ls could benefit from this question being answered now:
Does anyone have an idea what ranks correspond to what GPAs? I feel like all I know for sure is that 177 is the stated median (in actuality probably trends high, but it's at least what employers are given) and that top 10% is vaguely around 180 / slightly under. Anyone have any idea about top third? Top quarter? The point at which grades actually give you a boost? Most of the answers to this online are buried in XOXO threads from 2007, so I feel like they're largely useless. Any 3Ls/recent alums have an idea?
Just had a hard time buying into "grade selective firms" in NY/Chicago wanting 178s. The WWW list for this year would seem to indicate it's higher.
You should probably plan your bidding like you planned law school apps, with targets, reaches, and safetys based on that GPA list. Don't feel like just because your GPA is, say, 178.2 you are wasting a bid on a firm with a range of 178.7 -- 181.3.
My guess is that historically 178-178.5 approximates the same cutoff as Stone (somewhere between 1/3-1/4), but I don't know if it has the same effect, since employers have to actually calculate it, rather than seeing "Stone" on your transcript. I guess this is market-specific question in some ways, but does anyone have a sense of what it takes to get Kirkland/Sidley in Chicago, or V5/V10 in NYC? Really lame that OCS doesn't provide a median to go along with the min/max. Makes them way less meaningful.
No one can give you accurate cut offs for K&E, Sidley, Skadden, etc., because while grades are important, other factors like work experience and interviewing skill also make a huge difference. Just speculation on my part, but I'd also think that someone with a GPA of 178.2 that came almost entirely from 178s would perform less well than someone with a GPA of 178.2 that came from a mix of 177-180 grades.
