WUSTL Recent Grad (and others) Taking Questions Forum

[dietcoke0]

Osgood had 8 grads 79 or below. I didn't have him, but heard he was a tough grader

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... Osgood.pdf

[DoveBodyWash]

Osgood had 8 grads 79 or below. I didn't have him, but heard he was a tough grader

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... Osgood.pdf

Must..get...Inazu..

[Randomnumbers]

Errps. No grades were below 74 (the lowest passing grade). This is what happens when I post too early in the morning.

[hoos89]

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[notedgarfigaro]

Errps. No grades were below 74 (the lowest passing grade). This is what happens when I post too early in the morning.

Yeah I was wondering what you were talking about. Badawi gave out 6 78s. And I agree..I really don't know what you'd have to do to get under a 74.

And yeah I don't understand Osgood's grading; one year he gave out a 93 as the highest grade for one of his sections. He doesn't give out really high grades but he gives out a bunch of really low grades? Also I heard that the 95 in his class last semester wrote about 40 pages. What do you have to do to get higher than that?! That's probably the exam I'm the least confident about.

Unless you're a 1%er, a flat curve is to your advantage. 48 people in his section that had a high grade of 93 last year got between a 91 and 88. In the other section (high grade was 97), 24 people did. So while you're not going to get an outstanding grade, you'll definitely get a solid one.

His exam was lengthy, but the material itself is not particularly difficult. Probably explains the flatness of the curve somewhat. Just write as much as possible, and throw in some history if you have time, he loves it.

Also, to get below 74, you basically either have to cheat or fail to take the exam. I'll let you know if it's possible otherwise after my exams this semester (b/c right now it's not looking pretty).

[hoos89]

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[Xs20]

What happens if one section gets professors who give out multiple 99-100s and another section has several whose max grade is only a 93-94? Is the latter section just out of luck or is there a way they compensate for that?

[hoos89]

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[TatteredDignity]

(I'm not sure anyone ever gives out multiple 100s but I could be wrong)

This caused quite an uproar when our current 3Ls were 1Ls...

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... rfield.pdf

[hoos89]

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[TatteredDignity]

(I'm not sure anyone ever gives out multiple 100s but I could be wrong)

This caused quite an uproar when our current 3Ls were 1Ls...

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... rfield.pdf

Wow. How is that even possible? There aren't even any crazy low grades just a fair number of low 80s.

I dunno, but if Romo comes in here, expect a rant about it.

[stratocophic]

(I'm not sure anyone ever gives out multiple 100s but I could be wrong)

This caused quite an uproar when our current 3Ls were 1Ls...

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... rfield.pdf

Wow. How is that even possible? There aren't even any crazy low grades just a fair number of low 80s.

And yeah I bet some people were upset about that. The school really should regulate that sort of crap, I think. It's just unfair that the top students in some sections just can't compete with the ones like that.

See below. That section didn't have an advantage.

[stratocophic]

(I'm not sure anyone ever gives out multiple 100s but I could be wrong)

This caused quite an uproar when our current 3Ls were 1Ls...

http://law.wustl.edu/registrar/distribu ... rfield.pdf

Wow. How is that even possible? There aren't even any crazy low grades just a fair number of low 80s.

And yeah I bet some people were upset about that. The school really should regulate that sort of crap, I think.

Ok, real talk for the 1Ls from someone who understands teh maths a little better than the average law student. As I recall it, the uproar about it was stupid because it was mostly centered around complaining that Carfield's grade distribution was unfair - here's what 30 seconds of remembering about 30 superaspie minutes of research/analysis/remembering 1L year on my part uncovered.

Half of the people that had the rogue property teacher (Carfield) also had a Ks professor (Baker) whose highest grade was a 95 - DeGeest and Greenfield each gave 5 grades higher than the damn CALI level-grade in Baker's contracts section. The other section who had Carfield for property had Smith for Ks, who gave out 1 97 and 4 95s - not terrible, but worse than DeGeest and Greenfield. If you look at the averages for the top 5 students in each Ks class, Baker/Smith were both 2+ points lower than the other sections.

Drobak gave 2 100s in property - why did nobody flip out about that? Even more ridiculous, Drobak and Carfield had the same number of 97+ grades. Drobak and Carfield had the same # of grades above a 95 and as I recall, nobody griped about that. Drobak gave 29 90+, Carfield 26 90+. Mandelker students are the only ones with any right to bitch about grades, and their contracts professor's upper range was better than both Smith's and Baker's (average of top 5 students in the class was a full 2 points higher than Smith, and 3 points higher than Baker). D got screwed by your property professor, but they shouldn't even complain about B and E, who had Carfield; those two sections didn't even have the best distribution. That distinction belongs to A (see below).

People who complained basically ignored the fact that the ranges for every section except D (and that's only because of Mandelker - the other 2 grades they got were right in line with everyone else's) weren't very different when you looked at the 3 classes together instead of separately. I'm about 99% sure that not everyone who complained was in D. Long story short, people are going to complain no matter what the outcome is - 1Ls, you're probably going to be fine.

3-class averages of the top grades awarded by letter section for fall 2010
A (Greenfield/Drobak/Norwood) - 97.9
B (Smith/Carfield/Goldwasser) - 97.2
D (DeGeest/Mandelker/Tamanaha) - 96.1
E (Baker/Carfield/Goldwasser) - 96.9

Note that C/F didn't have all 3 classes for some reason (LLMs/transfers or something?), so I didn't include them.



TL;DR - B and E had to sit through Carfield for a semester, and everyone in those two sections should have gotten 100s for that alone.

ETA - yeah, I was in one of B/E, and no, I didn't get a 100 (or even close) in Property.

[Oban]

Is any of that something that actually happens to people, or not really?

I'm sure it does happen, but I've never heard of it happening. There are usually very few grades in the 70s per class, so to have a 70s average would be pretty hard to pull off.

I don't know the official details, but i'm pretty sure someone failed out or was put on probation during my one 1L year. They dropped out a few weeks into second semester. I also knew of someone else in a different section (E) IIRC, who also dropped out, presumably due to poor grades. But in general, few people fail out, unlike TTT schools.

[hoos89]

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[stratocophic]

Are you just averaging the top grades in each class or are you accounting for the fact that there were 4 of them?

Didn't bother with LRW - it's only worth half as much as a doctrinal course. Average of the top 5 grades awarded in each doctrinal course, and then averaged the resulting 3 class averages (divided by section). Doesn't give the whole picture, that would require some regression analysis that I'm way too lazy to actually relearn and perform, but it equates to roughly the top 10% (tho tha estimate doesn't account for the differences in average which, based on the 4 averages, probably mean that an extra person or 3 in the Drobak section was in instead of the Mandelker section, but again there's no telling because not every person in the top 5 of a class necessarily hit top 5 in the other two classes, tho it is fairly common) so it gives a pretty good picture of how competition for the top stacked up. Keep in mind that who teaches what changes every year, so this manages to be even less predictive (and thus less useful) than CO2008 job placement stats.

Regardless of my post-final, adrenaline-fueled madness up there, it's just not something for 1Ls to worry about. Odds are that the sections are going to be pretty even and the best way to make sure it doesn't affect you is to outwork everyone else (relative to your own intelligence vs that of the rest of the class). Just worry about things you can control, those things being your own effort and how wisely you go about figuring out how to write an exam.

[JCougar]

I don't know the official details, but i'm pretty sure someone failed out or was put on probation during my one 1L year. They dropped out a few weeks into second semester. I also knew of someone else in a different section (E) IIRC, who also dropped out, presumably due to poor grades. But in general, few people fail out, unlike TTT schools.

I'm assuming you're section B (and it bugs the shit out of me that I still don't know who you are on here). Two people in our section dropped out, one was put on probation, but they were three separate people. The person on probation later got somewhat back on track.

I'm kind of curious to know who from E dropped out. I might not even remember him/her.

And, to the rest of the thread, I was in that Carfield class. That was just a terrible experience, and that's as far as I'm gonna go with that.

[stratocophic]

I don't know the official details, but i'm pretty sure someone failed out or was put on probation during my one 1L year. They dropped out a few weeks into second semester. I also knew of someone else in a different section (E) IIRC, who also dropped out, presumably due to poor grades. But in general, few people fail out, unlike TTT schools.

I'm assuming you're section B (and it bugs the shit out of me that I still don't know who you are on here). Two people in our section dropped out, one was put on probation, but they were three separate people. The person on probation later got somewhat back on track.

I'm kind of curious to know who from E dropped out. I might not even remember him/her.

And, to the rest of the thread, I was in that Carfield class. That was just a terrible experience, and that's as far as I'm gonna go with that.

If it's who I think it was, you wouldn't remember the person. He was almost never in class and I don't remember ever seeing him around bar reviews or happy hours.

[notedgarfigaro]

Even though the funniest parts of it had to be cut, the WashU submission to ATL's law revue contest is still the funniest, so go and vote!

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/04/law-revu ... nalists/2/

[bouakedojo]

Even though the funniest parts of it had to be cut, the WashU submission to ATL's law revue contest is still the funniest, so go and vote!

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/04/law-revu ... nalists/2/

Nice! We're killing it.

Also, Tamanaha's wife....wow.

[TatteredDignity]

I had no idea WUSTL submitted something. Well done, people, that was funny.

[romothesavior]

Who here has previously taken Commercial Law? Any and all insights on what I should be focusing on and what the exam is like would be appreciated.

[kyle010723]

I got my acceptance to WUSTL as a transfer and will most likely accept it. How are transfers perceived among other students?

Also, I will be visiting STL after my finals, can someone kindly suggest a few apartment buildings/complexes that I should look at in CWE? I'm hoping to find a 1br, somewhat updated, and has parking (read about the car that got broke into a few pages earlier is a little alarming).

[dietcoke0]

For CWE, what's your budget? There are a ton of higher rise (15-25 story) buildings, and pretty much a range of prices (probably $700-$1500 for a 1br) but it's a highly coveted area, that the med school has allowed prices to be highly inflated compared to the rest of the town. Some of the nicest places in town are in the CWE (and Wash Ave, but no one lives there hardly) but will cost you. If you want just to be in the neighborhood, a lot of options, especially when you get a few blocks off the main areas, but then they become a bit dodgey, especially as far as cars are concerned.

As for transfer stigma, I got to imagine there would be close to none. I'm just a 1L, but the law school is very laidback and people are generally super friendly. You'd be going in at a time where rising 2Ls are integrating with each other, and with rising 3Ls, so there will plenty of chances to meet new people for everyone, since I know I don't think I have any classes with my closer friends, so I'll probably be changing up social groups a bit. Plus there's a whole batch of 1Ls you can hang out with, who will probably like an elder (one who could help them out with the new transition into Law school) You'll be fine, and congrats on the transfer.

[kyle010723]

For CWE, what's your budget? There are a ton of higher rise (15-25 story) buildings, and pretty much a range of prices (probably $700-$1500 for a 1br) but it's a highly coveted area, that the med school has allowed prices to be highly inflated compared to the rest of the town. Some of the nicest places in town are in the CWE (and Wash Ave, but no one lives there hardly) but will cost you. If you want just to be in the neighborhood, a lot of options, especially when you get a few blocks off the main areas, but then they become a bit dodgey, especially as far as cars are concerned.

As for transfer stigma, I got to imagine there would be close to none. I'm just a 1L, but the law school is very laidback and people are generally super friendly. You'd be going in at a time where rising 2Ls are integrating with each other, and with rising 3Ls, so there will plenty of chances to meet new people for everyone, since I know I don't think I have any classes with my closer friends, so I'll probably be changing up social groups a bit. Plus there's a whole batch of 1Ls you can hang out with, who will probably like an elder (one who could help them out with the new transition into Law school) You'll be fine, and congrats on the transfer.

Thanks for the insights.

A few places I am considering:
Towne House
Park 44
Parc Frontenac
Metrolofts
West End Terrence

Any thoughts on them or if I should look at other places?