Harvard Student(s) Answering Your Questions Forum

[Blessedassurance]

Anybody ever lived in Gropius? How is it?

[delusional]

Word around the block is the 26th based on an email one profs secretary sent to a section.

A friend who's been living in the registrar's office says that he asked them and they told him the 26th. The question is whether they'll be like LSAC and release it a few days earlier. Maybe 2 and 3Ls can answer what the likelihood of that is.

[094320]

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[englawyer]

Anybody ever lived in Gropius? How is it?

Have not lived but have visited. It feels like an undergrad dorm really...massively shared bathrooms, small rooms (think bed + desk + books thats it). But it is by far the cheapest option (like $700/mo) and I think it is pretty social with parties and stuff.

[portaprokoss]

Hi, one of my professors taught at Harvard and I was hoping someone could check if any of her past exams are available. Can anyone help?

[ph14]

Is the grading scale for LRW the same as normal classes? DS/H/P/LP?

[annyong]

Can any of you guys speak about the small, faculty-led reading groups for 1Ls? I saw it mentioned a couple times on the website and was wondering if this was a common thing to participate in and if it was worthwhile? Thanks!

[094320]

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[tomwatts]

A few things...

I don't know about median, but I think that if the grade distribution really is still 37% H's, then mathematically, the average number of H's in the first year is 3.7. 10 grades, 37% H's... I think it really is that simple. I don't know if there's any reason to believe that the average is significantly above the median (which would happen if people with H's tended to get all H's, and everyone else tended to get only zero or one, say) or below the median (which would happen if people who bombed tended to really bomb). My guess is that most people get around 3-4 H's in their first year, and there's something like a bell curve around that, but I have no evidence for the shape of the curve.

My comments (and some others') on the dorms are back on pages 15-17 of this topic.

I can look up old exams if you want. PM me specifics.

LRW is graded the same way as the other classes, but it's based on two HW assignments, rather than a big exam. (And theoretically on class participation, etc, but I doubt that's decisive in fact.)

I was in a 1L reading group on contemporary legal scholarship. I have some interest in academia, so it was fun. Four students and one professor met up to get a pretty nice breakfast at a hotel four mornings early in the semester and talk over two law review articles we read each week. The readings were a little long but very skimmable and interesting. I thought it was worth doing. If you end up in a group that is not on a topic you're interested in, it might not be worth it, though.

[DoubleChecks]

A few things...

I don't know about median, but I think that if the grade distribution really is still 37% H's, then mathematically, the average number of H's in the first year is 3.7. 10 grades, 37% H's... I think it really is that simple. I don't know if there's any reason to believe that the average is significantly above the median (which would happen if people with H's tended to get all H's, and everyone else tended to get only zero or one, say) or below the median (which would happen if people who bombed tended to really bomb). My guess is that most people get around 3-4 H's in their first year, and there's something like a bell curve around that, but I have no evidence for the shape of the curve.

Actually, while I agree that the median is around 3.7 Hs for 1L year, I think the average is noticeably above that median line. H's DO tend to congregate around some people, and avoid others, it seems (anecdotal evidence only). I know of a LOT more people with 0-2 Hs OR 7+ Hs than I do people with 3-4.

[CuriousClerk]

ITT, law students show why they're not math students

[tomwatts]

A few things...

I don't know about median, but I think that if the grade distribution really is still 37% H's, then mathematically, the average number of H's in the first year is 3.7. 10 grades, 37% H's... I think it really is that simple. I don't know if there's any reason to believe that the average is significantly above the median (which would happen if people with H's tended to get all H's, and everyone else tended to get only zero or one, say) or below the median (which would happen if people who bombed tended to really bomb). My guess is that most people get around 3-4 H's in their first year, and there's something like a bell curve around that, but I have no evidence for the shape of the curve.

Actually, while I agree that the median is around 3.7 Hs for 1L year, I think the average is noticeably above that median line. H's DO tend to congregate around some people, and avoid others, it seems (anecdotal evidence only). I know of a LOT more people with 0-2 Hs OR 7+ Hs than I do people with 3-4.

I think you have that backwards. The average is 3.7 H's. There's no way around that. The question is what the median is, and if you're right that they cluster in that way, the median is probably below the average.

Imagine that there are 100 students in a class, and each of them gets 10 grades. That's 1000 grades handed out, 370 H's and 630 P's. If 37 students get all H's and 63 get all P's, then the median would be all P's. That is, average 3.7 H's but median 0 H's. If you relax the bunching assumption somewhat and create a more reasonable distribution, you can increase the median, but it's still below 3.7.

EDIT: I thought it might be a fun mathematical exercise to show how you could have averages and medians that differ, and what would have to be true about grade distributions in order for that to work out. Let's imagine a class of 10 people, with 10 grades each, for a total of 100 grades, 37 of which are H's and 63 of which are P's. No matter what, 37 H's among 10 students means an average of 3.7 H's per student, so the average is fixed.

If you have the above situation, a few people with really good grades and most everybody else with mediocre, you could have, say, three of the ten students with almost all H's. Imagine that's one with 7, one with 8, and one with 9. That already takes 24 of the 37 available H's. Only 13 are available for distribution among the remaining seven students. Let's say that six of them get 2 H's and one gets 1 H. That means the number of H's looks like this:

{1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7, 8, 9}

In that case, the median number of H's is 2, lower than the average of 3.7. Why? Because the top few students are gobbling up most of the available good grades, and the remaining students can't really differentiate themselves. The bottom end is all more or less the same. In this case, it would be great to be the 7, 8, or 9 person, but it would make little difference to be anyone else. Basically, some people are great, but everyone else is typical.

This could also work out really differently. Imagine that we start with the same 7, 8, 9 at the top end, but now, with 13 H's left to distribute, we have one student with 5 H's, one with 4 H's, one with 3 H's, one with 1 H, and the rest with none. That would look like this.

{0, 0, 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9}

In that case, the median would be 3.5 (halfway between the 3 and the 4), pretty close to the average. The difference here is while the top end is gobbling up most of the available good grades, the bottom end is taking none of them, leaving a distribution of grades in the middle. In this case, there would actually be a difference between being anybody here; the 1 looks better than a bunch of the bottom, but the 4 and 5 look a lot better than the 0's and 1's, and the 7-9 crowd looks a lot better still.

On the other hand, you could have something really funky, like this:

{0, 0, 0, 1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6}

In that case, the median would be 6, way above the average. It would be really huge to be one of the above-median people, but since the distribution is bimodal, it's really which mode you're in that matters.

My guess is that the actual distribution is something like the second scenario, a sort of bell curve with a fairly broad spread. In reality, it probably has more people with 1 and 2 H's and fewer with 0. The give is probably at the top end; probably under 10% of students manage 9+ H's in their first year. That's just wild speculation, though. (Also, there are DSs and LPs to take into account, though obviously not very many.)

Uh, I feel obligated to point out that I did this as a fun statistical exercise, not anything more.

[DoubleChecks]

Sure, swap my words median or average or whatnot to make my comment make sense lol. You love math too much tomwatts to be in law school

[splbagel]

Can anyone tell me about internet options and reliability for HRES housing? My SO is a pretty serious gamer.

[freestallion]

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but I am interested in cross registering at other schools (Fletcher, HKS, etc) and it looks like you can take up to 10 credits outside the law school. Roughly how many courses would this actually translate into?

[delusional]

So now that we've established that grades are coming tomorrow, can we truly TLS and discuss what time of day?

[DoubleChecks]

Can anyone tell me about internet options and reliability for HRES housing? My SO is a pretty serious gamer.

Finally, a legit, serious question. I, too, am a serious gamer. The internet in HRES housing is great (comes with most HRES accommodations I believe) -- amazing speeds. Pretty reliable. Now this is all assuming he's using an ethernet connection and not wireless, but that probably has to be the case if he is indeed a gamer.

[DoubleChecks]

So now that we've established that grades are coming tomorrow, can we truly TLS and discuss what time of day?

I have not even heard of this -- when was this established?

[delusional]

So now that we've established that grades are coming tomorrow, can we truly TLS and discuss what time of day?

I have not even heard of this -- when was this established?

I emailed someone in the registrar's office. Until now, at least for me, it's only been hearsay. I know that I'm just a random internet person to you also, but that's where we stand.

Anyway, about that time of day...

[DoubleChecks]

So now that we've established that grades are coming tomorrow, can we truly TLS and discuss what time of day?

I have not even heard of this -- when was this established?

I emailed someone in the registrar's office. Until now, at least for me, it's only been hearsay. I know that I'm just a random internet person to you also, but that's where we stand.

Anyway, about that time of day...

Well I have no reason to think you're lying (I'm not that suspicious of others lol)...in fact, what you said sounds very credible.

As for time of day...5 pm fo' sho.

[splbagel]

Can anyone tell me about internet options and reliability for HRES housing? My SO is a pretty serious gamer.

Finally, a legit, serious question. I, too, am a serious gamer. The internet in HRES housing is great (comes with most HRES accommodations I believe) -- amazing speeds. Pretty reliable. Now this is all assuming he's using an ethernet connection and not wireless, but that probably has to be the case if he is indeed a gamer.

Thank you, that's great news! I don't care too much about the speed of the wireless as long as it's reliable -- just enough to write my papers and run Spotify on the laptop while he's letting off steam on Skyrim or Call of Duty through ethernet.

[splbagel]

. (double post, sorry!)

[tomwatts]

Several reliable sources have confirmed that grades are out tomorrow. And what, you guys aren't going to be checking at midnight and hourly thereafter? What kind of HLS students are you?

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(This being TLS, I feel obligated to point out that I'm joking.)

[delusional]

Several reliable sources have confirmed that grades are out tomorrow. And what, you guys aren't going to be checking at midnight and hourly thereafter? What kind of HLS students are you?

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Are you kidding? I actually called my friend who's a computer repairman to see if maybe it was my refresh button that wasn't working.

[DoubleChecks]

Can anyone tell me about internet options and reliability for HRES housing? My SO is a pretty serious gamer.

Finally, a legit, serious question. I, too, am a serious gamer. The internet in HRES housing is great (comes with most HRES accommodations I believe) -- amazing speeds. Pretty reliable. Now this is all assuming he's using an ethernet connection and not wireless, but that probably has to be the case if he is indeed a gamer.

Thank you, that's great news! I don't care too much about the speed of the wireless as long as it's reliable -- just enough to write my papers and run Spotify on the laptop while he's letting off steam on Skyrim or Call of Duty through ethernet.

No idea on the reliability of wireless in HRES -- I don't use it. But I mean, the Harvard wireless is usually pretty dang good/reliable.