Harvard Student(s) Answering Your Questions Forum

[Lawyerlylaw]

Anyone know when 1L grades are released?

[stupididiot]

Anyone know when 1L grades are released?

June 7

[Pozzo]

Anyone know when latin honors come out? Is it a graduation surprise?

From looking back at this thread, it appears that honors are announced the same day that grades are released. Usually, that was the week before commencement, but posters seem to say that more recently that's been early the same week. So maybe Monday the 24th? Or hopefully the Thurs/Fri before that.

It was in fact Mon. 5/24 this year, for posterity’s sake.

[Ansible]

Also for posterity's sake, missed cum laude with a 3.615.

While not far off from the historical ~3.6 cut off, it is a little surprising considering we lost a semester of 2L grades and average 2L/3L grades are probably higher than average 1L grades because of upper division seminars/clinics/written work. Indeed, median 1L GPA is believed to be about 3.3 (3H/7P) while median final GPA is suspected to be about 3.5.

[Piggy11]

Also for posterity's sake, 3.981 was magna, in line with historic expectations.

[Ansible]

I was curious about the impact of the Fall 2L three pools (0.5, 0.6, credit hours) calculation on the number of honors given in 2021. In addition, the HLS website (https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/ocs/employ ... ng-policy/) says that if multiple students are on the percentage cut off for honors, they will all get honors. I think this means that if multiple students have tied GPAs at the top 40% cut off, they would all get cum laude honors. Here are the honors numbers for 2020 and 2021:

2020:
JDs = 570
Honors awarded = 245 (1 summa; 64 magna; 180 cum laude)
Regular honors = 229 (570 * .4 + 1 summa)
Three pools + margin tie honors = 16

2021:
JDs = 594
Honors awarded = 243 (1 summa; 63 magna; 179 cum laude)
Regular honors = 239 (594 * .4 + 1 summa) = 1 summa; ~60 magna; ~178 cum laude
Three pools + margin tie honors = 4

I think the most surprising thing is that the 2021 class had 24 more JD graduates but 2 less JD honor students than the 2020 class. It appears that the three pools calculation had very little impact on the 2021 graduating class. In fact, 2021 only had 1 more cum laude graduate than expected and that might have been due to a margin tie and not the three pools calculation. While I doubt GPAs are normally distributed (maybe trimodel?), I would assume GPAs have some concentration around the median. Thus, one would assume the three pools calculation would help a decent number (maybe 10+) of students make honors. This would make up for the fact that the missing 2L semester limited the ability of students to improve their GPAs after 1L. I am not sure what to make of this. Maybe the three pools calculation was not fully applied?

Also, please feel free to redo/check my calculations. I might have made some errors since I am definitely no statistician. For example, the off-May graduates (5 in 2020 and 7 in 2021) may have offset things a little, but probably not too much since there was only a difference of 2 such graduates between 2020 and 2021.

[Sarkhan]

I was curious about the impact of the Fall 2L three pools (0.5, 0.6, credit hours) calculation on the number of honors given in 2021. In addition, the HLS website (https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/ocs/employ ... ng-policy/) says that if multiple students are on the percentage cut off for honors, they will all get honors. I think this means that if multiple students have tied GPAs at the top 40% cut off, they would all get cum laude honors. Here are the honors numbers for 2020 and 2021:

2020:
JDs = 570
Honors awarded = 245 (1 summa; 64 magna; 180 cum laude)
Regular honors = 229 (570 * .4 + 1 summa)
Three pools + margin tie honors = 16

2021:
JDs = 594
Honors awarded = 243 (1 summa; 63 magna; 179 cum laude)
Regular honors = 239 (594 * .4 + 1 summa) = 1 summa; ~60 magna; ~178 cum laude
Three pools + margin tie honors = 4

I think the most surprising thing is that the 2021 class had 24 more JD graduates but 2 less JD honor students than the 2020 class. It appears that the three pools calculation had very little impact on the 2021 graduating class. In fact, 2021 only had 1 more cum laude graduate than expected and that might have been due to a margin tie and not the three pools calculation. While I doubt GPAs are normally distributed (maybe trimodel?), I would assume GPAs have some concentration around the median. Thus, one would assume the three pools calculation would help a decent number (maybe 10+) of students make honors. This would make up for the fact that the missing 2L semester limited the ability of students to improve their GPAs after 1L. I am not sure what to make of this. Maybe the three pools calculation was not fully applied?

Also, please feel free to redo/check my calculations. I might have made some errors since I am definitely no statistician. For example, the off-May graduates (5 in 2020 and 7 in 2021) may have offset things a little, but probably not too much since there was only a difference of 2 such graduates between 2020 and 2021.

I'm the furthest thing from a math person that there is, but my take re: the 3 pools is that it likely raised overall GPAs across the board, since everyone got sorted in the pool that was most favorable for them w/r/t latin honors. My uneducated hunch is that the result was a slight increase in GPA reqs for cum laude/magna/etc.

[lawstudent792]

Anyone heard if this year's Sears prize winners have been notified?

[HLS1983]

Obvious 3L question: anyone know what it takes to fail a reading group? Is it safe to skip one or two meetings, or is attendance a bare minimum?

[TheLaw1995]

Any idea when Fall grades will come out?

[lawschool22yay]

3L grades came out today -- missed magna cum laude with a 3.97

[Law12356]

3L grades came out today -- missed magna cum laude with a 3.97

Also missed magna with a 3.98

[ahdkffj]

3L grades came out today -- missed magna cum laude with a 3.97

Also missed magna with a 3.98

missed honors entirely with 3.65 🥲 what happened this year??

[4647595672648595]

How low would 3 or 4 H's at graduation be? Like bottom 10% ?

[ksm6969]

3L grades came out today -- missed magna cum laude with a 3.97

Also missed magna with a 3.98

missed honors entirely with 3.65 🥲 what happened this year??

For people reading this in the future, keep in mind that this graduating year had half of 1L pass/fail because of COVID. So quite possible that aberrations in honors cut offs are just a COVID blip.

Also, make sure youre using the right formula (1L counting for half) to calculate gpa.

[LeslieKnopeLover]

Just a datapoint: Got cum laude with 3.79.

[Careful_thinker]

Another data point - cum laude with 3.71

[charlesives95]

Looks like 1L grades just dropped!

[fuzzybug342]

So surprised that people with extremely close to 4.00 didn't get magna this year. Wonder why the needle moved up...

[jdkfjdkfsld]

Another data point - cum laude with 3.71

is this done as ((.5)*(1L GPA) + (1)*2L GPA + (1)*3L GPA))/2.5?

[fuzzybug342]

Has anyone heard whether Sears orother prizes have been announced and how?

[polareagle]

So surprised that people with extremely close to 4.00 didn't get magna this year. Wonder why the needle moved up...

I don't think it did? The rule of thumb for magna has always been more DSes than Ps. (Just go back far enough on this thread and you'll see that.) If you think of DS = 5, H = 4, and P = 3, then you'd need above a 4.0 to get magna. (Of course, the way it's actually calculated, the credit hours within each year matter. But since the three years are then all averaged together equally, it tends to wash out.) Maybe the pandemic years messed things up a bit, but >4.0 would be a return to the norm.

[lawstudent9293904]

Does anyone know when 1L grades will be released or when they came out last year

[charlesives95]

Does anyone know when 1L grades will be released or when they came out last year

Current 2L here. They came out on 1/20 last year if I recall correctly. I'd assume around the same time this year.

[lawstudent9293904]

Does anyone know when 1L grades will be released or when they came out last year

Current 2L here. They came out on 1/20 last year if I recall correctly. I'd assume around the same time this year.

Thank you so much!!