Section Placement - Who Else Got Shafted?

[midjeep]

I don't know what the folks at my school were smoking when they divided us into sections, but my section got screwed. The only winners of the top scholarship at our school is in our section, we have the only Fullbright scholar in our section, and it seems like all the gunners belong to our section as well. Additionally, we have the harder professors, all of our professors covered twice as much material as the other section, and the other professors seemed to have easier exam. For example, we had an a 2.5 hour exam that should have been for 3 hours in contracts; the other professor gave them a 2 hour exam for 4 hours. Their professor even acknowledged the huge time difference and said "I don't want you to stress out."

I know it will eventually equal out when our sections merge, but the first year grades matter more. The other section is known as the "party" section and we never see their section in the library. Sorry for the rant....just felt like a female dog fest. Anyone else in the same boat?

[MichaelK]

It all seems to depend on the school.  This is one area where I really like my Law School.  From what I can tell, they do a really good job at making the sections as even as possible (based on LSAT and GPA).  The part time day students seem to be split up evenly among the sections.  Also, the level of teaching appears pretty consistent across the sections.  If one section has a weak teacher in one subject versus the other sections (sans evening) it is made up by having a stronger professor in another subject.  It is not perfect, but to me it seems like it is as close as the school could get

[Italian2L]

I have a theory about this. I have heard that my section last year contained something like 75% of the people that were given scholarships in my class. Now, I don't know all of the numbers, but it seems to me that when you consider the fact that there is a minimum GPA that one must maintain in order to keep their scholarship AND the classes are graded on a strict curve, there is no way that everybody could keep their scholarship. Personally, I had a 100% tuition scholarship last year and have a 0% tuition scholarship this year and my class rank is near dead middle. Based on this, I'm guessing that there are at least a few others who lost their scholarships. I don't think they're redistributing the money either by giving it out to the top performers who came in without scholarship, because you have to be at the VERY top of the class for that and I'm guessing that a decent number of those people came in with a scholarship anyway. You get where I'm going with this.

Now, I should qualify all of this by saying that it is completely based on unsubstantiated rumors, and I'm sure everbody knows how unreliable those can be in the law school context. 

Moral of the story: Never make decisions about where to attend law school purely based on money without investigating the situation thoroughly first, because they may just be playing a numbers game on you that will result in you paying only one year less worth of tuition to attend your super safety school that you would be paying at any of those tier  1 schools that accepted you.

[shao2007]

Moral of the story: Never make decisions about where to attend law school purely based on money without investigating the situation thoroughly first, because they may just be playing a numbers game on you that will result in you paying only one year less worth of tuition to attend your super safety school that you would be paying at any of those tier  1 schools that accepted you.

Wish I had heard this rumor a couple of months ago

[Fawn06]

This is good to know...I've been seriously taking into account the difference in tuition & the money offered in trying to make my decision on where to send my deposit.  I wonder how honest the admissions staff are when asked about this?

[zaphod]

Based on this, I'm guessing that there are at least a few others who lost their scholarships. I don't think they're redistributing the money either by giving it out to the top performers who came in without scholarship, because you have to be at the VERY top of the class for that and I'm guessing that a decent number of those people came in with a scholarship anyway. You get where I'm going with this.

I didn't receive anything coming in, was ranked at the very top, and they gave me 3k.  I'll take it, but you're right, it's not going to the top performers.

[naomi288]

It all seems to depend on the school.  This is one area where I really like my Law School.  From what I can tell, they do a really good job at making the sections as even as possible (based on LSAT and GPA).  The part time day students seem to be split up evenly among the sections.  Also, the level of teaching appears pretty consistent across the sections.  If one section has a weak teacher in one subject versus the other sections (sans evening) it is made up by having a stronger professor in another subject.  It is not perfect, but to me it seems like it is as close as the school could get

uh oh krup, don't make me get started about the sections! lol

[MichaelK]

Naomi, you know this whole problem is caused by me having Ward for Civ Pro

Happy Hanukkah