curves? i dont get it.

[usnewz]

And, sooorry, this is simply not true! If the top 20% at Cooley transfers to Harvard he'd rank top 20% at Harvard as well. It's that simple!

I find it funny that this is coming from a person named "Get Real"

Your statement is false for three reasons:

1)  When people transfer to a new school, their first year grades are typically marked as non-graded passes.  Thus, the transfer is starting out from scratch and has no class rank at his new school.

2)  Even if he did get to keep his grades, Harvard has a higher grading scale than Cooley, so the 3.4 that earned him his Top 10% or whatever, would only be on the median at Harvard.

3)  Most importantly, as I stated in my last post, succeeding at Harvard is miles away from succeeding at Cooley.  Harvard sends people to the Supreme Court.  Cooley sends people to the Eastern District of Michigan.  Besting your peers at Harvard means you could best your peers anywhere.  Besting your peers at Cooley means you've bested your peers at Cooley.

As to

1) you're right, it's true.
2) because Harvard has a higher grading scale than Cooley our transferee would get better grades than he got at Cooley, so his GPA will be 3.7, instead of the 3.4 Cooley gave him, so that he'll end top 20% at Harvard as well.
3) Succedding at Harvard, baby, is NOT miles away from succedding at Cooley, unless you think from the prespective of my name.

Have a good one, sweetie!

[tjking82]

And, sooorry, this is simply not true! If the top 20% at Cooley transfers to Harvard he'd rank top 20% at Harvard as well. It's that simple!

I find it funny that this is coming from a person named "Get Real"

Your statement is false for three reasons:

1)  When people transfer to a new school, their first year grades are typically marked as non-graded passes.  Thus, the transfer is starting out from scratch and has no class rank at his new school.

2)  Even if he did get to keep his grades, Harvard has a higher grading scale than Cooley, so the 3.4 that earned him his Top 10% or whatever, would only be on the median at Harvard.

3)  Most importantly, as I stated in my last post, succeeding at Harvard is miles away from succeeding at Cooley.  Harvard sends people to the Supreme Court.  Cooley sends people to the Eastern District of Michigan.  Besting your peers at Harvard means you could best your peers anywhere.  Besting your peers at Cooley means you've bested your peers at Cooley.

As to

1) you're right, it's true.
2) because Harvard has a higher grading scale than Cooley our transferee would get better grades than he got at Cooley, so his GPA will be 3.7, instead of the 3.4 Cooley gave him, so that he'll end top 20% at Harvard as well.
3) Succedding at Harvard, baby, is NOT miles away from succedding at Cooley, unless you think from the prespective of my name.

Have a good one, sweetie!

I hit lots of home runs in little league.
I guess I could hit lots of home runs in the Major Leagues!

I am the fastest kid in my high school.
I could win an Gold Medal in the Olympics!

I can beat up retarded kids.
I'm the next Rocky or Muhammed Ali!

I have the biggest appetite in my family.
I could win Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest!

I could go on and on...

[RootBrewskies]

why are people wasting their time comparing harvard and cooley?  obviously they arent equal.  maybe cooley has a few students that could be top students at harvard but as a general rule, the students who are accepted to harvard are simply more qualified students than the ones at cooley. 

the comparison is stupid.  look at this from a realistic prospective.  take the top 20 or so schools out of the picture, they are exceptions to the rule in basically all situations, at least in getting that first job.


stop compariing cooley and harvard. 

more likely cooley and msu would be competing for jobs.  something like that.  and harvard grads with BU or BC or NYU grads. 

[tjking82]

why are people wasting their time comparing harvard and cooley?  obviously they arent equal.  maybe cooley has a few students that could be top students at harvard but as a general rule, the students who are accepted to harvard are simply more qualified students than the ones at cooley. 

the comparison is stupid.  look at this from a realistic prospective.  take the top 20 or so schools out of the picture, they are exceptions to the rule in basically all situations, at least in getting that first job.


stop compariing cooley and harvard. 

more likely cooley and msu would be competing for jobs.  something like that.  and harvard grads with BU or BC or NYU grads. 

I agree completely, we're just being goaded by GetReal/usnewz who seems to hold the indefensible view that Harvard Law students and Cooley Law students are essentially identical in legal skill.

How?  Don't ask me - apparently some people just slip through the cracks of the educational system.

[nown4ever]

Why are people wasting their time comparing harvard and cooley? Obviously they arent equal.  maybe cooley has a few students that could be top students at harvard but as a general rule, the students who are accepted to harvard are simply more qualified students than the ones at cooley. 

Yes. That is true. But the fact that a top student at Cooley would not have a harder time to be at the top at Harvard remains unchanged. One had to take into account the fact that some very good students with high undergrad GPAs end up in lower tiered law school because of their low LSAT scores, not to mention that many law students at top schools get there only because of a high LSAT score, although they did suck as undergrads. Well, you all know what a "good" indicator of academic ability LSAT is ...

[username]

One had to take into account the fact that some very good students with high undergrad GPAs end up in lower tiered law school because of their low LSAT scores, not to mention that many law students at top schools get there only because of a high LSAT score, although they did suck as undergrads. Well, you all know what a "good" indicator of academic ability LSAT is ...

Indeed! Here it is an article on thje issue

http://www.hlrecord.org/media/paper609/news/2002/09/19/Opinion/Artificial.Selection.Lsat.Bias.Affects.Us.All-281888.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.hlrecord.org

[RootBrewskies]

yea, i realize the lsat is not a very good indicator of who is going to be an excellent student, but the truth is that there are very few students at harvard or any of the top schools that dont have excellent academic resumes. 

there may be some odd balls with the 3.0 and the 180 but for hte most part its 3.8's and 175's or something to that extent. 

lets stop arguing over whether or not harvard is a good school.  we know it is.  cooley is a fine school too, but they arent attracking the same students.

[paran0id]

Indeed! Here it is an article on thje issue

http://www.hlrecord.org/media/paper609/news/2002/09/19/Opinion/Artificial.Selection.Lsat.Bias.Affects.Us.All-281888.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.hlrecord.org

... ok i'll admit i merely skimmed the article, but i didn't see anything about a correlation between LSAT scores and performance. If anything, it's complaining about being biased against woman/minorities (i'd never heard the woman arguement before). Was there a single sentence I missed or something? I'd expect any arguement that attempted to show the LSAT was not indicative of performance to be heavily supported with data. Such an arguement would require a lot more than a single sentence.

Thanks for the irrelevant link though. Good job. Keep it up.

[tjking82]

Why are people wasting their time comparing harvard and cooley? Obviously they arent equal.  maybe cooley has a few students that could be top students at harvard but as a general rule, the students who are accepted to harvard are simply more qualified students than the ones at cooley. 

Yes. That is true. But the fact that a top student at Cooley would not have a harder time to be at the top at Harvard remains unchanged. One had to take into account the fact that some very good students with high undergrad GPAs end up in lower tiered law school because of their low LSAT scores, not to mention that many law students at top schools get there only because of a high LSAT score, although they did suck as undergrads. Well, you all know what a "good" indicator of academic ability LSAT is ...

This is simply ridiculous.

First, while LSAT isn't a great predictor of law school success...UNDERGRAD GPA IS WORSE!!!  This has long been documented.  See http://www.lsacnet.org/Research/Predictive-Validity-of-LSAT-Summary-Correlation-Studies-ES.htm for an article proving such.  So your verbal rolling of the eyes at the LSAT is silly, especially when you rely on the fact that Cooley has some people with great GPAs.  And even on the GPA front, Harvard is better, see below.

Secondly, Harvard students come in with a better LSAT and GPA, by far, period.  Here's some data from lawschoolnumbers.com for fun:

Harvard:  118 accepted this year, average GPA/LSAT:  3.84/174.3
Cooley:  65 accepted this year, average GPA/LSAT:  3.07/149.9

Wow.

I am not arguing with the contention that a handful of Cooley students could be competitive at Harvard.  But I'm sure I could count them on one hand - and even for those students, to say it'd be just as easy competing against students far superior to their competition at Cooley is simply to kid oneself.

[RootBrewskies]

haha, this cooley vs. harvard stuff is getting out of hand and funny.

anyway, the thread was initially about how GPA is not neccessary in law school.  undergrad is a different story for a number of reasons, but we arent arguing whether the LSAT is a good indicator of law school perfermance or whether undergrad GPA is a good indicator either.  what i was trying to say is that regardless of how u got to law school, once your there law school GPA becomes fairly worthless as a result of curves.

they really just dont make much sense.  a class should distribute itsself evenly as a natural result of the class.  if it doesnt and students perform equally, they should be graded equally.  if you have a class of 10 students and they are all some type of super genius students, it doesnt make sense to fail any of them, and vice versa if u have a class of idiots they should all fail.  there shouldnt be a distribution between them with mandatory A's, B's, C's, etc.