Quote"Anarchic" isn't a word often associated with the Ivy League. But it's how students, faculty, and even the immediate past dean describe Yale Law. And with good reason: The traditionally grueling first term is un-graded (and subsequent courses are graded on an honors, pass, low-pass, or fail basis), there are virtually no course requirements past first term, and professors are free to choose what they want to teachEven if we acknowledge that grades do not serve as a benchmark of quality with clear meaning, they do operate as a powerful incentive. Students use grades to define themselves in positive or negative fashion, as in "I am a B student." Many faculty would assert that, without grades, students won't work.Nowadays we read these studies confirming that grades are not necessary to motivate learning. But faculty members who have taught a pass/fail course in a school in which marks are given are likely to howl in disagreement. Their experience supports the theory that grades are necessary to motivate students: in pass/fail classes (or for students who elect a pass/fail option for an otherwise graded class) students simply do not work as hard as they do in graded courses. Eliminating grades entirely would do much to create the conditions for encouraging different learning motivations. Law school structures do not tend to provide the types of flexibility and student control that would be conducive to this support, though. As a society we may have so firmly entrenched with the message that one learns only for reward, that encouraging learning for its own sake may indeed be quite difficult, in fact, impossible.
"Anarchic" isn't a word often associated with the Ivy League. But it's how students, faculty, and even the immediate past dean describe Yale Law. And with good reason: The traditionally grueling first term is un-graded (and subsequent courses are graded on an honors, pass, low-pass, or fail basis), there are virtually no course requirements past first term, and professors are free to choose what they want to teach
At the age of eleven, he lectured to distinguished mathematicians on the subject of Four-Dimensional Bodies.
As a society we may have so firmly entrenched with the message that one learns only for reward, that encouraging learning for its own sake may indeed be quite difficult, in fact, impossible.
But but maybe Yale will be the first school to show us that learning for its own sake IS possible. Other schools will then fellow.
Quote from: Thomas239 on April 27, 2005, 11:57:39 PMYale. You either get "Pass" or "Honors". And you could probably fail a class, but I doubt that happens very often. Realistically, anyone who gets into Yale is probably going to put forth some effort, but there isn't a whole lot of pressure to go nuts. I mean, even if you get all "Pass" scores, you still graduated from freakin' Yale Law. I'd guess that getting a lot of "Honors" would give the top Yale students priority for the super prestegious clerkships, like working for a Supreme Court justice. But really, as long as you graduate and pass the bar (as over 94% do- which is actually disturbingly low [it really should be 100% on the first attempt] in my opinion considering the outrageously high GPA and LSAT scores of their student body) you'll have an enormous advantage over the graduates from almost every other law school."Anarchic" isn't a word often associated with the Ivy League. But it's how students, faculty, and even the immediate past dean describe Yale Law. And with good reason: The traditionally grueling first term is un-graded (and subsequent courses are graded on an honors, pass, low-pass, or fail basis), there are virtually no course requirements past first term, and professors are free to choose what they want to teach. Current Dean Harold Koh, an international human-rights expert who served as assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, recently took a class to a screening of the legal thriller Runaway Jury , during which he loudly enumerated the film's many procedural errors.High-minded. Classes at Yale are highly theoretical; this is not the place to look for the nuts and bolts of practice. "You're going to have to cram for six miserable weeks for the bar exam anyway, so why waste time preparing when you're in law school?" A recent contracts course included a long, spirited discussion over whether Pepsi could in theory be held liable for its TV commercial offering a Harrier Jet to customers who collected 7 million Pepsi points. At other schools, "I might spend time going over statutes," says Richard Brooks, an associate professor who teaches contracts. But this high-minded approach has its limits, students say. "Most people coming from Yale haven't spent time taking bankruptcy or even business organization, and you come to a big firm and it's a large part of what you do," says 2004 grad Matt Alsdorf, now an associate at a large New York firm. "It isn't a deficit you can't make up, but sometimes have to go to the library and take out a book on securities."
Yale. You either get "Pass" or "Honors". And you could probably fail a class, but I doubt that happens very often. Realistically, anyone who gets into Yale is probably going to put forth some effort, but there isn't a whole lot of pressure to go nuts. I mean, even if you get all "Pass" scores, you still graduated from freakin' Yale Law. I'd guess that getting a lot of "Honors" would give the top Yale students priority for the super prestegious clerkships, like working for a Supreme Court justice. But really, as long as you graduate and pass the bar (as over 94% do- which is actually disturbingly low [it really should be 100% on the first attempt] in my opinion considering the outrageously high GPA and LSAT scores of their student body) you'll have an enormous advantage over the graduates from almost every other law school.
Are you saying that Yalies do not work hard? I know for a fact that they do.
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