Grades: easier to get at UBC or Osgoode?

[CBay]

Question is pretty much the title. Which school is it easier to get good grades in and end up in the top 10-15 percent of your class?

 

[LMP]

If you're going to be a top student, you'll be a top student. This is a silly question and a bad way to decide between schools. 

[CBay]

Hard disagree. You can't tell me that it wouldn't be easier to be near the top end of a class at certain institutions over some others. I'm just wondering if that would be the case between these two schools, and if so, how much of a factor people think it might be. And no where did I say that it is was a primary factor, or even a factor at all, in deciding between the two. 

[LMP]

You can disagree all you want but don't ask questions if you don't want people's answers. 

There is no good way to compare the tops of the two classes. The top 10% of students at either school will be extremely strong. Any information someone gives will be inherently one-sided as almost no one has attended both schools. Would I have done better at UBC? There is literally no way of knowing, especially because the number of factors involved in ones grades go far beyond how your classmates do. 

What it seems like you're really trying to ask is "what school is generally perceived to have a weaker cohort?" 

To which I'd say my original answer still stands. Neither school is regarded as weak and the amount of work you'll need to do (or talent you need to have) to achieve your goal would secure you a top spot at either school.

[CBay]

Just now, LMP said:

You can disagree all you want but don't ask questions if you don't want people's answers. 

You didn't answer. And my advice to you would be if you don't have an answer, don't reply to someone's question. 

That said, I don't disagree with your second paragraph. This is of course something intangible, and there's no way to control for it really unless the same person went to both schools, and even then there would be factors, such as luck, class choice, professors, commute time, weather, coffee quality, which would make answering the question accurately impossible. 

I suppose it's fair to rephrase the question into one about which is the weaker cohort. To me, if we look at, say, LSAT medians, with UBC's being ~91st percentile, and Osgoode's being ~78th percentile, it would suggest to me that a stronger student might be higher up in the class rankings at the latter. If this logic is misleading, though, I am certainly willing to be corrected. 

I think more than anything I was just hoping for some personal anecdotes from people who went to either school, or are familiar with the graduates at both schools, who might have some info along these lines. Perhaps someone out there transferred from one school to the other and noticed a difference? Who knows, just put the question out there. 🙂

[Renerik]

18 minutes ago, CBay said:

You didn't answer. And my advice to you would be if you don't have an answer, don't reply to someone's question. 

Good way to alienate anyone who would otherwise answer.

LMP isn't saying that being top x% at all schools requires the same work, but that it'll be around the same at UBC and Oz.

It's been said a decent amount on here, picking a school based on perceived difficulty so you can "more easily" land in the top of the class is a bad strategy.

[CBay]

Just now, Renerik said:

Good way to alienate anyone who would otherwise answer.

LMP isn't saying that being top x% at all schools requires the same work, but that it'll be around the same at UBC and Oz.

I don't think so. I was just trying to eliminate another flippant and unhelpful response. I certainly didn't read into his response that he meant they would be "around the same."
 

Just now, Renerik said:

It's been said a decent amount on here, picking a school based on perceived difficulty so you can "more easily" land in the top of the class is a bad strategy.

To be clear: I am not picking a school based on its perceived difficulty. Obviously, many, many things go into choosing a school that's right for someone, and this question is just relatively small part of that for me. 

You say it's a bad strategy though, but I fail to understand why it's something that shouldn't be discussed or considered. Take, for example, someone who wants to get into big law. Oz places around 35% in Toronto, and UBC around 30% in Vancouver. If that's your ultimate goal, and you don't have a geographic preference, someone might do very well to consider how likely they are to end up with a class ranking in either school that would allow them to be successful. Again, we can look to LSAT medians for this. Presuming that LSAT scores are in fact approximately predictive of law school success, being in a pool of people in the 90th percentile fighting for 30% of the spots for big law might be a significant disadvantage for someone when compared to being in a pool of people in the 80th percentile fighting for 35% of the spots. To me, this is a non-trivial point. Certainly not one worth being frivolously dismissed, anyway.

[CleanHands]

@CBayWell FWIW I like you and your logic here because I would like to believe that if only I went to Oz I'd have been a medalist. 

[CBay]

1 minute ago, CleanHands said:

@CBayWell FWIW I like you and your logic here because I would like to believe that if only I went to Oz I'd have been a medalist. 

What I'm saying is you should have went to TRU and I thank you for your sacrifice in going to UBC and not getting a medal simply to illustrate my point. 

(No shade to TRU or its students. You did it right.)

[RC51]

10 hours ago, LMP said:

If you're going to be a top student, you'll be a top student. This is a silly question and a bad way to decide between schools. 

Have you been to school before? This is a very realistic question...Different schools have vastly different standards for grades, and that starts from the secondary level all the way to law school. Answer like yours just shuts down the discussion for no reason other than espoucing some idealistic maxim. 

[QueensDenning]

14 minutes ago, RC51 said:

Have you been to school before? This is a very realistic question...Different schools have vastly different standards for grades, and that starts from the secondary level all the way to law school. Answer like yours just shuts down the discussion for no reason other than espoucing some idealistic maxim. 

Have you been to law school before? 

The curve is the curve and OP is asking about two top schools where the difference between top students is going to be absolutely negligible, and OP just does't like the answers he is getting. A top 10% student at Osgoode or UBC is in all likelihood going to be a top student at UofT, Queen's, Windsor, wherever. 

A top student at Windsor is also likely to be a top student at UofT. 

[LMP]

11 minutes ago, RC51 said:

Have you been to school before? This is a very realistic question...Different schools have vastly different standards for grades, and that starts from the secondary level all the way to law school. Answer like yours just shuts down the discussion for no reason other than espoucing some idealistic maxim. 

You haven't started law school yet, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and try to explain. 

Being in the top 10% is very, very diffcult. It requires you to be excellent at one thing, law school. This is doubly true at schools like UBC or Osgoode. 

I hone in on that metric because this isn't a question of just doing better than most of the class, it is a matter of being better than almost everyone. At Osgoode you'd need roughly speaking, to be in the top 7 people in your section. 

Do you see what I'm getting at? The nonsense your spouting about standards of grading are irrelevant in a system with a curve, all that matters is being stronger than your peers. But when the numbers are so small, like I said a matter of less than 10 people. Then comparisons between schools like these don't matter.

They are both excellent schools, the top 10% of students at UBC could have gone to Osgoode and vice versa. There is a certian benchmark of ability needed to reach those top spots and you'll either have the ability or you won't because the caliber of competition at the top of the class will be near equally tough. 

 

[Bruiser]

11 hours ago, CBay said:

Presuming that LSAT scores are in fact approximately predictive of law school success

My 170 LSAT and median law school grades beg to differ.

[123]

3 hours ago, QueensDenning said:

Have you been to law school before? 

The curve is the curve and OP is asking about two top schools where the difference between top students is going to be absolutely negligible, and OP just does't like the answers he is getting. A top 10% student at Osgoode or UBC is in all likelihood going to be a top student at UofT, Queen's, Windsor, wherever. 

A top student at Windsor is also likely to be a top student at UofT. 

3 hours ago, LMP said:

You haven't started law school yet, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and try to explain. 

Being in the top 10% is very, very diffcult. It requires you to be excellent at one thing, law school. This is doubly true at schools like UBC or Osgoode. 

I hone in on that metric because this isn't a question of just doing better than most of the class, it is a matter of being better than almost everyone. At Osgoode you'd need roughly speaking, to be in the top 7 people in your section. 

Do you see what I'm getting at? The nonsense your spouting about standards of grading are irrelevant in a system with a curve, all that matters is being stronger than your peers. But when the numbers are so small, like I said a matter of less than 10 people. Then comparisons between schools like these don't matter.

They are both excellent schools, the top 10% of students at UBC could have gone to Osgoode and vice versa. There is a certian benchmark of ability needed to reach those top spots and you'll either have the ability or you won't because the caliber of competition at the top of the class will be near equally tough.

I didn't know everyone's grades in my cohort. And they didn't necessarily show it off, but the top students in my year were sharp. At least for the gold medalist, she had almost all A+s at Dal. So even if she didn't medal everywhere, I would be shocked if she wasn't a top student at every school, every year, because there was basically nothing for her to improve on.

Some people might be able to claw their way into the top 10% through luck and work. But my experience is that the top students were very concise, organized, and clear in making their points during exams and discussions. They executed their work with an efficiency and consistency that was unattainable for someone like me.

It's like playing a sport. I was pretty good at soccer, playing higher up in the amateur levels. But at a certain point, I was outclassed by competition that was quicker, stronger, and saw the game at an elite level. In the same way, I might be relatively smart and capable. And I might have been top of many classes through undergrad. But I'm not quick enough to out-execute people who are consistently near-perfect on every law school exam. Neither are most people. Which is why most law students fall into the average to below average parts of the curve. And that's fine, because there's no shame in being good, but not elite.

Edited August 4, 2022 by realpseudonym

[CleanHands]

Yeah, I was going to say I disagree with the assertion that being at the top of the class is "difficult," and I would use the term "unlikely" instead. People either have it or don't. The latter can't work their way there.

Edited August 4, 2022 by CleanHands

[QueensDenning]

54 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

Yeah, I was going to say I disagree with the assertion that being at the top of the class is "difficult," and I would use the term "unlikely" instead. People either have it or don't. The latter can't work their way there.

There's a lot of talk on this forum about people getting straight A's and breezing their way through law school like it was a walk in the park. The ones I know with those types of grades are inherently more intelligent than every one else (or whatever you want to call it) but they certainly worked as hard or harder than everyone else too. It doesn't mean that they were in the books 12 hours every day but I think don't think they'd agree that it was not "difficult". 

Agreed that the people who don't have it can't work their way to it no matter how hard they try, though. 

[BlockedQuebecois]

2 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

There's a lot of talk on this forum about people getting straight A's and breezing their way through law school like it was a walk in the park

That’s because most of the people on this forum who got straight As or close to it did not work all that hard in law school. In fact, the majority of people on this forum with those kinds of grades would probably agree they didn’t work as hard as their peers.

The notable exception to that rule being the guy who thinks his ergonomic keyboard or whatever was the key to his success.  

[Lawstudents20202020]

9 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

The notable exception to that rule being the guy who thinks his ergonomic keyboard or whatever was the key to his success.  

But what impact do rgb mechanical keyboards have in grades? Maybe that was the secret to my success. 

[AllRise]

2 minutes ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

But what impact do rgb mechanical keyboards have in grades? Maybe that was the secret to my success. 

I build mechanical keyboards as a hobby, I can confirm that the EXTRA clicky switches I used under my keycaps improved my grades significantly.

[CleanHands]

6 minutes ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

But what impact do rgb mechanical keyboards have in grades? Maybe that was the secret to my success. 

The secret to your success was going to TRU and being on a curve against a weak cohort. 😛

[Lawstudents20202020]

2 minutes ago, AllRise said:

I build mechanical keyboards as a hobby, I can confirm that the EXTRA clicky switches I used under my keycaps improved my grades significantly.

[SlytherinLLP]

I wouldn't lump Dean's list students (at any school) and medalists (at any school). I didn't find the former particularly difficult, but I don't think I could attain the latter without incredible effort (if at all, almost certainly not at all). I remember being in awe listening to oral arguments and reading some of the factums. 

[ZukoJD]

2 hours ago, QueensDenning said:

There's a lot of talk on this forum about people getting straight A's and breezing their way through law school like it was a walk in the park. The ones I know with those types of grades are inherently more intelligent than every one else (or whatever you want to call it) but they certainly worked as hard or harder than everyone else too. It doesn't mean that they were in the books 12 hours every day but I think don't think they'd agree that it was not "difficult". 

Agreed that the people who don't have it can't work their way to it no matter how hard they try, though. 

Nah man. You’ve got it all wrong. Grades are set in stone the day you accept your offer. Perhaps even the day you were but a wee lad or lass frolicking in your mother’s yard. 
 

If you’re one of the destined few you can grab a few bags of chips, kick back, and enjoy the ride to your top of the class grades. 
 

To any future 1Ls reading this: don’t try to continuously improve yourself or your method of study. It’s a total waste. Yesterday’s mistakes are tomorrow’s solutions, and hard work does not translate into results in the aggregate. 

[123]

29 minutes ago, ZukoJD said:

Nah man. You’ve got it all wrong. Grades are set in stone the day you accept your offer. Perhaps even the day you were but a wee lad or lass frolicking in your mother’s yard. 
 

If you’re one of the destined few you can grab a few bags of chips, kick back, and enjoy the ride to your top of the class grades. 
 

To any future 1Ls reading this: don’t try to continuously improve yourself or your method of study. It’s a total waste. Yesterday’s mistakes are tomorrow’s solutions, and hard work does not translate into results in the aggregate. 

No one is saying this. At all. Everyone should go into law school eager to learn, and hungry to maximize their experience. It is the foundation of your career and you get out what you put into it. If you go to class, do your readings, engage in discussions, and participate in clinics, you will benefit yourself immeasurably and contribute to the legal community around you. 

But your motivation should not be dependent upon achieving a high class ranking. First, that’s because many aren’t going to rank at or near the top of the class, and they need to sustain their drive regardless. Second, most benefit from moving away from the idea of career success measured in terms of accolades. Through school, your successes are measured and marked. But once you’re in practice, a lot of progress is just getting incrementally better with little external recognition or validation. There’s no next hoop to jump through. You have to find your satisfaction other places. Law school helped me with that (somewhat uncomfortably at the time). But I’m a better person and better lawyer for it.

Be ambitious, yes. But placing top ten or medalling should be the only be the icing on the cake. You shouldn’t need it to sustain you. 

[QueensDenning]

Come to think of it it's really only a few people on here constantly reminiscing about how easy it was for him to achieve near perfect grades.

I was just below deans list, but I certainly worked my ass off to get there and if I didn't I don't think I would have done nearly as well. We can't all be perfect but working hard certainly helps to get there. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by QueensDenning