Grades: easier to get at UBC or Osgoode?

[123]

22 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

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. 

Law school isn’t easy for the overwhelming majority of students. 1L in particular is a challenge, because reading case law and writing law exams are new skills for almost everyone. You’re also being graded against a pool of reasonably smart, diligent students. Which isn’t always the case in other educational programs. It’s a challenge and an adjustment.

It’s also not supposed to be a gruelling experience. Some of the comments that get thrown around about law school being easier on the forums were, in context, pushing back against overstressed students, who were reading far too many hours due to poor study habits. Generally speaking, law school shouldn’t be that. It should be approached like a job. Read and go to class for regular, reasonable hours. Ramp up around exams. But if you’re slacking or closing down the library  every night, you’re probably short changing yourself on the experience. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by realpseudonym

[QMT20]

I was dean's list every year in law school. 

In 1L I did every reading, made all of my own outlines from scratch, and spent the majority of my time in the learning commons studying. 

In 2L I did the same thing but added recruit, research, journal, and a competitive moot to my workload. My moot coach was in 3L and I once mentioned 3LOL to her. Her response was that everyone in law school lies to you about it being less work as it goes along. She ended up being a medalist and then went on to appellate and SCC clerkships. 

3L ended up being my busiest year in law school. I found law school was hard work from day 1 and it continued snowballing for 3-years because if you do good work, people try to give you more of it. I certainly wouldn't say I cruised through law school or it was easy to get good grades in law school. I felt like the time and effort I put in was necessary to achieve what I wanted to achieve. 

That said, hard work is relative. In law school you generally have a lot of flexibility to set your own schedule. Even if you have multiple research assignments, papers, and exams, your preparation time is measured in weeks and months. Compared to articling where your timeline for assignments is often days and hours, the workload in law school wouldn't seem as bad. 

[CheeseToast]

loling at the (alleged) dean’s listers / medalists pretending they didn’t study harder than most of their peers. It’s okay to be a nerd guys!!! 

[capitalttruth]

How much does luck play into good grades? For instance, one year a student may luck out in having exams/assignments with easier fact patterns than others. I'll use myself as an example - this year I did really well on all of my exams except for one with a fact pattern that was relatively difficult. I did well in the fall portion of the course which was worth 75 percent so it really didn't matter, but I am left with an unclear impression of what sort of student I am. Whether I am someone who is good at issue spotting or someone who just got lucky. 

I'm not trying to humblebrag, here, either. If I sound like I am, do your due diligence and shame me for it!

[SNAILS]

I think that students entering law school this year, for the most part, need to abandon the idea of being "top students." In undergrad, you were probably a big fish in a small pond. Law school is all of the big fish from various ponds all in one elite pond.

Much respect to anyone who pulled straight A's in law school. But also much respect to people who got mostly B's and a couple of A's. Even the latter is not an easy feat.

[CBay]

16 hours 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. 

I wouldn't say that different law schools have vastly different standards for grades necessarily, though there certainly is some variation from my understanding. And even if they did, the fact that law school is graded on a curve negates this to a large extent. 

What differs, I think, is the pools of students between schools. Unlike what @QueensDenning said about a top student at Windsor being a top student wherever they could have gone, such as U of T, I do not believe that to be case. If the top student at Windsor was suddenly thrown into the pool at Toronto, and judged against them, there is a very good chance they would no longer be the top student. It's quite possible that they wouldn't even be in the top 10%. And hence the basis for my original question. 

 

16 hours ago, LMP said:

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.

Precisely right. All that matters is being stronger than your peers. Which is why the relative strength of your pool of peers plays a role in whether you will be a top performer or not. 

Let's take your example and play with it a bit. Say you took the top 10% of students from Osgoode (7 students from each of 4 cohorts), and placed them in a law school with the top 10% of students from UBC. Now you have approximately 50 people in this new law school, all of them previously in the top 10%. If this new law school had, say, 250 students, then all those people who were top 10% performers suddenly aren't anymore. Only half of them are. This is the power of the strength of the student pool. 

While I do understand that the general consensus among some of you is to ignore this, probably because in reality it only affects a small amount of people in any given program, I do think there is some merit to at least mulling some of these things over. It doesn't hurt to be strategic. It might even help you. Why be a top 25% student at U of T when you could be a top 10% student at Osgoode? It seems to me that the latter would confer far more benefits to career outcomes. 

[QMT20]

13 hours ago, CBay said:

Precisely right. All that matters is being stronger than your peers. Which is why the relative strength of your pool of peers plays a role in whether you will be a top performer or not. 

Let's take your example and play with it a bit. Say you took the top 10% of students from Osgoode (7 students from each of 4 cohorts), and placed them in a law school with the top 10% of students from UBC. Now you have approximately 50 people in this new law school, all of them previously in the top 10%. If this new law school had, say, 250 students, then all those people who were top 10% performers suddenly aren't anymore. Only half of them are. This is the power of the strength of the student pool. 

While I do understand that the general consensus among some of you is to ignore this, probably because in reality it only affects a small amount of people in any given program, I do think there is some merit to at least mulling some of these things over. It doesn't hurt to be strategic. It might even help you. Why be a top 25% student at U of T when you could be a top 10% student at Osgoode? It seems to me that the latter would confer far more benefits to career outcomes. 

Assuming there is a correlation between entering stats and performance in law school, the problem with your argument is you're applying entering class medians to compare students who are at the top of each class. Some of the top students at statistically less competitive schools choose to be there because they received a full scholarship or for personal reasons like proximity to family or a significant other. Sometimes those students have comparable entering stats with the top entering students at schools such as U of T. However, that wouldn't be captured if you're only looking at medians which reflect the relative strength of the middle of each entering class. The fact that the middle of the class at U of T is presumed to be stronger than the middle of the class at Windsor is reflected in things such as the median U of T student having a good chance in OCIs while the median Windsor student does not. 

You could only do a comparison of the top of each class based on entering stats if you actually have the stats for the top of each class. Even then, it won't be a perfect comparison. There will always be outliers who have low entering stats but turn into top law students. I know someone who had an LSAT in the high-150s and an undergraduate GPA in the 3.4 range (both below their school medians) who ended up becoming a medalist and an appellate clerk. Again, comparing only entering stats, you wouldn't expect that person to outperform the students in their class but they did, and a few students in their position do that every year. 

 

[Snax]

17 hours ago, SNAILS said:

I think that students entering law school this year, for the most part, need to abandon the idea of being "top students." In undergrad, you were probably a big fish in a small pond. Law school is all of the big fish from various ponds all in one elite pond.

Much respect to anyone who pulled straight A's in law school. But also much respect to people who got mostly B's and a couple of A's. Even the latter is not an easy feat.

I’d disagree with praising the latter. That’s me, and nothing about my work ethic or habits in law school should be praised.
 

There were many, if not most, upper year courses where I’d just go to lectures, take notes, and read those notes over once, the day before the exam, against the summary I got from a friend or whatever for that course and make a few edits to the summary based on my notes. Then I’d go write the exam the following day, take a B, and be on my merry way to do it again next semester. Students should aspire to do more than that, and with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I did as well. 
 

I think most law students are capable of doing what I did, they just don’t because they’re generally a fairly neurotic bunch. 
 

Though I don’t disagree with your more general point that law students are smart and shouldn’t be ashamed of being an average-ish in terms of law school grades. 

[Mbu1]

Just because it's "easier" to get into a school doesn't mean it'll be easier to get the best grades there. I know someone who, for family reasons, transferred after 1L from a small Maritime school to Ottawa and found it easier to excel in Ottawa, even though, on paper, Ottawa has a stronger cohort. Don't set yourself up for disappointment.

[pastmidnight]

OP, you've posted a ton about whether you should go to Osgoode or UBC in several different topics. If you truly have no geographic preference, I think you'd be better off PMing graduates of each school on here who are in BigLaw (assuming they are willing to help) and/or reaching out to graduates on LinkedIn who are in jobs you are interested in. I think at this point you're just splitting hairs and will need to actually speak with graduates to determine which school makes sense for you. If you want to speak with UBC graduates working in NYC, PM me -- I noticed quite a few while on LinkedIn. 

I will say that if you're not already in Vancouver, your ability to accept your UBC offer, if that's what you decide to do, is going to be more and more challenging as we creep closer to September. Finding housing is rough in Toronto, but it is very, very bad here and it seems that everyone coming from a different province or even from outside the Lower Mainland has faced an uphill battle finding housing, and it's only going to get worse as other students return in September. 

[CBay]

5 hours ago, Snax said:

There were many, if not most, upper year courses where I’d just go to lectures, take notes, and read those notes over once, the day before the exam, against the summary I got from a friend or whatever for that course and make a few edits to the summary based on my notes. Then I’d go write the exam the following day, take a B, and be on my merry way to do it again next semester. Students should aspire to do more than that, and with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I did as well. 

Interesting. Is this just in a general "would have got more out of law school sense," or are you wishing you did to achieve a better career outcome?

4 hours ago, pastmidnight said:

OP, you've posted a ton about whether you should go to Osgoode or UBC in several different topics. If you truly have no geographic preference, I think you'd be better off PMing graduates of each school on here who are in BigLaw (assuming they are willing to help) and/or reaching out to graduates on LinkedIn who are in jobs you are interested in. I think at this point you're just splitting hairs and will need to actually speak with graduates to determine which school makes sense for you. If you want to speak with UBC graduates working in NYC, PM me -- I noticed quite a few while on LinkedIn. 

I will say that if you're not already in Vancouver, your ability to accept your UBC offer, if that's what you decide to do, is going to be more and more challenging as we creep closer to September. Finding housing is rough in Toronto, but it is very, very bad here and it seems that everyone coming from a different province or even from outside the Lower Mainland has faced an uphill battle finding housing, and it's only going to get worse as other students return in September. 

Cheers. This is almost an academic exercise for me as I find the differences between the schools fascinating, especially since they're ranked basically on par. I'll definitely shoot you a PM.

[CBay]

7 hours ago, QMT20 said:

Assuming there is a correlation between entering stats and performance in law school, the problem with your argument is you're applying entering class medians to compare students who are at the top of each class. Some of the top students at statistically less competitive schools choose to be there because they received a full scholarship or for personal reasons like proximity to family or a significant other. Sometimes those students have comparable entering stats with the top entering students at schools such as U of T. However, that wouldn't be captured if you're only looking at medians which reflect the relative strength of the middle of each entering class. The fact that the middle of the class at U of T is presumed to be stronger than the middle of the class at Windsor is reflected in things such as the median U of T student having a good chance in OCIs while the median Windsor student does not. 

You could only do a comparison of the top of each class based on entering stats if you actually have the stats for the top of each class. Even then, it won't be a perfect comparison. There will always be outliers who have low entering stats but turn into top law students. I know someone who had an LSAT in the high-150s and an undergraduate GPA in the 3.4 range (both below their school medians) who ended up becoming a medalist and an appellate clerk. Again, comparing only entering stats, you wouldn't expect that person to outperform the students in their class but they did, and a few students in their position do that every year. 

 

I have thought of this and agree with you on your points here. One thing that makes me think that the "top" of the class at somewhere like U of T is academically stronger than the "top" at a program like Windsor is the frequent comments on this forum, and among students elsewhere, that go something along the lines of "every Queen's student has something in common: they were denied at Osgoode," or the fact that Osgoode waitlists open right up when U of T goes through its last admission wave. Is it not fair to say that *most* students who get into both Osgoode and U of T go to U of T? And if that is the case, isn't it also the case that there is likely to be a stronger cohort at Osgoode?

I fully admit that there are outstanding students everywhere, due to location preferences and whatever, but can't it also be said, as a generalization, that the strongest students at somewhere like U of T are likely to be stronger than those at TRU or Windsor (using them as an extreme example)?

[QMT20]

8 hours ago, CBay said:

I have thought of this and agree with you on your points here. One thing that makes me think that the "top" of the class at somewhere like U of T is academically stronger than the "top" at a program like Windsor is the frequent comments on this forum, and among students elsewhere, that go something along the lines of "every Queen's student has something in common: they were denied at Osgoode," or the fact that Osgoode waitlists open right up when U of T goes through its last admission wave. Is it not fair to say that *most* students who get into both Osgoode and U of T go to U of T? And if that is the case, isn't it also the case that there is likely to be a stronger cohort at Osgoode?

Every school has the resources to convince a few of their top applicants to enroll. They may offer a full scholarship or research opportunities or whatever to convince a few candidates who usually have outstanding entering stats and/or other outstanding achievements to attend. For example, a recent medalist at Queen's was also the gold-medalist at their undergraduate university and was admitted to every law school they applied to, including U of T. They chose Queen's for the scholarship. I agree with you that the majority of students at Queen's were probably rejected by Osgoode and the fact that Osgoode's waitlists open up after U of T goes through its last admission wave may reflect that they're admitting students who were rejected by U of T. But again, the Queen's students who are rejected by Osgoode and the Osgoode students admitted after U of T's last wave reflect the median (or slightly below median) entering stats of each school, not the top. The top applicants would have gotten admissions in December and January. For this reason, I don't think either of those points provide insight into the top of the class at any of those law schools. 

8 hours ago, CBay said:

I fully admit that there are outstanding students everywhere, due to location preferences and whatever, but can't it also be said, as a generalization, that the strongest students at somewhere like U of T are likely to be stronger than those at TRU or Windsor (using them as an extreme example)?

When you use entering stats and pre-law school achievements to assess the strength of law students, you are essentially using past-performance to determine future success. When you do this, the larger the sample size you apply this thinking to, the more likely it is to be true for that sample size. I would agree that the overall class at U of T is likely to be stronger than the overall class at TRU or Windsor. However, I would be less comfortable accepting that claim for the top of either class because that's a much smaller sample size and there are always a few outliers who did not have stellar entering stats that turn into top law students. 

You might also say "well if the overall class at U of T is stronger, then the top students overcame stronger competition to get their position than students at TRU or Windsor." My response to that would be that you can only beat the competition you face, and likewise for the curve. A gold medalist at Windsor beat everyone on their curve and I don't think its fair to diminish that achievement by saying they didn't beat another curve that they never faced.

If you end up doing an SCC or an appellate clerkship, you can come back to this thread and tell me your anecdotal observations about the medalists and dean's listers at each school and which ones are stronger. Until that day, I don't think you have a basis to compare the top of each class. 

Edited August 6, 2022 by QMT20

[Rashabon]

Having worked with medalists and top graduates from numerous law schools, the top is the top. I graduated with Honours from U of T but don't think that my colleagues from other schools who graduated with similar accolades are any less intelligent or capable or would not have been able to achieve similar accolades elsewhere.

[CBay]

17 hours ago, QMT20 said:

But again, the Queen's students who are rejected by Osgoode and the Osgoode students admitted after U of T's last wave reflect the median (or slightly below median) entering stats of each school, not the top. The top applicants would have gotten admissions in December and January. For this reason, I don't think either of those points provide insight into the top of the class at any of those law schools. 

But this does suggest that Osgoode and Queens lost some of their strongest students, no? I mean, when the U of T waitlists open up, I assume those spots are going to the strongest students at Osgoode (assuming they applied to both). It seems to me that this would clear out some of the competition at the top at Osgoode. 

 

17 hours ago, QMT20 said:

You might also say "well if the overall class at U of T is stronger, then the top students overcame stronger competition to get their position than students at TRU or Windsor." My response to that would be that you can only beat the competition you face, and likewise for the curve. A gold medalist at Windsor beat everyone on their curve and I don't think its fair to diminish that achievement by saying they didn't beat another curve that they never faced.

I appreciate the sentiment here, but it seems to me that it's just that. Of course, you can only beat the competition you face, and we are dealing with hypothetical. I don't think that prevents us from making reasonable conclusions, though. 

17 hours ago, QMT20 said:

If you end up doing an SCC or an appellate clerkship, you can come back to this thread and tell me your anecdotal observations about the medalists and dean's listers at each school and which ones are stronger. Until that day, I don't think you have a basis to compare the top of each class. 

I think I agree with the notion that the "top is the top," in that I don't think the top student at Toronto, for example, is of a higher calibre necessarily than the top student from any other Canadian law schools. I do think the ceiling is the ceiling. That said, when you have such a cluster of seemingly bright people (yes, based on past data, but past data is the best predictor of future data) in one environment, I still think that for some people (those not quite at the ceiling), they might be happier with their outcomes at schools with fewer people near those ceilings. 

[FellowTraveler]

5 hours ago, CBay said:

I appreciate the sentiment here, but it seems to me that it's just that.

I love how you say this, but the rest of your comments are just... your own made-up sentiments about something you have no experience or concrete knowledge, or any other backing other than your "reasonable conclusions."

You seem to have a hard-on for data, so maybe check out something like:

https://www.legalevolution.org/2021/08/moneyball-for-law-firms-associates-a-15-year-retrospective-257/

"In brief, the top left box revealed that one common hiring heuristic was right—after controlling for a wide range of factors, law school grades were meaningfully correlated with midlevel associate performance.  In contrast, the bottom left box reflected hiring criteria that were not predictive of future performance, including law school rank and judicial clerkships. Undergraduate honors and law review are in red because these factors were, in fact, negative predictors of associate performance."

But yes, please keep repeating your sentiment about how undergraduate performance is the determining factor of a strong law class.

 

Edited August 7, 2022 by FellowTraveler

[sapsipper]

Quote

I don't think that prevents us from making reasonable conclusions, though. 

If you have a bunch of actual law students and lawyers telling you that there's not much a difference, quite a few of whom were in fact top of their class and interacted with top students from other schools, then maybe your conclusions aren't as reasonable as you think they are.

[Kid Presentable]

This whole discussion reminds me of this image:

Which is to say, yes, a person with the same aptitude might achieve grades that rank in, say, the 70th percentile at one school and the 60th at another. But besides some different letters on your transcript, what does that get you? Hiring managers adjust for these sorts of things. They hire students from all across Canada—they know how to compare transcripts from different schools. The same person might achieve more facially impressive grades at one school than they would at another, but that on its own won't necessarily make them a more competitive candidate for the jobs they want after law school. It's just pouring the same water into a different glass.

[helloall]

There's actually quite a lot of discussion in legal academia over the correlation between law school standards and future associate performance. @FellowTraveler posted an article, but I want to caution that even the original study notes that the comparison between HYS students and a lower T1 school at a AM100 firm is already skewed to the relative top performers. Given hiring criteria have school-dependent grade cut-offs, it's comparing a potentially subpar student at the former with a top performer at the latter. There are some more accurate research that adjusts for this via revealed-preferences/value-added rankings of law schools, but it's controversial (see: here, which argues that T4 schools can provide better opportunities when considering student backgrounds, which I think is a terrible statistic given the income:debt ratios of T4 schools)

Regardless, there's at least a mild correlation between median admission statistics, and law school & future performances (e.g., bar passage rates). We can also assume that the central limit theorem applies, so student performance is normally distributed. As such, I don't think it's outlandish to say that the 90th percentile student at UofT would, on average - and all else equal - perform better than a 90th percentile Windsor student if placed in a different law school environment.

However, the comparison becomes difficult to quantify when looking at the absolute top performers (e.g., the gold medalists and SCC clerks), because we can't accurately compare students. This is quite reductionist and simplistic, but it could be that the gold medalist at UofT a 99.01th percentile student while the Windsor student is close to a 100th percentile. I don't think it's worthwhile arguing about extreme outliers.

Edited August 7, 2022 by helloall

[FellowTraveler]

1 hour ago, helloall said:

Regardless, there's at least a mild correlation between median admission statistics, and law school & future performances (e.g., bar passage rates). We can also assume that the central limit theorem applies, so student performance is normally distributed. As such, I don't think it's outlandish to say that the 90th percentile student at UofT would, on average - and all else equal - perform better than a 90th percentile Windsor student if placed in a different law school environment.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not what that study seems to be implying. The existence of a mild correlation between admission stats and future performance is meaningless on its own. Their overall results lead them to say that the correlation is too mild to be much of a guide in-and-of itself, and that a holistic survey of candidates is likely to better predict future performance.

"A key overall lesson of all the above findings is the need for a broadly holistic review of all applications – because no one variable, alone, is powerful enough to justify admitting or denying a particular applicant."

"With almost no variable capable of predicting much more than one or two tenths of a point of difference in LGPA, treating any one applicant credential as dispositive is clearly a mistake."

"This Article's findings, however, provide strong support for a more rather than less holistic approach, and a less rather than more numbers-driven approach, to law admissions"

As such... yeah we can very much question whether a 90th percentile student at one school will perform better than a similar student from another school. Especially when that school is known in Canada for putting the most weight on stats alone.

[helloall]

Yes, they're arguing that holistic factors (e.g., undergraduate degree and substantial employment history) need to strongly considered, but that doesn't eliminate the predictive power. For example, see the regression analysis results of table 6 column 2f for the adjusted undergraduate GPA. There's a multiplier of 0.328 for undergraduate GPA (p<0.01) for law school GPA, when controlling for ethnicity, employment duration & type, major, and other factors.

[Lawstudents20202020]

1 hour ago, helloall said:

We can also assume that the central limit theorem

Can we though? I only briefly skimmed the paper but there's nothing really to suggest the variables are independent other than we have to assume it to use the regressional analysis. I wouldn't pull any firm conclusions out of those stats other than more research is needed. The stats there just aren't strong enough to say anything with any reasonable degree of certainty, which is also the conclusion of the authors. 

 

[helloall]

I wasn't citing the paper, but yes you can assume CLT since the sample size is large enough - except for with the absolute top students, which I already noted aren't comparable. Also, the only way to really "settle" this is to see how transfer students fare in their new school, but I can't find any papers on the topic.

[Lawstudents20202020]

8 minutes ago, helloall said:

yes you can assume CLT since the sample size is large enough

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of CLT. You may be confusing it for the law of large numbers. 

[CB2021]

11 minutes ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of CLT. You may be confusing it for the law of large numbers. 

Also curious why @helloallthinks CLT applies here.