Grades: easier to get at UBC or Osgoode?

[Lawstudents20202020]

4 minutes ago, CB2021 said:

Also curious why @helloallthinks CLT applies here. 

Because most undergraduate level stats courses, especially anything labeled research stats or stats for X majors, ignore the theory behind stats in favour of teaching how to force everything into one statistical model. 

[helloall]

Because it the sampling distribution mean of student LSAT and GPA approximates a normal distribution if n>=30. Not sure why you're talking about the law of large numbers when we're not talking about an expected value. Also, the paper already adjusted the values for linear regression.

Edited August 7, 2022 by helloall

[Lawstudents20202020]

20 minutes ago, helloall said:

Because it the sampling distribution of students approximates a normal distribution, and even if it doesn't the regression analysis controls for this. Are you seriously arguing that LSAT, GPA, etc. don't approximate a normal distribution? How exactly does the law of large numbers, which applies to closeness to the expected value, apply here?

 

I wasn't saying the law of large numbers applies, I said you may be confusing CLT and LLN because you stated CLT applies simply because of the sample size. I'm also not commenting on the distribution of LSAT scores or GPA. 

CLT requires independent variables and the variables in question here are law students. Law students are very much so not independent. You cannot simply assume CLT in this situation, it's missing one of its required ingredients. 

[helloall]

The point of the comment was about the GPA and LSAT score correlations with law school performance. I don't know if the authors checked for normality. But I think it's perfectly acceptable to assume that the independent variables of LSAT score and undergraduate GPA (relative to the dependent variable of law school GPA) follow a normal distribution, and again, even if they didn't, it's not necessary for the linear regression analysis.

Regardless, let's just stop diverting from the original discussion.

Edited August 7, 2022 by helloall

[BlockedQuebecois]

8 minutes ago, helloall said:

Regardless, let's just stop diverting from the original discussion.

Yeah, wouldn’t want to distract from the very important dick measuring contest of UBC vs Osgoode student cohort strength. 

Which notably isn’t a contest because everyone with a dick to measure has said “meh, they’re pretty comparable” and the only people insisting on measuring people’s genitals are undergrads. 

[helloall]

Alright man

Edited August 7, 2022 by helloall

[CBay]

9 hours ago, FellowTraveler said:

I love how you say this, but the rest of your comments are just... your own made-up sentiments

You seem to have a hard-on for data

 

So I’m either working on made-up sentiments, or I have a “hard on” for data (as if that’s a bad thing). Which is it?

And your link about later career outcomes doesn’t really tell us anything meaningful about the topic at hand. 

 

6 hours ago, sapsipper said:

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.

I’m not making any conclusions. I’m probing. 
 

It should also be noted that this forum is awash of comments about “stronger cohorts” and the like at certain schools. Some people think there is no difference in difficulty between those cohorts, some do. 

[CBay]

6 hours ago, Kid Presentable said:

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.

One can hope. But for things like clerkships, I would think being in the top 5% at any school would be considerably more useful than being in the top 15th percentile at another. My understanding is that the latter would be quite unusual in the top clerkships. 

[CBay]

6 hours ago, helloall said:

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.

Thank you. This is the type of information and level of discourse I was hoping for. I agree that it’s not worthwhile talking about the extreme outliers. Chances are, like you say, that they are at quite similar levels of performance. I also don’t think it’s outlandish to assume that the 90th percentile, for example, at somewhere like U of T is, is operating at a higher level than the 90the percentile at Windsor or TRU.

That said—how meaningful is that assumption? In your opinion, do you think the effect is strong enough on certain students at the “top schools” to negatively affect their career outcomes, when compared their hypothetical outcome at a school with lower medians?

[FellowTraveler]

42 minutes ago, CBay said:

So I’m either working on made-up sentiments, or I have a “hard on” for data (as if that’s a bad thing). Which is it?

And your link about later career outcomes doesn’t really tell us anything meaningful about the topic at hand.

I said you seemed to enjoy data, not that you had any idea how to interpret it as anything but a confirmation of your biases. As you continue to demonstrate, by validating the post that's had more holes poked in it than a Russian flagship as "the level of discourse you were hoping for." That's the kind of logical reasoning that screams clerkship material.

Speaking of negative correlations: I'll let you figure out why you might care about career outcomes (as you begin a professional degree) by yourself, though.

[SlytherinLLP]

1 hour ago, CBay said:

I also don’t think it’s outlandish to assume that the 90th percentile, for example, at somewhere like U of T is, is operating at a higher level than the 90the percentile at Windsor or TRU.

What do you mean by operating at a higher level? 

Genuinely curious because I have co-workers / have mooted against students from those schools and I cannot discern a difference in quality.

[CBay]

44 minutes ago, FellowTraveler said:

I said you seemed to enjoy data, not that you had any idea how to interpret it as anything but a confirmation of your biases. As you continue to demonstrate, by validating the post that's had more holes poked in it than a Russian flagship as "the level of discourse you were hoping for." That's the kind of logical reasoning that screams clerkship material.

Speaking of negative correlations: I'll let you figure out why you might care about career outcomes (as you begin a professional degree) by yourself, though.

He provided some data that was useful in this conversation. That’s more than I can say for you. Off you go. 

4 minutes ago, SlytherinLLP said:

What do you mean by operating at a higher level? 

Genuinely curious because I have co-workers / have mooted against students from those schools and I cannot discern a difference in quality.

Stronger academically on average for their respective percentile. 
 

I would agree that there’s probably little if any discernible difference in quality between the very top students at each respective school. 

[123]

15 minutes ago, SlytherinLLP said:

What do you mean by operating at a higher level? 

Genuinely curious because I have co-workers / have mooted against students from those schools and I cannot discern a difference in quality.

Like many, I’ve been co-counsel and opposing counsel to graduates from schools throughout Canada. I’ve actually been pretty consistently impressed by litigators from Windsor. But generally speaking, I’ve not discerned any patterns in terms of competence and Canadian school attended.

Admittedly, I also haven’t been looking very hard. It’s hard to keep caring about this kind of stuff, after I was admitted to law school. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by realpseudonym

[CBay]

11 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

Like many, I’ve been co-counsel and opposing counsel to graduates from schools throughout Canada. I’ve actually been pretty consistently impressed by litigators from Windsor. But generally speaking, I’ve not discerned any patterns in terms of competence and Canadian school attended.

Admittedly, I also haven’t been looking very hard. It’s hard to keep caring about this kind of stuff, after I was admitted to law school. 

I’ve heard similar comments about graduates from both Alberta schools and TRU from those in the profession, FWIW. Speaks well of Canadian legal education as a whole. 

[CBay]

6 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

Yeah, wouldn’t want to distract from the very important dick measuring contest of UBC vs Osgoode student cohort strength. 

Which notably isn’t a contest because everyone with a dick to measure has said “meh, they’re pretty comparable” and the only people insisting on measuring people’s genitals are undergrads. 

Tell me you don’t understand the point of the conversation without telling me you don’t understand the point of the conversation. 

[CBay]

10 hours ago, FellowTraveler said:

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.

Interesting. This seems particularly relevant for anyone considering Osgoode vs. a more numbers-oriented school. It seems there is some predictive value of incoming medians, though just how predictive they are in isolation needs more research before any conclusions can be made. 
 

What their data does allow for is the possibility that holistic factors may be more predictive of law school success than numbers alone. Maybe Osgoode is onto something with its admissions process. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by CBay
Typo

[Snax]

On 8/6/2022 at 1:53 AM, CBay said:

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?

 

A bit of both, I guess. I think I came out of law school alright - I’m in the practice area I wanted to be in and am at a decent enough firm.  But had I tried harder and gotten better grades, could I have gotten into a firm that better positions me for my ultimate career goals? Maybe. I guess I’ll never know for sure, and nothing is guaranteed either way, but there’s always that wonder. 
 

That’s not to say these career goals of mine are now unattainable, they just require an extra step or two that might make it take a year or two longer. All in all, it should all probably come out in the wash if I’m looking back 20 years from now, but we’ll see. 

[CBay]

On 8/8/2022 at 9:05 AM, Snax said:

A bit of both, I guess. I think I came out of law school alright - I’m in the practice area I wanted to be in and am at a decent enough firm.  But had I tried harder and gotten better grades, could I have gotten into a firm that better positions me for my ultimate career goals? Maybe. I guess I’ll never know for sure, and nothing is guaranteed either way, but there’s always that wonder. 
 

That’s not to say these career goals of mine are now unattainable, they just require an extra step or two that might make it take a year or two longer. All in all, it should all probably come out in the wash if I’m looking back 20 years from now, but we’ll see. 

I'd agree. I get the impression that it can be possible to lateral a couple years after call into positions that people might have gotten right out of law school if they were luckier/more competitive/went to a higher ranked school. Plenty of UBC grads ends up in NY, for example, even though they don't generally get hired into that market right out the gates of law school. Seems like your situation is analogous. A good lawyer can probably make up for slight deficiencies in their law school record simply by being a good lawyer. I wouldn't spend too much time wondering about it. 

[NikM]

Osgoode for sure. No brainer

[Mal]

Having attended both of these law schools, the student quality is very similar. Even at schools that have further separated student talent, the top students tend to be pretty similar. There is a reason that law firms recruit across schools.

[CheeseToast]

On 8/9/2022 at 7:58 PM, CBay said:

Plenty of UBC grads ends up in NY, for example, even though they don't generally get hired into that market right out the gates of law school.

[citation needed]

[CBay]

4 hours ago, CheeseToast said:

[citation needed]

Paging @CleanHands

 

 

15 hours ago, Mal said:

Having attended both of these law schools, the student quality is very similar. Even at schools that have further separated student talent, the top students tend to be pretty similar. There is a reason that law firms recruit across schools.

Where have you been this whole conversation? 😂 Thanks for your perspective on this though. Did you do an LLM at Osgoode?

 

16 hours ago, NikM said:

Osgoode for sure. No brainer

What makes you say that? Medians?

[CleanHands]

2 minutes ago, CBay said:

Paging @CleanHands

 

 

Sorry to be unhelpful to you here, but I don't think I've ever asserted that a significant amount of UBC grads ended up in NYC, and I wouldn't really agree with that proposition. I'm certainly no expert in any event as that's something I never looked into, but anecdotally I'm only aware of 2 people from (the top of) my class going to NYC. (Granted, you said it doesn't happen as often straight out of law school and I'm not that far removed.)

[CBay]

1 minute ago, CleanHands said:

Sorry to be unhelpful to you here, but I don't think I've ever asserted that a significant amount of UBC grads ended up in NYC, and I wouldn't really agree with that proposition. I'm certainly no expert in any event as that's something I never looked into, but anecdotally I'm only aware of 2 people from (the top of) my class going to NYC. (Granted, you said it doesn't happen as often straight out of law school and I'm not that far removed.)

My apologies. I could have sworn I had read somewhere that you said you know of a “surprising” amount of UBC grads who have made their way to the NYC market, or something along those lines.