Studying for the LSAT and taking a little break…I feel like this place is my second home! Just wondering, JUST how hard is it to get top grades in your 1L? Lock yourself in the room for months, only go to class, and have no life at all?
The thing about getting top grades is that hard work isn’t sufficient. So many other random factors come into play. I got the top grade in a class that, while I absolutely loved, I probably spent the least amount of hours on during the semester because it clicked for me. I got median in another class because it was our 1L small section which I think was stacked with a significantly above average of freaky smart people and I thought the test was fairly upfront, which probably meant the difference between the top half of the class was razor thin. Hard work and smart preparation can limit the random factors, but they still exist.
Identifying what your professor wants and giving it to them.
Many people who know far more than me and studied much longer did worse because they missed the mark.
Well I didn’t get my grades yet. But on the midterm exam I scored top of my class. I don’t study all day. I go out, enjoy life, watch TV, relax, today I barely touched my books. I’m not saying I don’t study. I do the “READINGS” throughout the semester. I do what is required for research on LRW and don’t beat myself up over it.
About 2 months before exams I start outlining and reading supplements. Do it a bit earlier and you can finish like one outline per week or per two weeks, which is a very relaxed pace.
Although I have a three-step process I call “1) mega outline, 2) mini outline + supplement reading, 3) practice exams” but I’ll have to wait for my grades to see if it worked for me or not (worked great for the midterm).
I think it comes down to the thickness, weight, and aerodynamics of the paper on which you submit your exam. When the professor tosses the exams down the stairway, you want yours to go the farthest. It’s more an art than I science, especially when you consider that some professors use the “reverse method” (i.e., the highest grades are those papers that go the shortest distance). These professors are in the minority, but a big factor is attempting to discern throughout the semester which method your professor uses. Good luck.
People who think exam grades are random or luck simply don’t get it.
Do a search of law school success threads here on TLS.
To get you started:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77628
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=118545
Are you saying you don’t believe professors use the stair method?
It’s definitely not luck.
Seriously I read over my response on my midterm (I got an A+). I went over my outline. Honestly speaking, I missed so much I could have put in there, it was incoherent at times, etc…
But I wrote exactly what the professor wanted. I literally had it outlined beforehand. He wanted “Issue + Rule + Analysis of Plaintiff’s Position + Defendant’s Position/Rebuttals + On Balance, Court Opinion”.
With that outline it was honestly easy to finish the one-hour exam within 25 minutes.
If you wrote a 1 hour exam in 25 minutes and got an A+, then:
- It was extremely easy
or - Your classmates are idiots
or - You can think and type at 200 words per minute.
Anyways, OP, performance in law school is not about hours worked, but on how smartly you worked those hours. For instance, I studied less than many of my classmates, but I ranked at the top of my class. How? I took tons of practice exams and practice multiple choice questions. I briefed most of my cases (will only be book briefing this semester, I did write actual briefs part of last semester), but I did not spend a lot of time on cases.
The trick to doing well is taking a lot of exams. Comparing your practice exams to model answers. Figure out what your professor wants and write out the answer he/she wants in the exam. Yes, you have a bunch of rules/factors/exceptions to memorize, but most law school students can memorize the rules for any given class fairly easily. The hard part is being able to regurgitate them under time pressure and knowing exactly what they mean. Practice exams and multiple choice questions were huge for me.
- You can think and type at 200 words per minute.
It’s GW, people here are not stupid. I type really, really fast. It’s not an issue of intelligence or anything. I jot down my ideas on an outline for 15 minutes and I can type up the 1500 word essay within 10-15.
People who got good grades will tell you it’s not about luck. People who got bad grades will tell you it’s all about luck. Either way, it is about luck (just like everything else in life). It’s also about inherent intelligence and an inherent possession of the particular type of intelligence that works on law exams. It’s also about amount and efficiency of work. Possibly most of all, it’s about performance–usually in a single four hour period or less.
I’ve hit every single “bin” on our curve. I have no idea what I’m doing right or wrong.
Reminds me of the different ways kids describe their report cards:
“I got an A in Math!” vs. “Mrs. So-and-so gave me a C in History.”
+1.
I got my personal best grade in the class I studied least for, and worst in the one I studied most for. Law school is weird like that.
You can absolutely have a life. I didn’t start prepping until Thanksgiving, and I only did a few full, written practice exams (although I did read through and outline the answers to almost all the exams available), but I ended up with great grades. Do your homework along the way so that you’re not trying to learn everything at the very end. Write your exams the way that your professor talks through things in class. You’ll be fine!
It’s not arbitrary.
My main key: lots of sex.
I didn’t study that much, but I pretty much called my own shot coming out of the test room. (top 2% after 1st semester.). But you have to realize that its not something you can control by inputting more or less. More studying doesn’t mean better grades. I bet if we put everyone that has read Arrow’s guide on here about how to have success, they would fall right on the bell curve. People don’t have secret knowledge…all anyone has to do is google “how to take a law exam” and there is an immediate flattened playing field. I honestly think that a lot of LS grades are predetermined before the first class.
In other words, assess your strengths and weaknesses. In the past, have you outperformed others on tests (ex. ACT, especially LSAT)? That is probably the biggest predictor. I think a lot of people think, “I got great grades in UG, I’ll just study my ass off in LS and my trend will continue.” But it doesn’t. Its not a switch you can flip and all of the sudden move to the top of a curve. I know a lot of my classmates that probably had 4.0s in UG because they never missed a class and had everything in on time and followed the requirements exactly. They never had the wrong margins and always did the extra credit. Those things don’t help in LS. You have to be good at taking tests.
I had shit town grades in UG, but I always set the curve on tests. LS just plays to my personal strengths, because I hate busy work, but I love prepping and taking tests/big papers. I’m probably in the minority here, but I don’t think that there are a ton of things you can do to make yourself more likely to get high grades. Basically because it is the nexus of preparation (which you have a ton of control over) and performance (which you can practice for, but it is more about your inherent strengths). By preparing and practicing correctly, you can get above median probably, but I’m not sure you can practice your way into the top percentiles if you aren’t a good test taker.
People that deviate from the above are statistical outliers.
edited for clarity
^ I’m with you.
I don’t understand people who live in the library. The workload so far in law school has been not ANYTHING I expected (i.e. I thought it was way worse). I think we were all just spoiled in college, where we wrote our 12 page assignment 2 hours before class. Overall law school just needs daily work. But really come on, I can get most of my readings done within 3-4 hours a day. It’s only the month before exams where the studying gets more intense.
So you got bad grades, then? 
Law school exams test law school test taking skills. Sure, luck and intelligence play their respective roles, but at the end of the day the exams test how well you can answer a question under time pressure to the subjective satisfaction of the professor. Basically, law exams test your ability to figure out what your professor wants and answer it under time pressure.
That is my take anyways.