Just finished my first year at a New York CCN and ended up with a GPA that puts me in about the top 40%. Only problem is that my transcript contains both the lowest grade possible (bottom 10%-ish) and the highest grade possible (top 10%-ish), both from this past semester.
Mainly wondering if firms will look at this just as a relatively ok GPA, no questions asked, or if they will look at my whole transcript, as I am, and be like wtf. Am I more likely to be seen as the dumb kid who got lucky or the smart-enough kid who just [understandably, forgivably] dropped the ball on one exam (is there a stigma to be overcome from the bad grade)?
The other thing I’m wondering is how top 40% at a CCN stacks up at OCI - would this be considered part of a distinct “above median” strata, or am I basically starting with the same burden of proof that I’m awesome as everyone who was ever in the neighborhood of median? Personally, I don’t think there’s much of a difference in terms of intelligence/lawyering ability between myself and, say, a person slightly below median, but I’m not sure how firms look at these things.
Average: a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values.
A peculiar mix of grades in law school is far more common than getting grades within even a modestly wide band. Don’t discuss your grades in an interview, if you have to move on quickly, and assume that employers will look at the average of your grades when making decisions about your academic credentials.
Law school isn’t like undergrad. Bad and poor grades reflect a single exam for which you were not given meaningful preparatory feedback. Every year brilliant and hard working people get poor grades. Law firms - and the lawyers working there - understand this intimately.
Law firms aren’t law schools. They need some way to thin the heard of hundreds of applicants for every spot they have to offer. As a very, very rough tool they use law school grades. In that respect, your GPA is a rough proxy for your intelligence, work ethic, pain tolerance, and luck. Nothing more profound. Your gold-star in legal writing won’t land you a job for being meticulous, your C+ in contracts won’t get you laughed out of town by anybody whose practice touches the UCC.
I don’t entirely agree. As far as screening, your GPA is all that matters for not getting your resume thrown in the trash. But once you get past that hurdle, someone will look at your transcript and may very well ask you what was different between A+ class and C- class. It would be prudent to have an answer on hand for this sort of question. Just because it’s relatively common doesn’t mean you won’t be asked about it.
A lot of top schools don’t put GPA on transcripts in an effort to be sneaky. Recruiters and law firms, being large and possessing substantial intellectual and human capital resources, manage to calculate your GPA anyway.
You and Renzo both made this point, and that’s fair. I’m mostly responding to OP’s questions about how he will be regarded in general, but it’s definitely possible there will be a one-off question to this effect.
Welcome to the club. I had three top 5% grades, 2 median grades, and 2 below median grades at a T10. Wondering about the same problem, myself. I didn’t get any questions about it at all for my job this summer (1L SA). I think it’s just part of only having one exam in each class that’s graded on a curve with a bunch of other really smart people
Please realize that your grades are NOT unusual. Most people get a weird mix of grades, and nobody knows that better than recruiters from firms looking at dozens of resumes.
Be prepared to answer “What happened in X class?” Not every firm will ask, but enough will that you should have an answer ready. The reason is probably less important than how you handle the question.
Agreed. Some firms, especially the more grade conscious firms are going to ask what happened and truly care about your response. Most other firms won’t ask and won’t care. Also, it will depend on the course and what semester you got the grade. Make sure you tell them you met with the professor and you know why you didn’t do well now.
In terms of being in the top 40%, you don’t necessarily have a golden ticket but you definitely have a better than average chance of doing well. Make sure you bid on enough firms that are not grade conscious. Most firms actually stick to their grade cutoffs.
Yeah, I have a friend with top grades who got a B- in Property. She was asked about it in interviews, but I got the impression that the questions were more friendly/curious than interrogative/hostile.
Similar question: what if you’re at median, but with a great semester and a terrible semester? What if your terrible semester, most unfortunately, was spring semester? Will they ask what happened, and is there a good answer? If it matters, I think the truth is just that the classes I’m good at were in fall and the classes I’m bad at were in spring. It looks like a meaningful pattern but really it’s boring coincidence. I feel like it looks so damning though.
There’s almost no chance it will come up and you are not alone in having weird grades. They do not read deeply into it because everyone - including the people interviewing you - got crazy grades. People work hard and get Bs, it’s not like they’ll think you go t dumber.
Your GPA is all that matters; how you got it doesn’t. But if you have anything on your transcript that stands out (e.g. an A+ and a C+, a good semester followed by a bad semester), be prepared to discuss it, as some interviewers will bring it up. You won’t be turned away for any grade abnormalities as long as you don’t say anything stupid if asked about them. Even though you often can’t explain good or bad grades, just try and come up with something to say about how you didn’t deliver as hoped on exam day. Certainly don’t blame the professor or say you didn’t work hard enough or something of that sort.
What about a B? Not that Bs are at all unusual, but my transcript has one B (in Contracts) and no other grades below A-, and it’s also the first grade on my transcript, so it stands out.
Also, what amounts to a good “explanation”? I mean, I never really understood why I did worse in Contracts than everything else. It was the only exam with multiple choice questions, which I feel like would be something of an explanation, but I actually aced the multiple choice and fucked up the rest of the exam.
My transcript looks somewhat similar to yours. Only a handful of interviewers even asked about my B (property), and they did it mostly jokingly. Remember that your interviewers all probably got a B or two at some point in law school, so it’s certainly not a big deal. As far as a good explanation goes, just honestly state what went wrong. For example, for your contracts grade, something like “well, the exam involved a challenging UCC 2-207 problem, and I misapplied it in a couple instances which hurt me. But thankfully I learned what I did wrong” or some similar bullshit.
Just to add some context. Applicants usually hand their transcript over at the beginning of the interview and one of three things usually happens: The interviewer asks about a specific professor because she also had the professor in law school, she asks about a specific grade/course, or they say nothing at all. Its literally is less than a minute of the actual interview. I wouldn’t focus on grades/transcripts too much but like people mentioned earlier have a prepared answer that assumes personal responsibility and also shows you learned something from the experience. You should definitely focus your energy on other questions like why this firm, or how you are enjoying law school, or what practice you might be interested in joining. These questions, which seems like softballs but which your are almost guaranteed to be asked, are where you can separate yourself from other less prepared interviewees.