Sheep and Goats

A group of Law School students will meet during the coming two months to re-examine the school's present grading system. As they deliberate about grade distinctions, they should also be careful to separate the problems they are trying to solve. Although the agitation which led to their investigation was largely caused by employers' exaggeration of actually minute differences in class ranking, many suggested solutions of this problem have emphasized changing the present competitive system itself. Now may indeed be the time to ask seriously whether heavy competition is good for the Law School, but revamping the system will not in itself solve the most pressing problems.

Grades in Law School ordinarily mean money later on, and under the school's present system, each student is ranked numerically according to his class standing, from one to about 500. The grade distinctions between 62 and 70 on exams--in the large C group--are largely artificial. So a difference of no more than one point in this scale can lead to unjustified distinctions in class standing. There is actually a negligible variance between number 175 and number 250 in the class. When employers, however, examine class records, they often assume that individual differences in this particular group equal the differences in the students ranking between 1 and 75, or between 375 and 450.

Whatever the committee decides about the competitive system itself, it will still face the problems of distinguishing talents in the large middle group, and informing employers where differences in ranking are significant and where they are not. It may be several terms before any change, if any, is made in the actual competitive system. Meanwhile, the administration should take immediate steps to minimize meaningless distinctions in the middle group, and the Placement Office should do its utmost to make sure employers know who are the sheep and who are the goats.