How Will Harvard and Stanford Grades Affect the Clerkship Market?:
The announcement that both Harvard and Stanford Law Schools are dropping letter grades and moving to a H/P/LP/F system raises a really interesting question: How will the switch impact the market for law clerks? Harvard and Stanford students are often major players for very competitive clerkships. How will the judges who are evaluating applicants respond to having less information about candidates from these top schools?
I think the the answer depends in large part on where the schools draw the cut offs. What percentage of students will get Honors? Will it be 30% or so, like at Yale? Or will it be only 10%? Or 20%? Put another way, will the line between H and P be like the old line between A and A-, or A- and B+, or something else?
I would think that where the line is drawn is going to have a major impact on the clerkship hiring process. Here's my thinking. When I was a student at Harvard in the mid-1990s, the common wisdom I heard was that a B+ average was usually needed to be competitive for district court clerkships; an A-/B+ average (that is, the midpoint between the two) was usually needed to be competitive for the less sought-after circuit court clerkships; and an A- average was needed to be competitive for the more prestigious circuits (like the DC Circuit). If you wanted to clerk for a feeder and be in the running for a Supreme Court clerkship, you needed between an A- and an A. Of course, actual results varied based on the judge and the candidate, sometimes a lot. But that was the rule of thumb I heard at the time.
Now let's assume that the "H" of "High" grade is given to only 10% of the class, making it roughly equivalent to a straight "A." Under this system, a lot of judges are going to have a hard time figuring out who to hire. Imagine a student with all A- grades under the old system. In the old days, that student would be interviewing with top judges. But under the new system, that student will have a transcript with all P's, exactly the same transcript as a total slacker who never went to class and went through the semester mostly drunk and high. If the only information judges have is who had a top 10% grade and who was in the rest of the class, they won't have the information they used to use to find clerks.
I think the the answer depends in large part on where the schools draw the cut offs. What percentage of students will get Honors? Will it be 30% or so, like at Yale? Or will it be only 10%? Or 20%? Put another way, will the line between H and P be like the old line between A and A-, or A- and B+, or something else?
I would think that where the line is drawn is going to have a major impact on the clerkship hiring process. Here's my thinking. When I was a student at Harvard in the mid-1990s, the common wisdom I heard was that a B+ average was usually needed to be competitive for district court clerkships; an A-/B+ average (that is, the midpoint between the two) was usually needed to be competitive for the less sought-after circuit court clerkships; and an A- average was needed to be competitive for the more prestigious circuits (like the DC Circuit). If you wanted to clerk for a feeder and be in the running for a Supreme Court clerkship, you needed between an A- and an A. Of course, actual results varied based on the judge and the candidate, sometimes a lot. But that was the rule of thumb I heard at the time.
Now let's assume that the "H" of "High" grade is given to only 10% of the class, making it roughly equivalent to a straight "A." Under this system, a lot of judges are going to have a hard time figuring out who to hire. Imagine a student with all A- grades under the old system. In the old days, that student would be interviewing with top judges. But under the new system, that student will have a transcript with all P's, exactly the same transcript as a total slacker who never went to class and went through the semester mostly drunk and high. If the only information judges have is who had a top 10% grade and who was in the rest of the class, they won't have the information they used to use to find clerks.
Chicago, as you know, has a very graduated grading system where it is very easy to see the difference between the A+, A, A- student, and everything in between. Nonetheless, in my experience, when students seek clerkships with feeder judges, D.C. circuit judges, and super-elite judges, it is recommendations and personal contacts that matter most. Top applicants often cull their list of judges, limiting it to judges that have personal relationships with their recommenders or current U of Clerks with some influence. Moreover, board membership on law review, and one's particular board position, is as important as grades when one is in the top group.
My guess is that this has always been true at Harvard and Stanford as well (though I could be wrong). So my guess is that, when they go to a less graduated grading methods, not much will change with respect to how super-elite judges choose their clerks. They will, as they always did, look at the top students (meaning top 10-15% or so) and within that group give great weight to recommendations and personal relationships, with significance also placed on law review.
Thanks for the perspective. In my experience, this wasn't true at Harvard. Generally speaking, the Harvard faculty was too distant to offer much help. Plus, law review had very few grade-ons. On the other hand, maybe I was just out of the loop? It's possible.
If the grades give less info, then the judges will either have to pass more people through the first filter, or perhaps draw some other (maybe arbitrary) distinctions to limit the pool of candidates interviewed.
Stanford said "book prizes" would be about one per 15 students:
Tentatively called "book prizes" (after the fashion of some other schools that use this system), one book prize may be awarded for every 15 students, and this will be true in all classes, whether the basis of evaluation is an exam or a paper. In first-year required classes, 2 prizes will be available in small sections, and 4 in large sections. In advanced classes, professors have discretion about whether and how many prizes to award, though within the same maximum guideline of one per every 15 students (faculty may round up at 8).
That was my thought. Harvard/Yale students will have to rely a lot more on "starpower" in their recs, it seems.
They still have the advantage of name brands -- Ole Miss Law, I daresay, will not be going to this grading system any time soon -- but students who can't get Very Important Law Profs to write them glowing recs are not going to get anywhere.
Not that I actually know anything about this subject, mind you.
If a student at the "p"th percentile, on average, scores at the "p"th percentile at each class, then there will indeed be no information. But if a student at the "p"th percentile has has enough variability in his grades (sometimes he does better, some worse), then after averaging over many classes, the GPAs of both a 70/30 scheme and a 90/10 scheme will converge to the "true" GPA of a continuous grade system. This point was made by Jordan Ellenberg in a nice Slate article a few years back (regarding grade inflation in undergraduate Ivies).
Of course, it's not clear how many classes need to be taken before the GPA will converge (certainly enough will be needed that the student will have a good number of scores both above and below the cutoff).
In any case, in the sciences admission to anything (starting from grad school and on) is almost entirely based on letters of recommendation. The transcript says what the student was supposed to have learned; the letters say whether the student is actually worth his salt. Low grades are a bad sign, but as a rule grades are not very informative at the top (the part of the distribution from which, presumably, clerks are taken).
Such a cutoff is of course completely uninformative at the "bottom" (in fact, the probably majority: those who will not pass the cutoff more than once or twice). Moreover, this situation is highly de-motivating at that end of the distribution.
More generally, a binary system with a cutoff at a particular percentile will be quite informative regarding students who perform around this percentile (sometimes above, sometime below). It will be completely uninformative about (and de-motivate) students who consistently perform on one side of the cutoff.
You've got mostly all smart guys at Harvard. But those who get the best grades are usually those who work hard, are disciplined, can organize what they have to, can write and speak clearly and persuasively, and (did I say this) work hard. Grades don't always work this way, but they usually do. It's a shame Harvard has abandoned this--among other things I suspect that it will lead to a diminution in the level of hard work among the students, as well as in the other factors I mentioned.
That wasn't intended: I agree that very few will be in this boat.
What it meant for us is that we couldn't distinguish ourselves as much from the pack using grades, especially back when you applied for clerkships during the first semester of your 2L year, and thus only had one semester of grades. (The first semester at Yale is Credit/Fail.)
So the top students found ways to signal to judges aside from grades. You're right that getting to know the right professors was a big part of that. Undergraduate GPA and stuff like Rhodes/Marshall scholarships became more important as well. Ditto with Law Journal positions.
Now that clerkship application season has been pushed back, however, these effects will be less. Many students stop putting in full effort as the law school experience goes on, and one way to distinguish yourself from other students is to get honors in all courses or almost all courses. For instance, here's one YLS alumna who still brags about that in her online bio.
The H/P/LP system helps every student but those at the very top, so if I were an incoming law student in the original position (in the Rawlsian sense) I'd choose a H/P/LP system. It's by far the most risk averse choice, as well. As a result I expect Harvard and Stanford students will grow to like the change.
At Yale, almost every class was followed by a podium rush where the gunners would swarm the professor and try to impress him/her with their questions or otherwise kiss up. For example, one time after a class, just for the experience, I sat and listened to another student spend half an hour telling a professor how great his book was. This type of behavior was unfortunately common.
Getting the right recommender on your side was vitally important, and a lot of the top professors were very aggressive in promoting their select students for top clerkships. From what I remember, most of the students gunning for top clerkships had received offers by the first or second day of the hiring process, before their applications realistically could have been received by mail (this was post-compact but pre-Oscar).
I remember students who had not gotten offers by the third day of the hiring process “giving up” and becoming incredibly bitter because they were convinced that their professors had not touted them as they hoped.
The biggest thing that bothers me about the H/P/LP/F system is that it reduces transparency in the system and disproportionately rewards those with inside knowledge. Under a graded system with detached professors, a hardworking, intelligent student can theoretically get the grades necessary to compete for a top clerkship on their own.
Under the Yale system, that same student would need to decide which judges they wanted to compete for, find the professors who have good connections to those judges, and then know the best way to get a strong, enthusiastic recommendation from that professor. This places students with inside knowledge at a tremendous advantage (this was especially true when clerkship applications were done during first semester 2L year).
(My thoughts are based on my experience as a clerk for a competitive COA judge and a well-respected district judge.)