Law School Grading: How Mandatory Means Impact Grading
Why do mandatory means matter?
Mandatory means make grades comparative. It doesn’t just matter that you scored 8/10. It matters what each other student in the class also scored.
What is a mandatory mean?
Mandatory means require the professor to submit grades that average to a particular number. Often it’s around 3.3, which translates to a B+. Generally either the student handbook or information on the registrar’s office website provides the rules about the mandatory mean. This is a regulation set by the faculty as a whole or the university. Most schools adopted mandatory means in response to grade inflation. The system has its advantages and disadvantages. The primary purpose of this post is to explain how it works and how it is likely to impact the grades of any individual student.
What does it mean for grading to be comparative?
Comparative grading means that a particular score might or might not get an A. It’s all about the distribution of scores. To make sense of this, the best way is to look at how grades would be awarded to different scores in different classes. Here is a chart so you can see how this works.
How does the mandatory mean impact the distribution of grades?
First, the mandatory mean almost guarantees that in any given class there are very few A grades. For example, in a small section class of 17-24 students, the professor can likely award only three to four A grades. The mandatory means limit a professor’s ability to assign very high grades without also giving very low grades. It has to balance out to get to a mean of 3.3. So, a professor can assign several As, but only if she is also willing to assign several C+s or B-s. At most law schools, grades lower than a C+ are very, very rare, but that also means that As are rare as well.
But it’s not even certain that she can assign three to four As. It is all comparative. Let’s say that there are 17 students in the class. Precisely 15 of those students write very good, but not excellent exams. Out of the 100 points possible on the exam all of them scored between 83 and 86. The professor assigns those exams a grade of B+. The remaining two students score 94 and 99. Only the student who has a 99 can receive an A.
Why? In a class of 17 students, with all of the students having a B plus (3.3), and a mandatory mean of 3.3 +/- 0.05, the professor can only assign one A (4.0). That creates a mean of 3.341176, which falls just under the maximum of 3.35. If she assigned two As the mean would be too much: 3.38. She cannot even assign an A- to the student who has a 94, because that would make the mean 3.36.
If the professor wanted to assign an A- to the exam scoring 94, she would have to make one of the other grades lower. But in this example, all of the other scores are within three points of each other, so it doesn’t make sense really to give them different grades. In addition, it might be that there are four exams all scored at 83, so there would be no way to choose which exam to give a B rather than a B+. She may not be pleased at all with the 94 exam receiving a B+, but neither can she randomly choose an exam scored at 83 to drop. Her options are to live with the scores as they are or to consider re-grading the exams scored at 83 to see if one is lower than the others. Personally, I find that neither outcome feels fair.
What if the 17 student scores are more widely spread? It would be possible for the professor to assign three As and three A- grades, but only if she also assigned three Bs and three B-s. She would also have to have five exams in the middle as B+s.
How do mandatory means change exam writing for professors?
This grade assigning problem illustrates why professors prefer hard, long exams. It’s unfortunate but true. Long, difficult exams are more likely to produce a wide spread of scores. It makes the task of assigning grades much easier when the scores are well distributed over a wide range. And it makes it much more likely to avoid the problem given above, where it’s not possible for there to be even one A grade.
Why are law school grades so “bad”?
First, comparative grading is always harder than ordinary grading. Second, it’s all about expectations. If the incoming students have a mean college GPA of 3.7, more than more than half of them may be receiving the worst grades of their lives. It’s naturally very distressing for students coming from college grading systems, which are often (but not always) more generous.
I’ve had a student come into my office in tears because she had an A-. What she didn’t realize is that she also had the highest grade in the class. (And if the distribution of the scores had been different, I would have loved for her to have had an A.) Not realizing how the mandatory mean works can give students more distress than necessary over their grades. Not understanding how the mandatory mean works can also cause a student to have entirely unrealistic expectations. Even a student who graduates in the top spot in the class almost certainly does not have a 4.0.
How does class rank relate to the mandatory mean?
Class rank is calculated by arranging the GPAs of a class (all 1Ls, etc.) in order from highest to lowest. Class rank (which did not necessarily matter so much at college) suddenly becomes important in law school. The class rank is a better indicator of how you are performing compared to your classmates than your GPA is. Class ranks allow employers to evaluate students against their peers at their own school and other schools, without looking at the GPA. This is particularly helpful when different schools have different mandatory means. Many legal employers require class rank to be included on a resume for precisely this reason.