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One downside of class ranking is that it incentivises destructive behaviour. Law schools often do this, and I heard many stories of things like (in the days of

One downside of class ranking is that it incentivises destructive behaviour. Law schools often do this, and I heard many stories of things like (in the days of physical books...) moving the perfect references, a week before the deadline, to an unrelated shelf in order to trip up your classmates. By contrast the science students tended to collaborate on everything outside of an exam room, and learned a lot from each other this way. Even if their grades were less perfectly reflective of individual understanding.

liara_k 7y ago
My experience in law school was that, while this sort of destructive behavior thing did occasionally happen, it's way overblown. In all the courses I took, the missing book thing (1) happened _once_, during the first year, (2) was corrected within hours, (3) because of #2, was never shown to be out of malice rather than ignorance (4) had substantial negative social consequences for the person suspected (i.e., rumors, lack of trust) ANYWAY, and (5) never happened again throughout my entire law school experience. Nor did the competition prevent the formation of study groups. There were also some upsides to the competition in terms of motivation and focus, though admittedly with extremely ambitious law students it was a little over the top for the first year. But based on my experience teaching undergraduates, the middle ~60-70% of the class would benefit from an environment with more immediate competitive pressure.
- improbable22 7y ago
  OK, I'm glad to hear... you are literally the first person ever to tell me law school wasn't as bad as it sounds!
- asdff 7y ago
  I think that depends on your law school, to be honest it probably gets easier the more prestigious your school is. I have a friend right now who goes to a decent, but not top 10 law school. There is an insane level of competition going on in mid tier law schools, because the jobs which comfortably pay tuition are only offered to the top 15% of the class and there is a glut of people looking for jobs and holding a J.D. right now. Any short of that class standing, and good luck paying back 150k on your 45k salary with bleak prospects, hopefully you don't have undergrad debt either. Last semester, six laptops were stolen from the law library, accessible only to law students and staff. People feed lies about basic coursework questions. The culture in the mid tier is super toxic.

liara_k 7y ago

My experience in law school was that, while this sort of destructive behavior thing did occasionally happen, it's way overblown. In all the courses I took, the missing book thing (1) happened _once_, during the first year, (2) was corrected within hours, (3) because of #2, was never shown to be out of malice rather than ignorance (4) had substantial negative social consequences for the person suspected (i.e., rumors, lack of trust) ANYWAY, and (5) never happened again throughout my entire law school experience. Nor did the competition prevent the formation of study groups. There were also some upsides to the competition in terms of motivation and focus, though admittedly with extremely ambitious law students it was a little over the top for the first year. But based on my experience teaching undergraduates, the middle ~60-70% of the class would benefit from an environment with more immediate competitive pressure.

improbable22 7y ago
OK, I'm glad to hear... you are literally the first person ever to tell me law school wasn't as bad as it sounds!
asdff 7y ago
I think that depends on your law school, to be honest it probably gets easier the more prestigious your school is. I have a friend right now who goes to a decent, but not top 10 law school. There is an insane level of competition going on in mid tier law schools, because the jobs which comfortably pay tuition are only offered to the top 15% of the class and there is a glut of people looking for jobs and holding a J.D. right now. Any short of that class standing, and good luck paying back 150k on your 45k salary with bleak prospects, hopefully you don't have undergrad debt either. Last semester, six laptops were stolen from the law library, accessible only to law students and staff. People feed lies about basic coursework questions. The culture in the mid tier is super toxic.