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First!

Someone was kind enough to email this (pdf) to me early this morning (before it broke at ATL) but laziness must have gotten to me first because only now am I getting around to posting it. The short version of the story is that Harvard is the latest "top law school" to adopt the Berkeley grading system.

Oh, wait, it's not the Berkeley grading system, because the Harvard cutoffs are different:

Honors = 37%
Pass = 55%
Low Pass = 8%
Fail = 0%

See? Thirty-seven percent? Fifty-five percent? Totally, totally different.

Let's be sure to get two things straight. First, Haaaavard remains willing to tag and brand the bottom of the class. LP = bottom 8% ??? Ouch. Second, the school has explicitly reserved the possibility of failing students . . . but apparently does not plan on it: the passing grade percentages add up to 100.

Am I the only who thinks that as the big schools trend toward warm & fuzzy grading systems like ours, we ought to get some firsties credit? We may be dirty hippies out on the west coast, but come on! A little credit here!

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).