<p>Harvard Law has changed its grading policy effective wth the entering class of 2009 so it is more aligined with the grading policy at Yale Law and the recently changed grading policy at Stanford law.</p>
<p>Dean Elena Kagan just sent this message out to the HLS student body:</p>
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<p>The crucial question is whether this new system will be applied retroactively to the classes of 2009 and 2010. If I were in either of those classes, I’d stop worrying about the economy and show up for the debate, on October 2nd.</p>
<p>I was interested to hear about this a few months ago because there were a number of law schools with Honors-Pass-Fail kinds of grading policies about 15-20 years ago, and the vast majority of them changed over to the A-B-C more traditional grading systems to make their students more competitive in the clerkship application process. I believe that the feedback from judges was that it was much tougher to discern what a H-P-F grade meant from school to school versus what an A-B-C great meant. Therefore, schools made the switch.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what happens as a result of the change.</p>
<p>An H-P-F style system allows for very few distinctions between students. For example, the old Penn Law system had three grades: Excellent, Good and Fair, with students failing as necessary. There was a strictly enforced curve where 20% of each class received “Excellent” grades, 40% of each class received “Good” grades and 40% of each class received “Fair” grades. However, to the extent that a good number of students tended to receive mostly “E” and “G” grades, it was difficult to differentiate among students, and even more difficult for judges to understand that a “G” grade was not a huge negative on one’s transcript (and, in fact, typically only 0-5 students per class received all “E” grades in their 1L year).</p>
<p>An A-B-C system, with all of the “plus” and “minus” grades, allows for professors to distinguish between A, B and C students (even if 20% of a class gets “A” grades, 40% gets “B” grades and 40% gets “C” grades) by using plusses and minuses. </p>
<p>I don’t have a strong belief that one system is better than the other, but I do know that the original reason for the change was the expressed preference for the latter system (As, Bs and Cs) by judges. I’m sure that Stanford and Harvard did their diligence with judges and made their decisions accordingly, but this is simply a step back to a system that already came and went.</p>