@Ron: I know what you are saying. I found myself in Midtown during workday lunch hour this fall and I've never seen anything like it. Thousands of people in suits running around, talking business on cellphones, attending lunch meetings, etc, etc.

A graduate recently told me that Columbia switched from an Excellent/Very Good/Good grading system to a letter system sometime in the 90's, in response to concerns that students weren't as competitive with out of town firms. With Harvard and Stanford joining Yale in abandoning the letter system, will Columbia follow suit? I know the arguments for doing away with letter grades, but I'm a cynic, and would think that the above schools only modified their grading system once they felt confident that employers needed nothing other than the brand name to judge a candidate. Grades serve as a way to shift the burden of ranking and evaluating job candidates from firms to law professors teaching 1L classes, and the letter system with plus/minus designations provides firms with even finer distinctions between students. The question is whether Columbia graduates are in high enough demand that they don't need the extra data.

It's also interesting to note that Harvard and Stanford retain a High Pass designation (Yale has Honors I think)- maybe because they recognize there are legal jobs that still require a line to be drawn between the best and brightest and the bestest and brightest?

I actually found the atmosphere here to be what I'd expected, just by envisioning what a class of 300+ hypercompetitive, highly intelligent people would act like when placed together. Unfortunately, I do not think switching to a High Pass/Pass/Low Pass/Fail system would ameliorate the anxiety. As long as you are ranking people, and their rank in the system depends on the outcome of one four hour exam, there will be high levels of stress. Even though the school has tried to soften the blow somewhat (by not publishing class rank or GPA values) people still obsessively check grades or figure out ways to calculate their rank relative to the class. I think eliminating the 1L grading system entirely is the only way to measurably reduce anxiety, and it's my hope this wiki can help us figure out a way to do that while still promoting the skills we as first year law students need to learn.

-- JonathanWaisnor - 03 Feb 2010