Hanlon's Razor and How Law School Students Lose the Grants Game

Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

On the other hand, an article by David Segal in the Sunday Business section of the NY Times from May 1 of this year, "Behind the Curve, How Law Student Lose the Grant Game and How Their Schools Win" indicated that law schools could be using grants to:

1. Boosting the school's ratings based of the quality of their entering classes 
2. Recovering revenue when the grant students' grades fall below a specified GPA.

The first reason is common among all schools of higher education, offering scholarships to students to increase their ranking and making the school more appealing to future students.  However, with law schools grading on a curve it becomes statistically more difficult for a student to achieve the specified GPA.  The difficult in calculating the odds of maintaining the grant is dependent on the median GPA of the school.

Note to presumptive law school grant recipients: learn to calculate standard deviations and learn the practical applications thereof.  The Golden Gate Law School for example requires a 3.0 GPA to maintain the grant.  50% of the class got a grant, but only a third of the students get a grade of 3.0 or better.  Do the math: a sizable portion of the students with grants are expected to lose them.

Once the student loses a grant the student is faced with deciding whether to continue at full fare (a win for the school as the student's undergraduate GPA has already served its purpose) or go to Plan B.

I passed a reference to the story to two profs who teach statistics for a toss off in class.

It is a companion piece to Segal's article about employment after law school, "Is Law School a Losing Game?" That earlier article pointed out quite clearly that the employment statistics published by law schools doesn't provide the details necessary for presumptive students to know how many of those jobs are behind the counter at Starbucks.