Law Students Benefit from Bumped Up Grades

By Khadija Allen

A new policy to inflate grade point averages at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles will kick in next month to make it easier for students in a dire economy. The law school will increase their grading system by adding on 0.333 to every grade the student receives to enhance their portfolio and career prospects in a competitive job market.

For the past two years, more than 10 law schools have purposely altered their grading systems to include New York University, Georgetown, Golden Gate University and Tulane University. And law school recruiters have also accepted this change in order to advance the students’ projections and their own to compete in the realm of education. In many cases, students who apply every year are burdened with unemployment and student debt, which adds to the pressure of attending law schools in the future.

As a result, law schools have changed their career planning centers to include more on-campus interviews for job seekers. Others such as Duke and the University of Texas at Austin are rewarding students with paid internship opportunities working for the public interest. And Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law began paying law firm students for their internship programs. If somebody’s paying $150,000 for a law school degree, you don’t want to call them a loser at the end,” says Stuart Rojstaczer, a former geophysics professor at Duke University to The New York Times. “So you artificially call every student a success.”