Law school performance is based on one test at the end of each semester. To get into law review, you have to do well first year. There's no realistic second chance. Getting excellent grades is much easier if you study constantly, as much as twelve hours a day, and if you do so in a study group with other law students. The better the other students are in your study group, the easier it is for you.
It's much, much easier if you use an outline, and the best outlines are prepared, year after year, by A students who know the professor, because the professors teach according to an outline that doesn't vary much from year to year.
How do you get an outline? You can buy one, maybe. Or you can get one through the grapevine, sort of an Old Boy's Network, maybe frat brothers or sorority sisters, or actual family, or people who know each other through social connections.
So you've got to start early, first year, find a study group of brainiacs that will study with you, and a source of good outlines. Because once you're on law review, you're golden on the outlines, your fellow law review students have the best ones and they take care of their own.
The tendency of black students to stick together with other black students because they're black is harmful to the process of assimilating into study groups on the basis of merit, and finding good outlines on the basis of working your contacts.
Getting a good job as a lawyer is not entirely grade based, but you won't even get an interview unless you're in the top of the class.
Being at the top of your class doesn't matter once you're actually in med school, unless you want to go into research. Other qualities such as compassion, insight, perception, judgment, attention, social skills, are important, too. Black people have just as good people skills as white people, if not better. My own sense is that high-functioning black people actually have better social skills than high-functioning white people, on average. |
