Law School Report Cards? Why Penn State Should Change Their Policy

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Home » Law School

Law School Report Cards? Why Penn State Should Change Their Policy

Submitted by Andrew Schnitzel on Friday, 15 May 20096 Comments

How does your school distribute grades after finals end? Penn State Law has decided that the best way is to post each individual grade whenever the administration has the grade in their hands. And maybe this is just me being crazy, but when a single grade gets posted online I can’t help it but check a couple times a day to see if another grade has been posted.

That sounds fine, right? But then you realize that it takes up to 2 weeks for all the grades to be posted.

And it’s way worse when you’re a 1L and grades mean more to you. It’s winter break, you’re at home waiting for the results of the exams, and your family is asking how you think you did and blah blah blah.

Penn State uses a program called eLion, which manages a bunch of functions for students like a bursar account, class registration, transcripts and grades. So this semester, we have a feature in eLion that debuted this semester — the ** symbol!

So the first time I saw the ** double-star I figured that the exam software deleted my test and I was going to fail. But at the bottom it explained that Course Grading was in Progress. Great — this means somebody in the administration was putting in the grades, right? Because it can’t mean the prof is grading the test because that’d be crazy. Yeah — that’s my guess, the **’s have been up for three days.

Does the administration still read this blog? Maybe? Either way — they should fix eLion by either dropping all the grades at once, or giving proper notice to students.

I get that some people want to get their grades as soon as they’re up, which weighs against having them all released at one time. This is especially important for graduating 3Ls, but its my understanding that profs grade those exams immediately so they know who’ll graduate. Since there’s a due date for all profs to submit grades by, then just release them all two days after that.

Or, just tell the students that the first grades will be up on X date, and all the grades will be posted by Y date. Also, I’m sure someone in Penn State Computer Science (or Josh) could write a program that emails you as soon as a grade gets posted on your eLion. That might be too obvious though.

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6 Comments »

Joshua Auriemma said:

Funny, I’ve often considered writing a script to troll the eLion site to email me when my grades have changed from *. With my luck I’d probably be thrown out of school for hacking though.

It would be nice if we could get some clarification as to what ** actually means. Does it mean that the prof is submitting grades? I mainly ask because I want the butterflies from my Pro Rep ** to go away.

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- 15 May 2009 at 9:24 am

ouij said:

After having gone through this type of hell in 1L, I decided that I’d never check my grades until I was sure that all of them had posted.

It takes a fair bit of willpower, but I’m happier for it. Better to take my disappointment in a single, intense blast. That way, only one day gets ruined, rather than the four days over a long period, plus all the days an hours wasted waiting for grades to post.

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- 15 May 2009 at 12:23 pm

Kim said:

All I know is that it’s 4:00pmEST and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing all day, except that I’ve checked my grades nine million times since 7:00am.

…

Come to think of it, that’s probably why I haven’t gotten anything done all day.

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- 15 May 2009 at 1:03 pm

Andrew Schnitzel (author) said:

Answers!

So I emailed the Registrar, and the ** means that a prof has graded the 3Ls exams and now has until June 8th to grade the rest of them. So it’s good to have answers. Also, I realized that my prof taught 4 classes so my grade isn’t coming any time soon.

Hey, at least we got our law review credit “CR”

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- 15 May 2009 at 8:03 pm

Mar said:

Couple times a day Andy? Until Angel went down for web maintenance I was obsessively checking elion every second, and then I obsessively check e-mails, and by the end of the day I have no time for anything else. I agree- all the grades should be submitted at once and there should be a designated date.

p.s. I would like to give Josh some public online props for single handedly making my life easier re:the casenote competition grading. You’re the best Joshy!!!

Happy Summer Kids!
-Mar

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