Stupid question, I know, but just humor me.
When (approximately) do you get your grades back, and what school do you go to?

Someone asked in the NU 2012 about when other schools get grades back and how that affects 1L summer applications, so I thought it might be interesting to see what the distribution is like.

Boston College - As they become available, starting Jan. 1
Wake Forest - Jan. 4th
Northwestern - Jan. 14th-ish
Chicago - Jan 15th
Mercer - Jan 15th
St. Johns - Mid January
NYU - Jan. 16th
UT - Jan. 22nd, but rolling in before then
Harvard - Jan 25
Michigan - Rolling in, no later than Jan. 22
Penn - February
CLS -February

NFC. End of Jan/Feb. Maybe March.

no idea. I've heard Febish.

january 8th! they'll be posted online.

Ours roll in starting as soon as tomorrow through February.

Could you guys also list what schools you go to?

I'd rather not.

Poll!

End Jan/Early Feb

CLS... not sure how that helps when my response is "Febish, apparently."

Same response for me, but I go to Penn.

Last year at Wake it was January 4th. Should be around the same time this year, too.

End of January/Early February I hear

February seems preposterous.

How can it take more than two or three weeks to grade exams, given time off for holidays and time added for actually reading+grading? Okay, you finish your 3hr exam on December 16, and assuming you're in a class of 80 people who write on average 5000 words per exam (might be a high estimate, unless they're all gunners and write 8000 words each or you're in a class of 150 people) that leaves about 400,000 (and lets say 600,000 on the high end) words. If 500 words is about a page and a half (12pt double spaced times new roman), then 400,000 words is 1,200 pages (1,800 pages on the high end). If it takes about 3mins to read+grade per page (assuming that professors are seasoned pros at grading and can probably spot their grading checklist and high/low grades from a mile away while half asleep) that's 3,600 minutes (5,400 minutes), divided by 60 is 60 hours of work (90 hours on the high end). That should easily be accomplished in a week or so ( a bit more on the high end, plus recording grades and walking papers to the registrar's office), but if you add Thursday and Friday off for Christmas, as well as a few days around new years, that leaves at least 7 days between the exam and the first week of the new year to get the grades to the registrar's office. Assuming two or three days for administrative delays, I cannot see why grades should be available online any later than the end of the first week or beginning of the second week of January.

Is my reasoning out of line? I would love to be a professor someday, and from my perspective (albeit, a 1L) time allocations like these don't seem to be completely unreasonable.

The length of time they spend grading is a bit ridiculous. Especially since I'm not sure how many of the papers the Professors actually read, as opposed to passing them off to their assistants. But you should keep in mind that a lot of what they're reading will be somewhat incomprehensible because people are trying to cram in as much as they can as quickly as they can, so there are going to be a lot of typos, a lot of grammatical mistakes, a lack of organization, etc.

And I really don't think you can expect Professors to "work" 60 hours/week over winter break on grading. My bet would be that most won't even touch it over break since they'll be, you know, enjoying break. Which means that most probably won't start grading until next semester, when they'll have the further excuse that they already have a job and are working (even though they don't actually do all that much). So my best guess is that they probably won't spend more than two hours (on average) a day on grading. If you estimate 60 hours of work, that stretches to a month, which, if you assume that most Professors would rather relax than grade on their vacation, brings us right to February.

That being said, I'm really not looking forward to waiting more than a month.

^Yeah good point, I figured that--I should have added a variable to account for lack of motivation and/or personal obligation to give students some degree of timely closure for all the bloodsweattears that went into the semester. Then again, maybe I'm expecting too much?

But also at Wake they have already started rolling in for some classes. I know people who got grades last week (during the last week of finals).

You are expecting too much. These are law school professors, not decent people.

The length of time it takes professors to grade exams is a big joke amongst students at my school. Apparently last year it took until mid-February to grade them all. That's a full month into 2nd semester.

I know that one professor has to grade about 150 1L exams, but the rest have only about 80, so taking nearly two months seems a little absurd.

And you have to remember most profs aren't JUST teaching their 1L classes. They can have 3+ classes.

wow feb??? that's RIDICULOUS. you guys should protest or something. grades are out at my school january 11th (finals ended last week). any later than that and i'd wonder what the hell they're doing all month. these people get paid BANK (at my school anyway) to teach the same class pretty much verbatim year after year. grading on their point systems can't be THAT much more to ask for.

It most certainly is ridiculous. But the Professors here (at Penn) don't really care. They always emphasize that the grades aren't the point. So to prove the unimportance of grades, they decide to grade maybe two papers a day and leave us hanging while jobs and clerkships disappear.

Also, I would imagine students have protested in the past. I doubt anyone in the administration cares. What are we going to do? Drop out because grades don't come in til February? They've got us by the balls and they know it.

Hell, my last exam (tomorrow) is 100% multiple choice. When will I get the grade? I'd bet February.

At Michigan our grades trickle in one at a time, as they're received by the registrar. Grading deadline is 1/22, which means the last grades should be up a few days after that. The earliest grades will probably be up a couple weeks before that.

NYU, apparently first year grades have to be in by Jan 16th

I'm more shocked that people still have exams this late. It's Christmas week and people are still stuck at school

HLS: ~1/25