Totally agree Davis isn't gaming bar pass rates, but, again, donno what their entrance stats are. I'll look into it...someday.OneMoreLawHopeful wrote:I mean, I generally agree with this--but Davis cannot possibly be gaming it's bar pass rates (my understanding is that it's impossible to game those). According to LST, Davis' admission stats tanked until 2014, when they began to rebound. But to me, that's the real kicker--the people who are failing the bar at UCH now have *arguably* the same stats as their peers at Davis (because we're talking about 2012 admits), but the Davis kids do substantially better on the bar. So there must be something else going on.hiima3L wrote:It's happening because the average UCH student has much worse LSATs/GPAs than before. As Faigman's email said, the top half at UCH has historically had a 90%+ pass rate. But the only thing that has changed (which, of course, his email failed to mention) is the dramatic decline in admission standards.OneMoreLawHopeful wrote:I just don't understand how this keeps happening. By any reasonable measure, UC Davis should not have any advantages over UCH (I.e. It's not like Davis has access to some secret jobs market to keep stats up...), but their performance on the bar suggests that they are doing something right which UCH is getting wrong.hiima3L wrote:For maybe the first time in its history, UCH's bar passage rate was below the state's average. I remember looking at UCH back in 2008 and its bar pass rates were in the upper 80s. Unbelievable how fast it has tanked, and it's only going to get worse, perhaps dramatically.
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/12/californ ... july-2015/
The school is reaching embarrassingly low stats.
I have suspicions, but would love to see the school give us an honest breakdown of who's passing and who's failing (not names, but stats, e.g. "People we let in despite a 152 LSAT!") so that we could be sure pressure was being applied in the right way. As it stands it's frustrating as fuck to be an alum and watch the school tank like this.
PS - did anyone else read the email Faigman sent out to alums this morning? It was typically light on substance, but I would love to know if he's serious about it.
I consider that to be the exclusive reason why UCH's bar pass rates have plummeted because there is an abundance of data proving a very, very strong correlation between bar passage rates and entrance statistics. It's not rocket science to figure out why--generally, people with higher LSATs/GPAs are smarter and do better on law school exams and the bar. Bottom of the barrel schools are like 3-year bar prep classes whereas Ivy League schools often focus on useless scholarship, theory, electives, etc. But Ivy Leagues have dramatically better pass rates for the obvious reason that the average Harvard student is dramatically smarter and more equipped to pass the bar than the average UCH student.
As for Davis, I have my suspicions that their employment stats are seriously gamed, but their relatively tiny class size and dominating/focusing on the Sacto market, which wasn't really hit by the recession, probably explains why their employment stats are better. Not sure about their bar pass rates cuz I haven't looked at their admissions standards.
Anyway, the school has now officially reached an embarrassing level. It was teetering above it before, but now that it has bar pass rate below the state average, it's clear to me just how bad it's gotten in only about 5 years. When I was looking at UCH in 08, the bar pass rates were in the high 80s, the school was decently competitive to get into, and it had a good statewide reputation. I emphatically tell people not to go to UCH now.
I've personally always suspected it's Hastings penchant for giving "opportunities" to people with truly horrific stats (Hastings reported accepting someone with a 145 LSAT back in 2012...then stopped reporting the true LSAT range altogether) and depending on the rest of the class to average this out, but I can't prove it.
Regardless, it's obnoxious that Davis was able to--and continues to--turn the situation around while Hastings continues to tank. That's a total failure on the part of Hastings' administration. Far more heads should have rolled than just Frank Wu's.
But, as Faigman's recent email said, the overall class at UCH is doing historically poorly. Accordingly to him:
"Particularly worthy of note, we found that, over the preceding decade, the top 50% of the class had over a 95% pass rate and, indeed, the top 75% of the class had over a 90% pass rate . . . . shockingly, only about 88% of the top half of the 2015 class passed this minimum competency exam and only 77% of the top 75% of the class passed."
This directly correlates with the drop in entrance stats. These are also roughly the same as other schools in the pass who had (or have) the same entrance stats that UCH has now. People can argue causation/correlation, but god the data is so large and so consistent that I find it borderline disingenuous to say lower bar pass rates are not directly correlated with lower LSATs/GPAs.
I think UCH kinda dug itself into an enormous hole decades in the making by growing to such an enormous class size. They relied on the assumption that 300-400 seats would be easy to fill. That changed dramatically and now either the class size shrinks or the entrance stats plummet. I see no other solution.