Reply to Heard a podcast claiming 30% of college students disabled?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Heard a podcast claiming 30% of college students disabled? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I heard that even in law schools students are getting exemptions from timed finals.

It kind of blows my mind that in 2 decades we have basically thrown out measuring processing speed as a type of academic skill relevant to assessment. I guess I am biased since speed and tests are my strong point, but I do think that the capacity to absorb and understand information quickly is highly relevant to a lot of metrics of ability. 
[/quote]

I’m the same as far as speed and tests but I also recognize that it really isn’t a major factor in most real life scenarios, including most legal jobs.  I think it is not excused for assessments where speed is an essential part of the test — things like fire fighting, some medical skills, culinary classes, etc.  Even for people who write on a deadline, timed exercises are not really reflective of the demands — you can generally just work later into the evening if you need more time since none of us are hourly employees.  And for many people, they don’t need the extra time so long as they don’t have the anxiety of the ticking time clock pressure.  [/quote]

It absolutely is a factor in most legal jobs. Why do you think it is the kids with high LSATs and grades (under the old system) that end up eg Solicitor General? It’s not the only factor, but if you don’t have a basic level of intellectual speed, you cannot keep up at elite levels. [/quote]

I’m the PP you’re responding to.  I went to the top ranked law school (at the time), clerked for a federal appellate court, and have worked at a firm for over 20 years.  I stand by my statement.  There are very few legal jobs that require you to issue spot and write a brief on a 2 hour time frame.  Analysis, judgement, the ability to think critically and write well are much more important than speed to almost all legal jobs.  Speed can be important for certain on your feet work, but most lawyers don’t do a lot of that and that’s also a totally different type of speed than doing an issue spotter test on a 2 hour time frame.  Even when I was in law school, most exams were take home tests of between 10 and 48 hours duration because the professors wanted quality, not what you could vomit onto a paper in 120 minutes. [/quote]

And yet all the people you clerked with and who were at your big firm were probably on law review or got very good grades right? Obviously work doesn’t always mimic a 2 hour exam, but speed and precision are always going to be prized skills in the law and many other areas. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics