Originally posted by Robber
I can't speak to med school, but you can't compare having regular class, taking routine exams, research and writing a paper, to going through semester after semester after semester and your ONLY grade is your final exam. There's no grading scale. Exam scores are curved so that 10% of the class fails the exam (that's how it was at Ole Miss). Sure woulda been nice for many a student to have other test scores to average out that one exam we have per course. And then y'all get grades for homework assignments that factor into your final grades. No such luxury in law school. Just your final exam. What you score on that exam is your grade for that semester. Each and every class, except first year research and writing courses.
I think all doctorate degrees are hard to come by. All are tough in their own right. But all things considered, I'd rank them this way:
1. Doctor of Medicine
2. Ph.D.s in SMET - Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or Technology, & maybe some more.
3. J.D.
The thing about the J.D. is, you don't need a law background to get into law school. You can have a B.S. in any discipline, make a good score on the LSAT, and if your G.P.A. is straight, then you've got a great chance of getting into a law school somewhere. You can't do that if you want a Ph.D. in an Engineering or Computer Science program. You would need at least a master's level of knowledge in that area before you get to where you can actually go for the Ph.D. (or a B.S. in that area to go straight into a Ph.D. program). Now, you can get into some master's programs without a B.S. specifically in Engineering or C.S., but you'd better at least have had that as a minor or have taken some junior-senior level courses along the way.
I understand what you're saying about how you all get your grades. It is more stressful to have your only grade be your final rather than having numerous grades throughout the semester. But A Ph.D. general exam, or a master's comprehensive exam, envokes that same type of stress. It doesn't matter what grades you got in your classes, because if you can't pass that exam, you're gone. When you take the test, it's not material from one course. It encompasses everything you've had in all your courses, and can easily contain material that you never covered in your classes. I can say that, for my master's exam, it's six hours on 12 different subjects, and I have to prepare for each section I will attempt as if I'm preparing for a final exam in that class, covering everything. A black professor in the LSU History Dept. told me his Ph.D. general exam lasted about 16 hours over two days. So it's basically similar to when you all have your final exams, except ours happen all at once. Then you would still have your master's project, Ph.D. dissertation, etc., to pass. You graduate when "they" - meaning your committee - want you to.
But I don't want you to think I'm trying to trivialize the J.D. in any way. That's definitely not the case. I've heard the stories of that first year of law school. Law school is definitely very challenging and rigorous. But Ph.D.s are stressful all the way around, just under different circumstances.