Top 5% at T14--worth it to transfer to HYS? Forum

[spondee]

Maybe because I'm still a non-board-member 2L, but LR has not been an awesome experience thus far. Casenotes and cite checking, ftl.

It's true.

Can you talk to a professor about this? If you do decide to transfer, you'll need letters of rec, so maybe talk to one of your profs from last semester now about the pros/cons of transferring? They'll probably have better insight than a bunch of other law students...

[TatteredDignity]

So, just like it's widely known that attending HYS says something about who you were as an applicant, LR says something about who you were as a student.

Makes sense, thanks!

[patrickd139]

So, just like it's widely known that attending HYS says something about who you were as an applicant, LR says something about who you were as a student.

Makes sense, thanks!

As long as you don't equate the "something" that attending HYS says with the "something" LR says (LR cred ≠ HYS cred), I would agree with that.

[drylo]

I would definitely stay, especially if you have any scholarship money where you are. If your GPA is that high at a law school with a national reputation, you will have all the opportunities in the world at OCI. I mean, honestly, top 5% will do more for you than HYS... I guess with the possible caveat that academia is elitist enough that the HYS name would be meaningful--but honestly, I don't even know that it would benefit you that much in academia if you can graduate in the top 5% where you are (on LR, etc.).

[ResolutePear]

I'd take Harvard in a heart beat... because it's Harvard. LRAP + Prestige. Do you plan on applying for any clerkships? Might want to factor that into your decision as well, imo.

I think VW has the most authority on this topic and pretty much summed it up.

[patrickd139]

I would definitely stay, especially if you have any scholarship money where you are. If your GPA is that high at a law school with a national reputation, you will have all the opportunities in the world at OCI. I mean, honestly, top 5% will do more for you than HYS... I guess with the possible caveat that academia is elitist enough that the HYS name would be meaningful--but honestly, I don't even know that it would benefit you that much in academia if you can graduate in the top 5% where you are (on LR, etc.).

A little rosy, don't you think?

[vanwinkle]

I'd take Harvard in a heart beat... because it's Harvard.

I think VW has the most authority on this topic and pretty much summed it up.

Let me sum up more clearly: If OP makes LR, they should stay.

If OP really wants to keep their options open, they should definitely go ahead and apply. After all, they're not likely to find out if they did make LR until after the transfer app deadline passed. So it makes sense to apply, but it also makes sense to stay if they do make LR.

Also, everything G.T.L. Rev said above is credited. He's the expert on when and why you shouldn't.

[drylo]

I would definitely stay, especially if you have any scholarship money where you are. If your GPA is that high at a law school with a national reputation, you will have all the opportunities in the world at OCI. I mean, honestly, top 5% will do more for you than HYS... I guess with the possible caveat that academia is elitist enough that the HYS name would be meaningful--but honestly, I don't even know that it would benefit you that much in academia if you can graduate in the top 5% where you are (on LR, etc.).

A little rosy, don't you think?

No, not really... are you serious? I'm not saying that you will get any job, but if you interview well, there is no job that you can't get. My point is that, with grades like that at a top school, you are basically in as good a position as you can possibly be going into OCI.

[ResolutePear]

Do you plan on applying for any clerkships? Might want to factor that into your decision as well, imo.

In all fairness, top 5% at lower T14 w/LR beats out top third at HLS 7 days a week, 365 days a year for clerkships. Put differently, you'd have to do very well at HLS to make a transfer worthwhile for clerkship purposes.

Vanwinkle's point about there being no harm in applying is a fair one.

I wasn't advocating one way or the other. I was just saying, if that's a decision - then it should be factored.

[nnnnnn-threadin']

Dude, I bet there are tons of kids at HYS who would kill to be in the top 5% at a lower t14. Think about that

lulz no

[vanwinkle]

Dude, I bet there are tons of kids at HYS who would kill to be in the top 5% at a lower t14. Think about that

lulz no

Lulz banned for trolling.

[drylo]

Dude, I bet there are tons of kids at HYS who would kill to be in the top 5% at a lower t14. Think about that

lulz no

?

Some people on this board seem to underestimate the importance of grades, vis-a-vis alma mater. The reason that so many choose to attend Harvard instead of Georgetown is because at that point in time, Harvard is a certainty, and top 5% at Georgetown is not... actually, let me rephrase: people might make that choice for any number of reasons, but the reason that informed people might counsel someone to make that decision is because, statistically, somebody choosing between Harvard and Georgetown has nearly a 100% chance of graduating from Harvard, and only a 5% chance of being top 5% at Georgetown. This principle is also not limited in applicability to T14 schools... but again, the attractive thing about higher-ranked schools is basically that if you turn out to be only an average law student, you will be a [NAME-BRAND] average law student.

[d34d9823]

?

Some people on this board seem to underestimate the importance of grades, vis-a-vis alma mater. The reason that so many choose to attend Harvard instead of Georgetown is because at that point in time, Harvard is a certainty, and top 5% at Georgetown is not... actually, let me rephrase: people might make that choice for any number of reasons, but the reason that informed people might counsel someone to make that decision is because, statistically, somebody choosing between Harvard and Georgetown has nearly a 100% chance of graduating from Harvard, and only a 5% chance of being top 5% at Georgetown. This principle is also not limited in applicability to T14 schools... but again, the attractive thing about higher-ranked schools is basically that if you turn out to be only an average law student, you will be a [NAME-BRAND] average law student.

On the other hand, you often have the option to take a ton of money at a lower ranked school and face lesser competition for the curve.

[BruceWayne]

?

Some people on this board seem to underestimate the importance of grades, vis-a-vis alma mater. The reason that so many choose to attend Harvard instead of Georgetown is because at that point in time, Harvard is a certainty, and top 5% at Georgetown is not... actually, let me rephrase: people might make that choice for any number of reasons, but the reason that informed people might counsel someone to make that decision is because, statistically, somebody choosing between Harvard and Georgetown has nearly a 100% chance of graduating from Harvard, and only a 5% chance of being top 5% at Georgetown. This principle is also not limited in applicability to T14 schools... but again, the attractive thing about higher-ranked schools is basically that if you turn out to be only an average law student, you will be a [NAME-BRAND] average law student.

On the other hand, you often have the option to take a ton of money at a lower ranked school and face lesser competition for the curve.

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

[drylo]

?

Some people on this board seem to underestimate the importance of grades, vis-a-vis alma mater. The reason that so many choose to attend Harvard instead of Georgetown is because at that point in time, Harvard is a certainty, and top 5% at Georgetown is not... actually, let me rephrase: people might make that choice for any number of reasons, but the reason that informed people might counsel someone to make that decision is because, statistically, somebody choosing between Harvard and Georgetown has nearly a 100% chance of graduating from Harvard, and only a 5% chance of being top 5% at Georgetown. This principle is also not limited in applicability to T14 schools... but again, the attractive thing about higher-ranked schools is basically that if you turn out to be only an average law student, you will be a [NAME-BRAND] average law student.

On the other hand, you often have the option to take a ton of money at a lower ranked school and face lesser competition for the curve.

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

I agree with this. I will be the first person to stand up for the lower-ranked schools in these kinds of arguments, but the expectation that it is easier to be at the top of the class is definitely not a good reason to go to a lower-ranked school. The money is a good reason. Expecting people to be dumber/lazier is not.

This was actually implicit in my post about Harvard vs. Georgetown top 5%... if you knew you could be top 5% at Georgetown (just using GULC as an example), you would be crazy not to go. But back to my previous post--you can't know that before you go to law school, and that is the best argument for going to a higher-ranked school (i.e., if you are going to be an average/median student, it is generally more desirable to be an average Harvard law student than an average GULC law student).

[d34d9823]

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

The correlation is strong within student bodies. Why wouldn't it hold between them?

[Renzo]

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

The correlation is strong within student bodies. Why wouldn't it hold between them?

The correlation of both GPA and LSAT together to 1L grades is about 0.4. I guess that's "strong" in statistical terms, but not strong in the sense of betting you'll be at the top of the class.

[vanwinkle]

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

The correlation is strong within student bodies. Why wouldn't it hold between them?

The correlation is strong with regard to student bodies as a whole, not individually. GPA/LSAT are strong enough predictors that if you take a large number of people with those stats, you can predict how many of them will succeed or fail at a certain level. It has very little to do with individual performance at all; if you're the type of person to do poorly despite a strong GPA/LSAT, that's very likely to happen at either of these schools.

To put it another way: From HLS to GULC, the difference in medians is 3 LSAT points and 0.07 GPA. With the numbers that close, do you really believe the difference between student bodies is so great that it would substantially change how well you could do at each?

[drylo]

This only applies if you believe that admissions according to LSAT/GPA directly correlate to the intellect and competitiveness of the student body. That's a very dangerous, and weakly supported assumption to make.

The correlation is strong within student bodies. Why wouldn't it hold between them?

Well, it might hold to some extent. For instance, if you are in the top 10% in GPA/LSAT coming in, it might be reasonably accurate to predict that you will be above median GPA in law school. But we are not talking about performing "above average" in law school when we speak of "doing well" or getting "good grades"--what we really mean is top 5%, 10%, 20%, 25%... there is nobody who can count on being top 5% in law school. Sure, some people obviously achieve that, but there is no certainty ex ante. I would concede that a few people in each law school class can probably feel relatively confident about being in the top 25% (approximately--just throwing out numbers), but that is only a handful of people and we're still not talking about the "top" top of the class.

Edit: Just wanted to second vanwinkle, as well.

[dr123]

I'm not sure about the accuracy of this but a lot of the lawyers I work with told me the content and difficulty of classes is pretty universal across the board at law schools

[TatteredDignity]

I'm not sure about the accuracy of this but a lot of the lawyers I work with told me the content and difficulty of classes is pretty universal across the board at law schools

Sure, but the issue is the quality of the competition, not the difficulty of the game.

[d34d9823]

The correlation is strong with regard to student bodies as a whole, not individually. GPA/LSAT are strong enough predictors that if you take a large number of people with those stats, you can predict how many of them will succeed or fail at a certain level. It has very little to do with individual performance at all;

Sure, but all of this analysis is focused on maximizing your statistical fitness. If you don't accept that, you can't say that attending Harvard is better than attending Touro.

To put it another way: From HLS to GULC, the difference in medians is 3 LSAT points and 0.07 GPA. With the numbers that close, do you really believe the difference between student bodies is so great that it would substantially change how well you could do at each?

Half the class at HLS falls within 5 LSAT points and 0.18 points of GPA. The statistical correlation has been derived on data sets with very similar input variance to the difference between schools.

Obviously, it's impossible to do an empirical correlation across schools, but I would be confident in an analytical correlation. I'm not sure if the data is available, but from what has been published, it's a pretty easy deduction that one's statistical fitness is higher at GULC than HLS.

[vanwinkle]

The correlation is strong with regard to student bodies as a whole, not individually. GPA/LSAT are strong enough predictors that if you take a large number of people with those stats, you can predict how many of them will succeed or fail at a certain level. It has very little to do with individual performance at all;

Sure, but all of this analysis is focused on maximizing your statistical fitness. If you don't accept that, you can't say that attending Harvard is better than attending Touro.

To put it another way: From HLS to GULC, the difference in medians is 3 LSAT points and 0.07 GPA. With the numbers that close, do you really believe the difference between student bodies is so great that it would substantially change how well you could do at each?

Half the class at HLS falls within 5 LSAT points and 0.18 points of GPA. The statistical correlation has been derived on data sets with very similar input variance to the difference between schools.

Obviously, it's impossible to do an empirical correlation across schools, but I would be confident in an analytical correlation. I'm not sure if the data is available, but from what has been published, it's a pretty easy deduction that one's statistical fitness is higher at GULC than HLS.

I don't even understand what you're trying to say at this point.

[d34d9823]

I don't even understand what you're trying to say at this point.

The same student is statistically expected to do better at GULC than HLS.

[vanwinkle]

The same student is statistically expected to do better at GULC than HLS.

You're talking about a very small difference in student body numbers (as pointed out, the differences in GPA/LSAT of the students at each school are not that extreme) and a rather low real correlation between combined GPA/LSAT and law school success (around .4, I think it was mentioned). Yes, the same student is statistically expected to do better, but not by an amount anyone would consider significant. It would be likely you'd end up with a class rank only a couple percentage points higher, and that's it. It's nowhere near the kind of significant difference that warrants serious consideration.