Damn, my late night five paragraph post came down to four sentences. Thanks for breaking it down BK.

Yeah, pretty much what BK said. Point is that as it has long been thought and as that thread with the v15 interviewer seems to confirm, most large lawfirms have "grade cutoffs" for every school in the T1. Generally, any firm that would interview you at your new school would have interviewed you and given you the same amount of consideration at your old school. This is especially true when you're talking about schools in the same region/state-- if they're willing to accept top 10% hastings grads and give them strong consideration, they would invest the relatively small amount of resources to send someone to hastings OCI.

Some people speculate that the new school gives you a prestige bump because firms would rather have a harvard grad on their roster, for example, than a cooley grad. The difference between the schools you're considering probably isn't enough for that bump to make a real difference anyway, but even if it were I've personally always been skeptical of this argument. When they have 500+ lawyers, I don't think they care what diploma you put on the wall of your doc-review closet.

Point is that transferring, for example, to UCLA would just be banking on a marginal edge that there might be a couple of firms that would consider a top 10% hastings grads but are too lazy to send someone to san francisco. Weighing this chance against the edge that you keep by staying in hastings (law review, scholarship, a school that appreciates your loyalty and will do what it can to help you boost its placement record) makes it a relatively straight forward choice IMO.

Again, though, it's up to you. I imagine LA has more sunshine and Berkeley always sounded like a cool place to live, so you might be personally happier elsewhere even if it doesn't do much for your career. Even though we don't put much weight on personal happiness in law school, it's still worth some consideration

1. if i were determined to transfer, i wouldn't be asking questions and doing research about the topic...
2. if top 10% at hastings = median at the school i transfer to, there is simply no way i would transfer. i've talked to people that have transferred, though, and it doesn't seem like that is true.
3. i've talked to a few people that have transferred; i will definitely look into how well the people that have stayed have done.

thanks.

that makes a lot of sense. is there some estimate as to what top 10% at hastings is equal to at usc/ucla/berk? top 20%? top 30%? top 40%? even lower?

also, one worry is what happens if i strike out at OCI (probably very likely). would it not be better to be searching for a job as a 2L/3L as a ucla/usc/berk grad than a hastings grad? hastings' employment numbers, in large part due to the bay area economy, have been very worrying. would transferring help me in such an occasion, considering i do well at the new school?

Again, there's really no point for an employer to look at your transcript from your old school and try to transmute it into numbers at your new school. Someone interviewing you at USC will see you as top 10% Hastings, not top 30% USC or whatever. Again, it's worth looking at that thread in the employment forum regarding the v15 interviewer. He talks about his perspective on transfers and how he evaluates them (using their standards regarding the student's old school, not his new one).

If you're asking just how they compare, though, then probably the best measurement is clerkships+NLJ numbers then compare. Of course, you can't know that the 10% who entered NLJ firms were the top 10% of the school, but it's likely very close.

As far as your question regarding 3l jobsearch, it's an interesting question, but likely with the same or less effort you'd be crushing it at your current school and would be top 5% for your 3l instead of the top whatever % you'd be at usc/etc. and again be in the same position as you are now contemplating transferring (e.g. would have the same job prospects at either place).

I really wouldn't be pessimistic about your 2l OCI though.. top 10% at hastings is really good. Even taking the 8.5% from 2011 (keep in mind many people think 2011 was a big anomaly and biglaw hiring will be back up next year; hastings had 16% nlj250 placement in 2010), add to that a conservative 3% clerkships, and you get 11.5%. Throw in the high likelihood that half of the top 10% will transfer out and I'd say you have really strong chances for biglaw. Work on your interview skills and I'd gladly put money on you.

^Re: Being considered median upon transferring to a place like UCLA (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=138344&hilit=jobs&start=50).

Obviously it's probably impossible to generalize too much but the conservative realistic scenario/rule of thumb seems to be that transfers end up near 'median' at new school. I.e., worse off than a top 10-15% Hastings student, when compared to medians at UCLA, USC, maybe Cal, but who knows. What to me would make this more difficult is the point you raised about extra-OCI opportunities. Btw, I think Kings was at least top 10% at IUB when he transferred to UCLA in '10, and he's posted some other great info about his transfer experience, fyi. Good luck.

thanks a lot guys. been a huge help to me. i've got a lot to think about...sigh.

where would i be without tls?

from what someone told me earlier on here, 4/6 hastings transfers to ucla got big law through OCI last year. but what you bring up and what kings said is definitely credited. it's so hard to gauge these kind of things with any certainty.

i swear, not knowing how things will turn out sucks. it went from "retake the lsat?" to "hastings or davis?" to "transfer?"...these decisions don't get any easier.

Maybe. I believe that what you should compare between Hastings and a possible transfer school such as USC/UCLA is not only the total percentage of the class that gets biglaw, but also your odds of being in that select group. If Hastings places 15% into biglaw and USC places 30%, your odds of getting into biglaw are twice as good at USC when starting out at the beginning of 1L. However, you are not choosing a school for 1L. You are at the top of the class at Hastings, and have a good shot at law review there. Assuming similar grades this term, you will be in the group at Hastings that has good odds of getting a biglaw job. Just because the good-chance-of-landing-biglaw club is smaller at Hastings than at USC/UCLA does not matter; you are in it. The risk of transferring is that although your new school may send more of its class to biglaw, you as a transfer may not be in that lucky group. You give up your stellar grades if you transfer, and some firms may treat you as a median student at your new school. If they treat you as median at UCLA/USC, you probably are not getting biglaw.

You could land biglaw if you stay or if you transfer, but I think transfering would only improve your odds of biglaw if you transfer up a lot. I think it would be very risky for you to transfer up a little (going to USC/UCLA). If you get into Boalt, that calculus may change. If you get really lucky and make it into SLS, definitely go.

I'm a 2L in the top 15% at Hastings + HLJ, and I'm working at V-50 this summer. Almost everyone I know on HLJ has a job except for a few. If you stay in the top 5% range and get onto HLJ, you certainly won't have a problem unless you totally screw up your OCIs and callbacks. Also, if you stay in top 5%, you will absolutely get 15+ OCIs, which may not be the case at UCLA/USC because their OCIs are run under a lottery system. It's definitely not worth it to transfer to UCLA/USC, especially since their placement rates aren't really that much better than Hastings'. It may be worth it for Boalt because of clerkship prospects (if that's something you're interested in).

Another thought: Don't think that just because you transfer to Boalt from Hastings, you'll be "the median student" at Boalt. The fact that you did well at Hastings is a testament to your work ethic, which a lot of students lack. If you can excel at a hyper-competitive atmosphere like the one at Hastings, I have no doubt that you'd do well at Boalt.

Good luck.

Thanks Buzz. Did you try to transfer, and if not, what made you decide to stay at Hastings? If I got HLJ I would most likely stay at Hastings, but we don't find out until August 1st about what journals we get on.

Hi ilovesf: I certainly thought about transferring towards the end of the year, but I would have only wanted to transfer to Boalt because that may increase my clerkship chances. But I ultimately chose not to transfer because 1) I never got close to my professors so I would have had trouble finding LORs, and 2) I didn't think top 15% from Hastings would be enough to transfer to Boalt. That being said, I'm glad I stayed because I really do think I got more OCIs at Hastings than I would have at Boalt. The fact that I got on HLJ and ended up with an OCI offer gave me comfort in my decision not to try to transfer as well.

Thanks. I'm a bit worried about not getting on HLJ. Do you think being on moot court and a secondary journal would put me that much further behind people on HLJ come OCI?

I'm honestly not sure. I know a lot, a lot, a lot of people who are on MC and secondary journals with no offers or OCIs, but that's also because being on MC and a 2nd journal doesn't necessarily mean you did well academically your 1L (whereas most HLJ members performed very well during their 1L), and the OCI threshold is a GPA cutoff. Being an HLJ member is probably the single most important extracurricular activity you can do to make your apps stand out.

ilovesf, you can always do what I did... I applied to transfer and then decided that if I didn't get RLJ (my old school's LR) that I would transfer. Once I found out I didn't get on, I left because I didn't want to risk the job market with no LR and just a secondary, and I didn't try out for moot court. I don't know if HLJ is the same way but our LR didn't have a grade on (only the secondaries had grade-on; probably to make sure top students didn't get shut out of journal).

i believe we find out if we got onto LR around august 1st...seems too late to execute your plan (or at least without paying thousands in deposits). i believe OCI starts just around that period and bidding definitely starts before that; it doesn't seem like we can pull that off.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.. August 1st seems like it's way too late to switch schools.

Oh wow, that's late. We found out in early July. Guess it wouldn't work then .

sigh...

'twas a nice thought.

i've been thinking about this more and i have a question. can transferring ever hurt me?

i could see how transferring could offer only minimal benefits (at least for OCI) but i don't see how it could hurt me. consider i am a top 5-10% student at hastings. if i transfer to berk/usc/ucla i will still be considered on the merits of my academic record from hastings. now, while it seems there may only be marginal benefits to that, i don't see how it could ever hurt me to transfer. if i don't transfer, my grades from hastings would still be used, and it would still be ranked against the cutoffs against other schools.

one main reason i want to transfer, even to ucla/usc is because as bad a shape as the legal market in LA may be in, it is still healthier than the bay area (and it's much larger). because i only have the slightest of preferences for being in the bay area, i am strongly considering a move. a quick NALP search shows ucla/usc have a larger OCI overall, their OCI has many more firms from LA/orange county/surrounding areas (about 40-50), and about 20 less employers from san francisco.

That A+ really got you thinking I hope you send a transfer application to Stanford. You may have a shot if you continue to do well.

i guess it did, but i have a strong feeling my other grades (especially contracts) will sink my boat. i might send an app to stanford (can't hurt) but i really don't have a chance in hell at getting admitted. berkeley already feels like a long shot.