Background: I just finished first semester at a school in the T20-30 range and finished right around the top 8%. My school is in the market where I want to work, and I have significant ties to the area as well (grew up here, long-term GF, family). I ultimately want to end up back here, but I want to put myself in position for the best opportunities possible (ideally I want to work big law). I am just starting to look into transferring and don't know too much about the process, so I would love to hear people's thoughts.
tl;dr version: I have 2 main questions about transferring after finishing top 8% at a T20-30
(1) Would transferring to a T14 school out of market be better than staying at my school in the market and (hopefully) staying in the top 5-10% (and possibly getting LR) for big law options?
(2) If so, what schools in the T14 would I realistically have at my current rank? At top 5%?
Thank you for all of the help, I definitely would not even be in this position to begin with if it wasn't for all of you awesome people on TLS
Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30 Forum
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Anonymous posting is only available to the creator of each thread. The anonymous posting feature is intended to permit the solicitation of anonymous advice regarding the transfer application process, chances of being accepted, etc. Unacceptable uses include: testing the feature, questions which are clearly fake or hypothetical in nature, harassing other users, etc. Posters should also read and understand the announcements posted at the top of the Transfers forum prior to using the anonymous feature.
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Anonymous Posting
Anonymous posting is only available to the creator of each thread. The anonymous posting feature is intended to permit the solicitation of anonymous advice regarding the transfer application process, chances of being accepted, etc. Unacceptable uses include: testing the feature, questions which are clearly fake or hypothetical in nature, harassing other users, etc. Posters should also read and understand the announcements posted at the top of the Transfers forum prior to using the anonymous feature.
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Re: Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30
If you want to stay in Atlanta, definitely do not transfer, especially if you have a scholarship. But, I would still apply to transfer and see if you can leverage an acceptance to increase your current scholarship.criticialmass wrote:Background: I just finished first semester at a school in the T20-30 range and finished right around the top 8%. My school is in the market where I want to work, and I have significant ties to the area as well (grew up here, long-term GF, family). I ultimately want to end up back here, but I want to put myself in position for the best opportunities possible (ideally I want to work big law). I am just starting to look into transferring and don't know too much about the process, so I would love to hear people's thoughts.
tl;dr version: I have 2 main questions about transferring after finishing top 8% at a T20-30
(1) Would transferring to a T14 school out of market be better than staying at my school in the market and (hopefully) staying in the top 5-10% (and possibly getting LR) for big law options?
(2) If so, what schools in the T14 would I realistically have at my current rank? At top 5%?
Thank you for all of the help, I definitely would not even be in this position to begin with if it wasn't for all of you awesome people on TLS
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Re: Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30
Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.
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Re: Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30
Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.
What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?
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Re: Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30
You'll do OCI before you ever see a class rank at the new school. It's going to be up in the air unless you know for sure that people with your GPA always have offers. So the "top 10% vs top 1/2-1/3" isn't really pertinent unless you are on a career path that won't get you a job offer until graduation or after (which I think is the case for some government jobs).criticialmass wrote:Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.
What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?
My advice in these situations is generally to transfer. My experience has been that transfers do well in OCI. However, if you don't do well during OCI you'll at least have the name of the new school.
The only circumstances I'd suggest others to not transfer is where they are on a significant/full scholarship and are pretty sure that they are going to have the options for work from their current school. If you are looking at COL debt versus $80k-100k + COL, it may not be worth the new school.
Those are my $0.02.
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Re: Need transfer advice -- top 8% at T20-30
You would do well to read this article. It's the best article on transfering on TLS and tells you what your grades need to be like to transfer into each tier. http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 27&t=82937criticialmass wrote:Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.
What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?
If you are set on working in Atlanta, transferring into the T14 is not going to help you out that much since Emory does very well in Atlanta as is. The exception might be HYS, but as it stands, your chances aren't get at any of those three.
If you are interested big law in NYC, DC, etc. then transferring is probably worth it.
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