Top Law Schools

how hard is it?
I am at a T20s school. Do I need to be at the top 10%?
I was waitlisted at both ...

Do the best you can at your school. Apply for transfer. Hope you get accepted. There is no real point in worrying about it.

In the same vein, could a transfer retake the LSAT to better the odds? Or are they only concerned with 1L performance?

let's just do the short answer on this one....no

kiwislug wrote:In the same vein, could a transfer retake the LSAT to better the odds? Or are they only concerned with 1L performance?

i think they are only concerned with 1l performance

How do law firms treat transfers anyway?

doyleoil wrote:let's just do the short answer on this one....no

thanks but... toward which question is this directed?

Pathfinder wrote:

kiwislug wrote:In the same vein, could a transfer retake the LSAT to better the odds? Or are they only concerned with 1L performance?

i think they are only concerned with 1l performance

thank you

long answer: the only reason the lsat is helpful in the admissions process is as a predictor of 1L performance - once you actually HAVE a 1L performance, the predictor is no longer necessary

doyleoil wrote:long answer: the only reason the lsat is helpful in the admissions process is as a predictor of 1L performance - once you actually HAVE a 1L performance, the predictor is no longer necessary

But if you do really well, what's to say you would do really well at a better school?

silver11 wrote:How do law firms treat transfers anyway?

well from what I've heard, when you have interviews as a 2L, you dont have any grades from your new institution, so the firms are forced to go off your old grades. Certainly, those grades are very strong, because they allowed you to transfer, but they aren't from the school they are recruiting from, which gives them pause.

doyleoil wrote:long answer: the only reason the lsat is helpful in the admissions process is as a predictor of 1L performance - once you actually HAVE a 1L performance, the predictor is no longer necessary

k, that makes sense thanks

Pathfinder wrote:

silver11 wrote:How do law firms treat transfers anyway?

well from what I've heard, when you have interviews as a 2L, you dont have any grades from your new institution, so the firms are forced to go off your old grades. Certainly, those grades are very to, because they allowed you to transfer, but they aren't from the school they are recruiting from, which gives them pause.

This is exactly what I thought, so how do you think they solve this? Do they discriminate between transfers and regulars?

i think if it's a cooley transfer (or similar), probably yes - if it's a wustl transfer into the t14, probably not so much

silver11 wrote:

doyleoil wrote:long answer: the only reason the lsat is helpful in the admissions process is as a predictor of 1L performance - once you actually HAVE a 1L performance, the predictor is no longer necessary

But if you do really well, what's to say you would do really well at a better school?

no idea....seriously....haha - but i think that's why certain schools are friendly with transfers from other certain schools (this stuff is dealt with in much more/better detail on that yahoo group - transferapps)

From my experience, firms don't have a problem with transfers. It makes it a little harder for them to compare you to the rest of the class, but you probably won't have any serious problems. I had several interviewers tell me that their experience had been that transfers were among the most impressive candidates they had gone to school with/worked with. Other firms seemed to hesitate, or to prefer non-transfers. It is helpful if the firm usually recruits at your former institution, of course.

It's not really something to worry about. A bigger issue is the difficulty of interviewing during such a transition (if you have to move across the country, for example). And all of your interviewers will ask you why you transferred, and how you like it so far, and stuff like that, so you should be prepared to answer those types of questions.

LSAT will not have much, if any, effect. 1L grades are far more important. Arguably retaking could help you transfer into Harvard, as they claim to accept transfers only if they would have been competitive for regular admission. Even there, though, I doubt it would be worth it.

is there a place to see stats for transfers? I'm only curious but I'm assuming you'd have to already be in the top 10% of a lower t14 to transfer into Harvard right?

no someone on this board transferred from mason to yale, and he said that many of his friends (also at the top of the class) transferred to other top ten schools

Pathfinder wrote:no someone on this board transferred from mason to yale, and he said that many of his friends (also at the top of the class) transferred to other top ten schools

WHAT?!??!

yea i think his name was yalie10 or something. he had a 4.0+ from mason though (number one in his class).

he sounds like a flame?

I don't understand how that could be possible...

silver11 wrote:

Pathfinder wrote:no someone on this board transferred from mason to yale, and he said that many of his friends (also at the top of the class) transferred to other top ten schools

WHAT?!??!

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/m ... le&u=26534

This person was top of their UG class and #1 in LS class. My guess is he/she is just a poor standardized test taker because clearly he/she is incredibly smart. This does not mean it's easy to transfer from somewhere like GMU to Yale.

never made a claim about the difficulty, just pointed out that it has happened and that you dont need to be within the the t-14 as kiwislug suggested. Also, why do people think this is impossible? it's clearly not easy to get nearly all A+s in law school

silver11 wrote:I don't understand how that could be possible...

Why?