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I'm currently enrolled in one of the following and will be starting my first year next month: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Duke University, or Cornell University.

I am going to do my best to try and enjoy my time at this school, but I feel like I missed out on my dream schools (waitlisted at Stanford, rejected to Harvard, and didn't apply to Yale which I regret now). I am wondering if I should withdraw my seat at my current school and re-apply next year with a better LSAT or try and stick it out and if I don't like it try and transfer.

The school I am enrolled in gave me 105K in scholarship money, so that will be hard to give up. I am paying for the rest in loans (took out abut 40K this year but will take out less in future years most likely).

I want to eventually work in California (grew up there and went to college there) and most likely work in big law (leaning towards something health care related but we'll see).

I took the LSAT twice. The first time I got a 163 and the second I got a 165. I have a 3.86 GPA and am Mexican American.

I know many will say reapply, retake the LSACT, and score in the 170s, but I am reluctant to do this for three reasons:
1) I wont be giving my current school a chance. It's a T-14 so I feel like I should try it out at least
2) I'm horrible at that test. I took a Testmasters course twice and still couldn't come close to that 170
3) I have always been strong at having a good GPA (4.33 in high school and 3.86 in college which qualified for Magna Cum Laude). I feel like I might have a better chance getting into HYS via transfer as it will be mostly reliant on grades.

Let me know what you think....

I think you're bait.

justonemoregame wrote:I think you're bait.

Uhh.....what?

If you are pretty sure you won't do well on the LSAT and are confident your grades will be high your 1L, try and stick it out. Michigan, Cornell, and Duke are nothing to scoff at. You open yourself up to the chance to love that school and leave open the option to transfer if need be.

I wouldn't bank on your confidence in getting good grades in law school. Not saying you won't make the grades to transfer, but LSAT is more predictive of gpa in law school than is undergrad gpa. Probabilistically your chances are much better of getting into HYS if you raise your LSAT at the outset and go straight there 1L. Question is have you really hit a plateau in your LSAT? Personally Im skeptical. Perhaps Im biased because it took me over 6 months of prep to get in the 170s consistently. I took every prep test of the modern era (73 in total) and I even retook some of the newer ones up to three times. If you really have exhausted your potential on the test and you have the best score you can get then your plan to transfer is really your only option.

Stardust84 wrote:I wouldn't bank on your confidence in getting good grades in law school. Not saying you won't make the grades to transfer, but LSAT is more predictive of gpa in law school than is undergrad gpa. Probabilistically your chances are much better of getting into HYS if you raise your LSAT at the outset and go straight there 1L. Question is have you really hit a plateau in your LSAT? Personally Im skeptical. Perhaps Im biased because it took me over 6 months of prep to get in the 170s consistently. I took every prep test of the modern era (73 in total) and I even retook some of the newer ones up to three times. If you really have exhausted your potential on the test and you have the best score you can get then your plan to transfer is really your only option.

Yeah, it seems like that will be my only option. Like I said, I took Testmasters and they pride themselves on only having real LSAT questions. In the 6 months that I studied, I studied every single day and went through every book cover to cover. The only new material I would see is tests past September 2015.

I'll just keep transferring as my option. Even if I don't make the grades to transfer to HYS, I could have done worse I suppose

I would say go and try to transfer.

triton1234 wrote:

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to transfer to HYS if your goal is biglaw? If you get the grades to transfer to HYS from your current school, I would think that you will likely have a good shot at biglaw from there along with law review, opportunities to develop relationships with 1L professors, keep your current substantial scholarship, etc. I'm also just a 0L so feel free to take with as much salt as you like and hopefully current students will chime in. But congrats on your cycle!

Gap year could never hurt. Don't sell yourself short of your dreams.