T-14 Transfer Students Please Post OCI Results Here Forum

[Anonymous User]

This is because the transfer class, on the whole, is slightly more attractive than the original 12ers (although not actually less awkward). Or at least the guys are. Sorry.

You assume I'm a guy, just because I have the Dude as my profile.

or

Yawn. Corporation Schmorporation. [gets up, scratches butt, and goes out to pick up my unemployment check]

Edit: shit I need to start differentiating between "quote" and "anonymous quote."

[ZXCVBNM]

i guess the rejection letter i received stating that over 400 applied for 45 seats was inaccurate...perhaps i'm mistaken.

This really isn't that complicated, dude. CLS probably wanted 45 transfer students. CLS probably admitted as many students as they thought they would have to admit to receive 45 transfer students A/K/A more than 45. A larger proportion than intended then accepted their offers to transfer to CLS. At least, that makes more sense than CLS bounding about lying to the people they rejected for no discernible reason.

It's more complicated since I received the letter last week, when class size was already set and had to already be above 45, and the letter was tailored to me so it wasn't just a boilerplate deal with an old number...dude.

Yup, my bad. Sounds really fucked up.

i mean, i don't really care...and i'm sure everyone reading here cares even less but why write that if its not even close?

[bradley]

Delete.

[ToTransferOrNot]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

Transfers are in your OCIs and classes, stealing your summer associateships, clerkships, and graduation honors.

[bradley]

Delete.

[ZXCVBNM]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

on the other hand....T6ers have to compete with the top 1% smartest students in the country and when they fall below median, of that elite group, they might not get a job. Whereas transfer students, such as myself, come along and do super well against a different student body and then gobble up the best jobs. I think it is kind of unfair actually.

Transfer students usually do well at their new school but not necessarily top quarter.

[Unemployed]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

Transfers are in your OCIs and classes, stealing your summer associateships, clerkships, and graduation honors.

I'm not going to comment on whether transfers "deserve" those things. That said, I hope you can see how an already over-enrolled class of law students do not want their class size to increase by 80 people in a rough economy, especially if those 80 people are "generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class."

[Anonymous User]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

excuse me?

[NYAssociate]

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[Anonymous User]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

1. The number of interview slots available does not vary based on a school's fluctuating class size from year to year. The more transfers, the fewer interviews for the original class. No way around it.

2. In order for the transfers to "increase CLS's quality," the transfers have to be, overall, of a higher quality than the original student body. While they obviously come to CLS with great grades, that speaks only to their abilities relative to their original classmates. Some people try and say it's not a big deal, because the administration could have just increased the incoming class size by 80 people instead of adding them as transfers. However, it's not the same, as they weren't part of our curve. I guarantee you that some of the transfers wouldn't have shone so brightly had they been graded against other CLS 1Ls. Also, we didn't get into CLS just because of our LSAT and GPA in some cases, just fyi.

3. Can you not understand why, in a down economy with fewer jobs to go around, current students would feel a bit put out or even betrayed that their administration cares more about the 40 transfers' tuition than about its students who have already sank $49,000 into the school? The administration doesn't seem to care at all about its students concerns, particularly when it appears as though 90% of the student body supports smaller class sizes and fewer transfers. And don't try and tell me that the transfers would've gotten these jobs/callbacks anyway, because the firms we're talking about don't even do OCI at their original school, usually. EVERYTHING in law school is a zero sum game. For the transfers to win, the rest of us have to lose.

[bradley]

Delete.

[bradley]

Delete.

[ToTransferOrNot]

There's no way you can compare the performance of a transfer after 2L and 3L years with the performance of a student who has done all three.

That's an absurd statement. Just throwing that out there. Overall GPA.. *maybe* not, at least not if the transfer student took a lot of uncurved classes, and the classes really were uncurved/inflated grades (no such thing at Chicago, but I can't speak for other schools). Saying that transfers only end up placing in the top quarter is just generally wrong - at Chicago, for example, there are 15 transfer students. 3 of us are in the top 5% of the class (top 5% = 10 people) (known due to Kirkland and Ellis scholar announcements,) I know at least 2 were within a hair's breadth of the cut-off, and several others are within the traditional cut-off for top 10%. Of those people, the majority of us took largely forced-curve classes.

And people weren't "giving up" on 2L/3L classes ITE, so don't even feed me that ridiculousness.

Anyway - yes, I can see there being bitterness, and as it relates to OCI, it isn't entirely irrational. That said, transfer students are not "taking jobs" from the people who did particularly well at the transferee school. They may be taking jobs from the 25%-and-down folks. In general, transfer students were probably vying from those same spots from the throne of their 1L school anyway - that isn't true for firms that simply don't interview at the 1L school, though, I'll grant that.

And, to get fully back on track - good luck to the transfer class this year. Here's hoping you all do better than transfers did last year.

[Unemployed]

Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree.

How do you know this?

If they're getting it, they did better than you.

There's no way you can compare the performance of a transfer after 2L and 3L years with the performance of a student who has done all three. I'm not saying that they did not do better, but you can't make the statement you made with any certainty.

Bottom line: ITE has made OCI a nearly zero-sum game. Every offer a transfer student takes is an offer a regular student would have otherwise received. Because of that, I understand where the bitterness is coming from. I think bitterness in general just comes from a ludicrous sense of entitlement, but I do think that even the most circumspect student didn't take transfers into account when deciding whether to matriculate and in determining their job prospects between different law schools.

I visited CLS after I got in as a transfer last year and they told me transfers generally end up in the top quarter. No reason to think they wouldn't have been in the top quarter after 1L, either. I went from a T3 to T10 and, quite honestly, there really isn't that much different in caliber of students (at least at the top of the class). Sorry to burst your bubble.

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, they aren't above lying... or at least fudging. I would have asked how in the world they came up with the top 25% figure - does that include the transfer students' excellent GPA's from their previous schools? Do they actually care enough to keep track of how transfers perform? Do they care enough to calculate GPAs and the corresponding percentiles? It's funny because the registrar neither calculates cumulative rank nor gives out any honors designation for top 25%.

Before you lecture others about getting hung up on UGAP/LSAT's, I would question whether you are entitled to anything as a result of better law school grades.

[Anonymous User]

CLS senate actually complained to the Dean about the large number of transfers? How welcoming! Shouldn't they, you know, want the best and brightest coming to their school to increase it's quality? Transfers are generally smarter than 3/4 of the original class and they deserve that T6 degree. I always feel like people hating on transfers are still hung up on their undergrad GPA and LSAT and think they're entitled to everything for life because they got into CLS.

1. The number of interview slots available does not vary based on a school's fluctuating class size from year to year. The more transfers, the fewer interviews for the original class. No way around it.

2. In order for the transfers to "increase CLS's quality," the transfers have to be, overall, of a higher quality than the original student body. While they obviously come to CLS with great grades, that speaks only to their abilities relative to their original classmates. Some people try and say it's not a big deal, because the administration could have just increased the incoming class size by 80 people instead of adding them as transfers. However, it's not the same, as they weren't part of our curve. I guarantee you that some of the transfers wouldn't have shone so brightly had they been graded against other CLS 1Ls. Also, we didn't get into CLS just because of our LSAT and GPA in some cases, just fyi.

3. Can you not understand why, in a down economy with fewer jobs to go around, current students would feel a bit put out or even betrayed that their administration cares more about the 40 transfers' tuition than about its students who have already sank $49,000 into the school? The administration doesn't seem to care at all about its students concerns, particularly when it appears as though 90% of the student body supports smaller class sizes and fewer transfers. And don't try and tell me that the transfers would've gotten these jobs/callbacks anyway, because the firms we're talking about don't even do OCI at their original school, usually. EVERYTHING in law school is a zero sum game. For the transfers to win, the rest of us have to lose.

If an employer chooses a transfer over a CLS student, it's obviously because, in their experience, those are the higher quality candidates. Just because you got into CLS originally - meaning you did well on one 4-hour test (LSAT) - doesn't mean you should get jobs over those from lower ranked schools who can perform legal analysis better than you.

One transfer I spoke with had a 200-question MC torts exam. I'm sure she did much better on it than I did on a five-page issue-spotter.

Also, at least at CLS, the 2L/3L lecture curve is decidedly more lenient that the 1L curve, while the upper-level seminar curve is a joke. Everyone does well after 1L.

[bradley]

Delete.

[ToTransferOrNot]

Um, when it comes to entry-level legal jobs, of course. You think LSAT should outweigh law school performance? Seriously? And by the way, employers don't generally hire transfers from schools that they wouldn't have hired from anyway. (Some firms will hire the #1 person from a T3 even if they don't do OCIs at their school - so they're not really "stealing" spots.)

In fairness, that's not really true.

[Anonymous User]

Um, when it comes to entry-level legal jobs, of course. You think LSAT should outweigh law school performance? Seriously? And by the way, employers don't generally hire transfers from schools that they wouldn't have hired from anyway. (Some firms will hire the #1 person from a T3 even if they don't do OCIs at their school - so they're not really "stealing" spots.)

lolno.

And they are if they hire the transfer and the new #1 at a TTT.

[Unemployed]

I visited CLS after I got in as a transfer last year and they told me transfers generally end up in the top quarter. No reason to think they wouldn't have been in the top quarter after 1L, either. I went from a T3 to T10 and, quite honestly, there really isn't that much different in caliber of students (at least at the top of the class). Sorry to burst your bubble.

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, they aren't above lying... or at least fudging. I would have asked how in the world they came up with the top 25% figure - does that include the transfer students' excellent GPA's from their previous schools? Do they actually care enough to keep track of how transfers perform? Do they care enough to calculate GPAs and the corresponding percentiles? It's funny because the registrar neither calculates cumulative rank nor gives out any honors designation for top 25%.

Before you lecture others about getting hung up on UGAP/LSAT's, I would question whether you are entitled to anything as a result of better law school grades.

Um, when it comes to entry-level legal jobs, of course. You think LSAT should outweigh law school performance? Seriously? And by the way, employers don't generally hire transfers from schools that they wouldn't have hired from anyway. (Some firms will hire the #1 person from a T3 even if they don't do OCIs at their school - so they're not really "stealing" spots.)

Never said that. Both pre-law credentials and law-school-exam-taking-ability are absurd indicators of whether a student "deserves" to be at a particular school.

Likewise, they don't say much about smarts or abilities as lawyers. Do you think you are smarter than 3/4 of the students at your T10 because you got better grades than 3/4 of your classmates? You are committing the same fallacy of which you accuse the students who somehow feel that transfers don't deserve to be at their school.

[run26.2]

There's no way you can compare the performance of a transfer after 2L and 3L years with the performance of a student who has done all three.

That's an absurd statement. Just throwing that out there. Overall GPA.. *maybe* not, at least not if the transfer student took a lot of uncurved classes, and the classes really were uncurved/inflated grades (no such thing at Chicago, but I can't speak for other schools). Saying that transfers only end up placing in the top quarter is just generally wrong - at Chicago, for example, there are 15 transfer students. 3 of us are in the top 5% of the class (top 5% = 10 people) (known due to Kirkland and Ellis scholar announcements,) I know at least 2 were within a hair's breadth of the cut-off, and several others are within the traditional cut-off for top 10%. Of those people, the majority of us took largely forced-curve classes.

And people weren't "giving up" on 2L/3L classes ITE, so don't even feed me that ridiculousness.

Anyway - yes, I can see there being bitterness, and as it relates to OCI, it isn't entirely irrational. That said, transfer students are not "taking jobs" from the people who did particularly well at the transferee school. They may be taking jobs from the 25%-and-down folks. In general, transfer students were probably vying from those same spots from the throne of their 1L school anyway - that isn't true for firms that simply don't interview at the 1L school, though, I'll grant that.

And, to get fully back on track - good luck to the transfer class this year. Here's hoping you all do better than transfers did last year.

Do you know, generally speaking, what the grade distribution is for the courses that were not forced-curve classes?

At my old school, almost all of the upper-level classes were not curved. As a result, there were more high grades in the upper level courses. Thus, transfers, who came in with a clean-slate for a GPA had something of an advantage. If they got straight As, for instance, they would have a 4.0 whereas someone with a 1st year GPA that was below a 4.0 who got straight As would have their first year dragging them down.

Perhaps this explains how transfers generally make it into the top 25% at CLS.

[Anonymous User]

Never said that. Both pre-law credentials and law-school-exam-taking-ability are absurd indicators of whether a student "deserves" to be at a particular school.

Likewise, they don't say much about smarts or abilities as lawyers. Do you think you are smarter than 3/4 of the students at your T10 because you got better grades than 3/4 of your classmates? You are committing the same fallacy of which you accuse the students who somehow feel that transfers don't deserve to be at their school.

This.

Any practicing attorney will tell you that law school teaches basically nothing about the practice of law. So how are law school grades any indicators of anything, except on the margins? (I'm looking at you, Prof. Lynch.)

[ToTransferOrNot]

Profs are highly encouraged to follow the curve in all classes. My lowest grades came in the non-curved classes - at least one of my seminar profs is notorious for grading his seminars below the curve, actually.

That said, no, I don't know where it fell out. I'm sure it varies by prof, just like everything else. Chicago is particularly prone to extremes on either side, since some profs simply never give anything over a 183 (max possible is 186,) some profs haven't moved their medians despite shifts in the official curve, etc.

It seems like even the lectures at Columbia aren't on the same curve as the 1L lectures though. Can't blame transfers for that - blame your school for giving in to grade inflation and a lack of rigor.

[bradley]

Delete.

[ToTransferOrNot]

Um, when it comes to entry-level legal jobs, of course. You think LSAT should outweigh law school performance? Seriously? And by the way, employers don't generally hire transfers from schools that they wouldn't have hired from anyway. (Some firms will hire the #1 person from a T3 even if they don't do OCIs at their school - so they're not really "stealing" spots.)

In fairness, that's not really true.

It absolutely is. And to the below poster, if firms only hire the #1 from a TTT then they will only hire the #1 - they won't hire people below that just because the top students transferred out. Rankings at the TTT don't change the second the transfers leave. And point well-taken about inflated GPA's if upper-class courses aren't curved. I don't know how that works, though, since at my T10 upper level classes are generally curved. Besides, if transfers really get the top clerkships, they took Fed Courts/Admin/Antitrust and not Juvenile Justice seminar.

Are you a transfer student who has been through OCI? No? Because there are plenty of my transfer student classmates who got jobs at firms that WOULD NOT HAVE LOOKED AT THEIR RESUME had they not transfered. Period. End-of-fucking-story. In my case, that came directly from the mouth of several of the people I worked with over the summer.

[Unemployed]

Profs are highly encouraged to follow the curve in all classes. My lowest grades came in the non-curved classes - at least one of my seminar profs is notorious for grading his seminars below the curve, actually.

That said, no, I don't know where it fell out. I'm sure it varies by prof, just like everything else. Chicago is particularly prone to extremes on either side, since some profs simply never give anything over a 183 (max possible is 186,) some profs haven't moved their medians despite shifts in the official curve, etc.

It seems like even the lectures at Columbia aren't on the same curve as the 1L lectures though. Can't blame transfers for that - blame your school for giving in to grade inflation and a lack of rigor.

Ah, so the move to increase the transfer size can be seen as an admirable effort to bolster our rigor. The Dean should have said "transfers bring new RIGOR to the class, so it's good for everyone." I would have been satisfied.

Anyway, I did not mean to play a hand in turning this productive thread into a complete s***show. I have very little personal stake in the matter, anyway. I was just bothered by bradley's somewhat hypocritical and self-righteous attitude... And yet I am not bothered by the entitled attitudes of people who aren't transfers - I guess I can't help it. I, too, am a hypocrite.