A "How Did Your Grades Change Post-Transfer" Thread Forum

[Jordan77]

Top 15% at a T2
to a T1 with Top 20%.

[afterglow99]

Top 10% at a low T2 to bottom third at CCN. I lived like a monk first year, got an SA gig when I transferred, and then rested on my laurels. For me, there was nothing to suck away motivation like knowing you could just rely on your school's brand and reputation. I'm definitely an anomaly, however, as I decided after 1L that I have very serious questions about whether I really want to be a lawyer.

[NotoriousIIED]

Mine stayed about the same. A lot of it comes down to course selection, IMO.

[ColkerCola]

Mine slipped. I was top 5-10% t25 now I am not close to there at a t10.

I had a stellar clerkship resume and now I dont. All it took was 2 instances of the worst grade I have ever gotten in law school. Spread out, this might be okay. Same semester, however, means more of a problem.

I think I went down for 2 reasons. First, I wrote onto the LR here, got a ton of job offers at really good firms and thought I kind of had it figured out. Second, I didn't know how to "game" the system and take very easy non-curved classes and I took very hard curved classes. This was a terrible idea. I didn't quite get owned on exams but I certainly didn't crush them like I did at my first school. It is embarrassing.

Now I have my work cut out for me over the next 3 semesters. One positive from all of this is that the 1L pressure has returned now and I am back to putting in the hours again. This was not the case last semester because I felt like I had things figured out and under control. I don't think the 1L pressure feeling will ever go away now. I'm also scheduling much more strategically than I did first semester and the difference is tremendous. I don't doubt that I will get out of here with a very good GPA but it is going to require considerably more work than if I had just taken easier classes last semester/maintained the work ethic I had as a 1L.

So the moral of the story for transfers:

1) Take easy classes first semester. It will set you up nicely going forward because between OCI, journal, and just getting used to a new school, you will have your hands full.
2) Nobody can maintain 1L style work habits as a 2L but you need to at least maintain some semblance of an ethic. It will be easy to coast but you shouldnt.

One surefire way to maintain a 1L style work routine is to do poorly during your first semester. Seems to have done the trick for me...

[laxbrah420]

I think that it is hard for people who have scored in the 150s to do well in t14 schools, basically. (Though this isn't always the case and I know a couple examples to the contrary.) I also think that being #1 at a school where the median LSAT's in the 150s isn't a very strong predictor of t14 performance. I don't think that it takes more work to do well at Georgetown... or that it's near-impossible for someone coming from a t4 to do well, because there are exceptions... but I have to think that going to a t4 is generally a function of one's LSAT. I mean, I was in a t30 school in spite of a 2.63 UGPA, so there's a limit to what being a lazy bum in college, on its own, can do to where you end up. And I do think that the LSAT predicts grades with some accuracy and that, in a school where virtually everyone has a bad LSAT, someone has to do well. Even at Georgetown, you look at a lot of the best exams professors designate and they're hardly masterpieces. So I can only imagine what a lot of A work at t4s looks like.

LSAT really doesn't have much to do with law school performance. Frankly, it doesn't take much intelligence to do well in law school. Not really directed at you traydeuce, since you probably already know this, but it's more of a function of ability to know what your professor expects and being able to cater your exam answer to that. For example, if the prof really doesn't give a fuck about the black letter law, but never shuts up about policy in your class, it's safe to assume that the prof expects a lot of policy discussion in your exam answer and little BLL. Some people just never understand this concept, and waste countless hours trying to learn from supplements. I even remember reading threads on TLS from 1Ls, after their first semester, talking about how they are going to start crunching for the next semester by reading supplements. IMO, that's completely retarded because supplements are designed to supplement something. If you don't know what your prof thinks is important yet, then reading a supplement is completely useless. So many people never understand this concept. And so many people just jerk around online and pay no attention in class. Those are also the people that bust their asses outside of class and still get terrible grades in law school. To be honest, I really put in very little effort into law school after my first semester (just got scared into believing the "law school is hard because everyone is smart" crap my first semester), and did well. I definitely spent less time working on law school stuff than the average classmate. I did, however, pay attention in class, take really good notes and used those + filling in stuff I didn't fully understand as well as I should have from supplements for studying for exams.

How does that explain people who are like top 1% at their old school and fall quite a bit at their new school. Is it just their inability to adjust to the new method of teaching presented by the professor?

I honestly think it's typically a combination of laziness and burnout from 1L year. As a transfer student myself, I can tell you first-hand it is really, really, really difficult to motivate yourself to do much of anything at the new school. A ton of my transfer friends felt the same way. This is especially true if you get a biglaw SA offer. In the back of your head you know you should take it seriously, but it's tough. You also have so much more going on your 2nd and 3rd year with journal, callbacks, internships, etc. Your first year the focus is on nothing but school and you know that your law school performance will 100% correlate to the job opportunities you have for the rest of your life, especially at lower ranked schools. At a top school, there's a lot more cushion, and to be frank, if you don't care about clerkships and think you can get an offer from your SA, the correlation between future job prospects and grades decrease substantially.

I'm not supposed to comment in this section since I don't go to law school, but I'm just curious if you think that perhaps Gladwell's theory pertaining to being "smart enough" that he used to argue for affirmative action would perhaps be valid here --that a high IQ/SAT (lsat) score is indeed predicative of success in school, but the difference between a 170-175 is perhaps negligible...

[RodneyBoonfield]

T4 8%ile----> T30 ~20%ile

[maf70]

TTT 3% --> T20 1%

[farmernate]

T100 10% ----> T25 1%

[traehekat]

^^ wow really? congrats to both of u, sick.

i dont know where i fell this semester because of grade inflation/lack of ranking, but probably somewhere between top third and median.

[keg411]

3/5 grades in, slightly worse than median.
Pro-tip for next years transfers: avoid gunner courses, they will fuck you.

[quiver]

Pro-tip for next years transfers: avoid gunner courses, they will fuck you.

110% agree with this. Check with any 3Ls as to what these classes are. The two worst I've heard are obviously Fed Courts and Admin (I can personally vouch for the latter) but definitely check with 3Ls on other courses.

[Transferthrowaway]

Pleasantly surprised at a T-35 to pleasantly surprised at a CCN.

[09042014]

TTTransfers blame LOLCI for failure. Why?

[Transferthrowaway]

TTTransfers blame LOLCI for failure. Why?

wat

[bceagles182]

top 7% at T2 to ~ top 25% on this semester's curve at T20. My grades themselves actually went up (3.66 1L to 3.67 2L) but the 2L curve is ridiculous because people take uncurved courses -- which I couldn't get into as a transfer.

On the bright side, I'm sitting somewhere near top 12% on the cumulative curve, so if I can garner up some motivation (unlikely), I might have a decent shot at magna cum laude.

It's pretty nice having just my 2L & 3L grades against everyone else's 1L, 2L & 3L grades on the cumulative curve though. I can coast to cum laude at this point.

[mrloblaw]

Why am I taking only curved courses as a 2L, again? Bad career move, ahoy.

"Hi, I'm the new transfer. I'm here to do 1L all over again, but at a harder school and entirely surrounded by gunners."

[Vronsky]

TT top 1% --> Median at C/N.

159 LSAT now competing with 170s. Multiple Cali awards at old school, nothing outside of the B range at the new.

Part of it was burnout from 1L, but also the SA. And to be honest, it also felt like the non-transfer 2Ls eased up a bit, too. I think in reality even if I had gunned like 1L, I'd barely sniff top 30-40%.

People are just way, way smarter in the T6, whereas the old TT now seems like a joke for 2/3 of the class. LSAT at TT was around 75 percentile. So Yes, you can tell a difference. Everything is different - the general intelligence of the other students, the detail of coverage in each course, and the subtleties of the profs. and their exams.

T6 feels like God of War on God Mode.

[bceagles182]

I'm sure there is a noticeable difference, but it sounds like you're psyching yourself out as well.

[keg411]

Why am I taking only curved courses as a 2L, again? Bad career move, ahoy.

"Hi, I'm the new transfer. I'm here to do 1L all over again, but at a harder school and entirely surrounded by gunners."

This is exactly how I felt last semester. Apparently the entire 2L class here is filled with gunners and no one told us .

I do think OCI burned me out, but that was more the travel plus the stress and terror of possibly not getting a jerb. After that I pretty much couldn't concentrate on anything, and I'm obviously not one of the people that can study at the last minute and get A's.

[bld17]

Long time lurker, first time poster. I guess the question left to ask, although it has been asked many times (but not specifically for transfers), is did any of last years transfer class which experienced a significant grade drop get no-offered? I ask only because it seems logical that transfers are far more likley to experience big drops (.5x).

[maf70]

Long time lurker, first time poster. I guess the question left to ask, although it has been asked many times (but not specifically for transfers), is did any of last years transfer class which experienced a significant grade drop get no-offered? I ask only because it seems logical that transfers are far more likley to experience big drops (.5x).

Doubtful.

[Transferthrowaway]

Long time lurker, first time poster. I guess the question left to ask, although it has been asked many times (but not specifically for transfers), is did any of last years transfer class which experienced a significant grade drop get no-offered? I ask only because it seems logical that transfers are far more likley to experience big drops (.5x).

Transfers tend to be transfer because they're "good" at law school.

[Regionality]

Top 5% at a T35 to around Top 15% and a T10.

[lawschoolgrapedme]

Top 3% at T25. No ranking or GPA at new CCN, but 2 As and 2 A-s, so pretty good.

I slacked off, took doctrinal classes, and still did ok. I don't think it is any harder to do well at the new school, but it is stressful like your 1L year because you just don't know where you stand when you transfer.

[acore8604]

T20 -> 2-3%
T10-> 5% (approximation)

I didn't jump that much in school rankings and I put forth about the same level of effort so if your thinking of transferring don't worry about your grades plummeting if you come from a good school and work hard.