Transferring into the t14, OCI, career prospects.. [UPDATED] Forum

[A'nold]

Sorry guys but you've just gotta give us potential transfers more to go on, please for the sake of our futures *cue dramatic music*. That is such a huge gaping difference in experiences. One school = 22 callbacks w/ multiple offers and another = 6 w/ no offer.

Can't you at least tell us what schools (to the new transfer contributor above) you thought seemed to make it difficult for transfers?

I have to agree somewhat. While I certainly appreciate the advice (a ton), and I completely understand the need for anonymity (for all of the reasons listed, and others), it would help so much to know what school you guys attend. I mean, is there somone really trying to figure out who each of you are at each school? Still, I understand the apprehension and am thankful for any advice I get. The extreme divide between the advice though is hard to reconcile.[/quote]

Yeah, this is the hard part for us. It's like telling someone that at the end of a rainbow is either a pot of gold or a lion's mouth, but not telling us which one is which.

[apper123]

Here's to hoping the anonymous poster feature is implemented on this board soon so the posters above can give us more details!

[stinger35]

Here's to hoping the anonymous poster feature is implemented on this board soon so the posters above can give us more details!

There ya go. A simple solution that completely went over my head.

[stinger35]

Sorry guys but you've just gotta give us potential transfers more to go on, please for the sake of our futures *cue dramatic music*. That is such a huge gaping difference in experiences. One school = 22 callbacks w/ multiple offers and another = 6 w/ no offer.

Can't you at least tell us what schools (to the new transfer contributor above) you thought seemed to make it difficult for transfers?

I have to agree somewhat. While I certainly appreciate the advice (a ton), and I completely understand the need for anonymity (for all of the reasons listed, and others), it would help so much to know what school you guys attend. I mean, is there somone really trying to figure out who each of you are at each school? Still, I understand the apprehension and am thankful for any advice I get. The extreme divide between the advice though is hard to reconcile.[/quote]

Yeah, this is the hard part for us. It's like telling someone that at the end of a rainbow is either a pot of gold or a lion's mouth, but not telling us which one is which.

[/quote]

So true. Like I said, I am very grateful for the advice as it is and am certainly not going to judge anyone for not wanting to out themselves. I just wish there was a way to be like HEY - went to school A and it worked out, I went to school B and it didnt.

That being said, as a PT student, my options will likely be limited anyways and will have to go wherever I get in anyways (even being # 1 in my class).

Anyone else feel more pressure than ever to get good grades? I have almost anxiety attacks worrying that I am not doing what I did last semester/studying less/the classes are harder/the exams will be easier and everyone else will catch up/etc. etc. etc. and that I will absolutely screw myself. Probably just being a fuckin freak

[Journeybound]

I'm feeling the same way. I'm still putting in the same hours, but I still feel like its not enough. Hopefully last semester wasn't a fluke. Ha!

[articulably suspect]

I was trying to be clear on this point, but it seems like I wasn't based on this question. Around 50% of the transfer class here struck out. Everyone worked last summer doing something legal related except me. That suggests 1L summer job experience + transferring does NOT equal a 2L SA for a lot of people.

Are you including PD, DA, AG, etc in that 50% that didn't strike out?

Also, if a potential transfer student's primary interests were local and state government work(possibly federal), is it worth it to transfer up from a relatively insulated regional(T2/3 school) in your opinion?

[A'nold]

I am very paranoid that I am not doing enough in my non legal writing classes right now and that I've now forgotten how to take law school exams. I feel like I will be conclusory, miss easy issues, and not analyze thoroughly enough. Hopefully this means we will do even better than last semester, haha.

[TransferGuy33]

FWIW, our CSO material was very explicit about the whole OCI process and explicitly said to expect 20-22 interviews. I think the issue was that they didn't edit it to account for the economy and lack of employers this year. It seemed like people who went against CSO's advice of targeting only 1 market did better in terms of getting OCI interviews. Did you do this?

EDIT- What else can you tell us? Are you an URM or LBGT? Where did you work your first summer (was it a firm)? Did you have prior full time work experience before going to law school? Was the t2 you transferred from regionally strong at the school you transferred to? What were your GPA & class rank at your t2? Did you get onto a journal, and if so, which one? What school did you transfer to? -- your other post seems to suggest you transferred to Columbia (a school that did pretty well this year despite the economy)...

Ugh, I'd really like to keep my anonymity, and answering a lot of those questions wouldn't help. I suppose it's not a big deal since I'm not saying anything negative though...

I'll just answer in a summary... I definitely did not get any "group based" advantage. I had a mediocre (all things considered) summer experience, and had a small amount of work experience. My GPA and Rank are largely unimportant. They were good enough to go from a T2 to a T14... so you do the math.

To answer your first question, yes, I only targeted one market. They told us to apply to many, but it seemed like the people who did well were targeting one market. I don't think many firms liked anyone who was looking at other markets (worried that they weren't your top choice). I think firms had a much easier time flying you out if you told them you were only interested in their market (Plus the possibility of splitting expenses between firms).

[t14underground]

Sorry guys but you've just gotta give us potential transfers more to go on, please for the sake of our futures *cue dramatic music*. That is such a huge gaping difference in experiences. One school = 22 callbacks w/ multiple offers and another = 6 w/ no offer.

Can't you at least tell us what schools (to the new transfer contributor above) you thought seemed to make it difficult for transfers?

I have to agree somewhat. While I certainly appreciate the advice (a ton), and I completely understand the need for anonymity (for all of the reasons listed, and others), it would help so much to know what school you guys attend. I mean, is there somone really trying to figure out who each of you are at each school? Still, I understand the apprehension and am thankful for any advice I get. The extreme divide between the advice though is hard to reconcile.

Yeah, this is the hard part for us. It's like telling someone that at the end of a rainbow is either a pot of gold or a lion's mouth, but not telling us which one is which. [/quote][/quote]

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In any event, there were transfers here that got 22 screening interviews (although, I don't think any got a whopping 12 callbacks, that's a lot). I hear luck being thrown out as a huge factor in grades, but luck is really a truly a huge factor in OCI bidding. At most school's what happens is you have a bid list and there will be 20 or so slots open for the firm. So if 18 people bid the firm as a "1", and 20 bid it is as a "2", then the people who bid it as a 1 get the firm and the 20 people who bid it as a "2" go into a blind lottery and only 2 get the interview. This year it looked like everyone pretty much bid on the same firms since there were a 1/3 less then typical and virtually no one bid on the v20 firms, meaning there were a lot more lotteries for interviews. The thing with the interview blind lottery is that it doesn't take into account how many other OCI interviews you got through winning the lottery. So, e.g., it is completely possible that you could win 11 interviews via lottery and end up with 22 interviews, whereas, I might lose all 11 lotteries and end up with 11 interviews. In a good year, I don't think that this would be as big of a deal since you could simply apply to the firm and get an interview outside of OCI, but this year firms were just getting bombed with resumes and a lot of them chose not to interview at all outside of OCI. And the one's that did interview outside of OCI weren't going to pick you as a t2 or t3 transfer student when they had 100 other top of their class t14 students to pick from (in addition to OCI)... So essentially, your fate (to a large extent) rests on how lucky you get in the OCI blind lottery bidding process

I also think there is a lot of stuff TransferGuy33 is not disclosing (such as possibly being on LR, a URM or LBGT, etc -- all of which would be a huge factor in the OCI process).

[A'nold]

Yeah, I feel you on transferguy not being completely upfront. I would love to believe that he is real and that he transferred to like GULC and he had a billion interviews w/ nothing special on his resume, but you are probs right that he is at Columbia and on LR, which is a lot different than a t3 transfer into the bottom of the t14 w/ no LR.

About applying to only one market: Does this work if the market is small, say Portland or Seattle? Would you ever risk that or are you guys talking straight up D.C., N.Y., Chicago here? Thanks.

[TransferGuy33]

T14underground - You're really being unfair about asking me these questions. I say specifically that I want to remain anonymous, and you go to other threads to consolidate info for everyone on these forums to try and figure out more about me. There are 100 questions you could ask me about OCI (such as, did interviewers ask you transfer specific questions? How did you respond? Was it awkward to be interviewed by people from the school that you transferred out of? Was your number of interviews typical for your school, or still less than other students? Is there any general OCI advice you can give us) that wouldn't give away my identity. Now you basically call me out, asking whether I'm on Columbia LR. If I said yes, then seeing as they 0-1 transfers make law review each year, my identity would be revealed. Even your other questions are equally revealing. If I said, for example, I was an Asian male at Columbia on a Secondary journal, do you think I would remain anonymous? No school takes more than around 50 transfers, so giving away that sort of info would pretty much completely give away my identity. (School narrows to 50, sex to 25, race down to at least 15, then journal or not reduces to about 8 max., Then invariably you would tease out more info from my slip-ups and make it clear who I am).


I know people want to know EVERYTHING about everyone's story so they can figure out if they want to emulate it or discard it as an outlier (or luck), but please try to be respectful of my wishes. All I wanted to do was share my experience, and tell everyone that transferring can be a great thing for job prospects. As others will tell you, it can also be a terrible thing (especially when you take losing a scholarship into account). If you guys don't want to hear about my OCI experience, then that's fine. But criticizing me for not "disclosing" or being "upfront" is completely uncalled for.

@ Arnold - From talking to attorneys, it sounded to me like bigger markets wanted you to focus, and smaller markets mainly just wanted you to have a strong connection there. I'm not from a major market (look, more info you guys can use!), and the attorneys I know from there were especially skeptical this year.

@ t14 - One last free bone for you... I said I received no advantages from my group, so that means (White/Asian)

If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them, but I fail to see how disclosing my precise GPA, school, class rank, exact journal, etc. is vital to OCI prospects. Sure, that stuff helps, but you can ask anyone at any T14 school what their prospects were w/ X class rank on X journal, or any person at your t2/t3 what X class rank and X journal what their prospects were. So, the only real difference that I have is that I used a different OCI and had to explain transferring. Otherwise, the processes were largely the same, and I don't think any other advice I might give would be any more helpful than anyone else who went through OCI anywhere.

[A'nold]

Thanks for your posts, we appreciate them. We are not trying to "out" you (well, at least I don't think anyone else is and I know I'm not) but there is a big difference b/w "t14" schools. If T14underground is a transfer student at Cornell and you are at Columbia, that really doesn't do much for the lower school people in terms of their decision.

Can't you give a "CCN" or "NDV" designation at least?

[TransferGuy33]

Well, I think the CCN is already out of the bag, so I'll admit it.

[articulably suspect]

T14underground- that was kinda messed up, seeing as one poster commented that given the information you provided, you narrowed it down which school you are attending. However, they opted not to out you and you thanked them for "not turning this into a guessing game." Probably should extend the same courtesy.

To either of the transfer posters: Any of the transfer students interested in PD/DA/AG at your schools? How did they do? Is it really worth it to pass up a free ride at a T2/3 if one wants to work in non-NYC, Chicago, LA local government or state government?

I suppose it would be worth the transfer if one was looking to work at the USAO, would you agree? How did those transfers who sought federal jobs/internships do?

Thanks.

[TransferGuy33]

Transferring to go into gov't work is pretty much unheard of as far as I know. You transfer 1) To help biglaw chances 2) Academia or 3) Personal Reasons. From what I have heard, I don't think that obtaining gov't jobs became as competitive as biglaw jobs became. I didn't hear of anyone at my T2 who wanted a job in that field with my grades and didn't get it or something similar.

So, I can't really give much advice as to transferring for improving Gov't job chances. From what I hear, connections are the best way to get those jobs anyhow, and you're not going to make a lot of money, so transferring and losing up to 100k doesn't seem worth it to me.

[kevinnutla]

T14underground- that was kinda messed up, seeing as one poster commented that given the information you provided, you narrowed it down which school you are attending. However, they opted not to out you and you thanked them for "not turning this into a guessing game." Probably should extend the same courtesy.

To either of the transfer posters: Any of the transfer students interested in PD/DA/AG at your schools? How did they do? Is it really worth it to pass up a free ride at a T2/3 if one wants to work in non-NYC, Chicago, LA local government or state government?

I suppose it would be worth the transfer if one was looking to work at the USAO, would you agree? How did those transfers who sought federal jobs/internships do?

Thanks.

Kind of agree that it was messed up. That being said, I still don't think people are really going to figure out their identities anyways. The employers obviously would somewhat matter but I doubt they spend their time lurking on TLS, honestly. As far as fellow students, F em. If I spent my day going through the boards looking for people I go to school with I'd just /myself.

That being said, since transferguy got this treatment, I will retaliate for him - I think t14underground goes to (HYC/JM - Harvard, Yale, Cooley/John Marshall)

EDIT: Fair enough

[TransferGuy33]

Kind of agree that it was messed up. That being said, I still don't think people are really going to figure out their identities anyways. The employers obviously would somewhat matter but I doubt they spend their time lurking on TLS, honestly. As far as fellow students, F em. If I spent my day going through the boards looking for people I go to school with I'd just /myself.

I really don't care at all about other Students figuring me out, but employers I definitely do. These posts are going to be here as long as TLS has their servers running, and I doubt any employer will ever see them, but you never know. Maybe something else in this thread is funny/abhorrent/otherwise newsworthy, then this thread gets forwarded in some emails and a partner stumbles across it. And maybe it's the kind of partner who just doesn't like any of their attorneys posting on these sorts of forums (there are plenty of partners who have a distaste for ATL or anything related... which would probably include TLS). Does that get me fired someday? No. But maybe it puts me on a watch list. Maybe somebody here outs me by name and a future employer searches for me and this thread comes up.

There are a variety of circumstances... all remote... but If given the choice between no chance and a 1 in a million chance... I'll take the 0 chance.

[stinger35]

Kind of agree that it was messed up. That being said, I still don't think people are really going to figure out their identities anyways. The employers obviously would somewhat matter but I doubt they spend their time lurking on TLS, honestly. As far as fellow students, F em. If I spent my day going through the boards looking for people I go to school with I'd just /myself.

I really don't care at all about other Students figuring me out, but employers I definitely do. These posts are going to be here as long as TLS has their servers running, and I doubt any employer will ever see them, but you never know. Maybe something else in this thread is funny/abhorrent/otherwise newsworthy, then this thread gets forwarded in some emails and a partner stumbles across it. And maybe it's the kind of partner who just doesn't like any of their attorneys posting on these sorts of forums (there are plenty of partners who have a distaste for ATL or anything related... which would probably include TLS). Does that get me fired someday? No. But maybe it puts me on a watch list. Maybe somebody here outs me by name and a future employer searches for me and this thread comes up.

There are a variety of circumstances... all remote... but If given the choice between no chance and a 1 in a million chance... I'll take the 0 chance.

I agree. Could care less about students. Period. But employers is a huge deal. Like you said, the chance is so so so so remote, but, better safe than sorry.

[t14underground]

TransferGuy33- sorry about taking a shot at guessing what school you go to (I edited it out). I was really hoping you would get just a little more specific in terms of the range of school you go to (such as CCN or DCNG), and whether you were on a journal, etc (as you kinda already did). As previously noted, there's a huge difference between being a t2--> barely admitted GULC transfer student with no journal versus a t2 w/ GPA of 4.0 or better (not to say that you have to have that GPA) --> CCN transfer + LR. I actually did reveal the range of school, journal information, and thought it was obvious that I am not a URM or LBGT.

kevinnutla- edit that (I'm not saying your right, but I want to narrow down what school I go to any further then the 3-4 I've already mentioned).
EDIT- thanks.

[TransferGuy33]

I suppose there is a difference in T14 transfer and T6 transfer, but I think everyone understands HYS>CCN>MVPB>DNCG. If you're MVPB was about 50% -> Transfers at higher schools can likely expect more, and others at DNCG can expect less.

To sort of respond to your original post. I definitely agree about the first summer. Every interviewer asked me about my summer, and all of them were looking for an answer that was 1) Good actual legal experience and 2) Something few other students had the opportunity to do. If you could describe your summer like that, then I think the interviewers responded well.

[A'nold]

Now that I really think about it, we know almost every single frequent poster's school on this site. I think you guys are being way too secretive.

[t14underground]

Now that I really think about it, we know almost every single frequent poster's school on this site. I think you guys are being way too secretive.

I don't really care about what other students think, and I'd actually be surprised if a good number of them didn't know exactly who I am just based on what I wrote.

However, I'm just trying to stay anonymous because I've said a lot of potentially career damaging stuff (e.g. talking badly about the firm that I am working at this summer). I mean if I were to say I attend NU as a t3 transfer and am working at a personal injury firm this summer that pays $37K /year, how many people does that narrow me down to? ... I actually got dinged at a law school I applied to merely based on what I said about the school on TLS, so you'd be surprised as to who lurks this board. Sure the employers might not actively search the board to out people that are talking poorly about them, but if they run a search of something and they run across a TLS post that sounds an awful lot like someone they are interviewing or hired for a SA, they'll look into it.

[A'nold]

Well, thanks guys.

[stinger35]

Now that I really think about it, we know almost every single frequent poster's school on this site. I think you guys are being way too secretive.

I don't really care about what other students think, and I'd actually be surprised if a good number of them didn't know exactly who I am just based on what I wrote.

However, I'm just trying to stay anonymous because I've said a lot of potentially career damaging stuff (e.g. talking badly about the firm that I am working at this summer). I mean if I were to say I attend NU as a t3 transfer and am working at a personal injury firm this summer that pays $37K /year, how many people does that narrow me down to? ... I actually got dinged at a law school I applied to merely based on what I said about the school on TLS, so you'd be surprised as to who lurks this board. Sure the employers might not actively search the board to out people that are talking poorly about them, but if they run a search of something and they run across a TLS post that sounds an awful lot like someone they are interviewing or hired for a SA, they'll look into it.

Seriously? How did they know it was you? Now that actually scares the shit out of me. Was that for transfer or for first-time admissions? Wow.

[t14underground]

Now that I really think about it, we know almost every single frequent poster's school on this site. I think you guys are being way too secretive.

I don't really care about what other students think, and I'd actually be surprised if a good number of them didn't know exactly who I am just based on what I wrote.

However, I'm just trying to stay anonymous because I've said a lot of potentially career damaging stuff (e.g. talking badly about the firm that I am working at this summer). I mean if I were to say I attend NU as a t3 transfer and am working at a personal injury firm this summer that pays $37K /year, how many people does that narrow me down to? ... I actually got dinged at a law school I applied to merely based on what I said about the school on TLS, so you'd be surprised as to who lurks this board. Sure the employers might not actively search the board to out people that are talking poorly about them, but if they run a search of something and they run across a TLS post that sounds an awful lot like someone they are interviewing or hired for a SA, they'll look into it.

Seriously? How did they know it was you? Now that actually scares the shit out of me. Was that for transfer or for first-time admissions? Wow.

I gave out way too much information about myself and bad-mouthed the dean of admissions.