Top Law Schools

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Don't go to a school with the expectation of transferring. Only choose a school you would be happy staying at for all 3 years.

Holly Golightly wrote:Don't go to a school with the expectation of transferring. Only choose a school you would be happy staying at for all 3 years.

I understand that, but I'm trying to figure out if it would matter substantially in the eyes of the admissions officer if I decide to transfer next year.

The only people who can 100% for sure say are admin folks.

I'm not one of those. But I imagine all they would care about is your grades/rank. Both are good schools (yeah, GW ranked higher by USNWR, but not by much). Both will be really competitive (at least in terms of having many many many very good students). Both will be hard.

Land at top 5-10%, and GW and WM are surely interchangeable for transfer purposes. So .. go GW, since you're happiest with the prospect of 3 years there.

Students ranked in the top 5% of their class at T2 schools received GULC EA transfer offers over students in the top 5% of their class at T30s this cycle. So really, just go to where you want, and work your butt off without the plan to transfer. If you do good - great! If not, you are where you want to be.

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The above advice is credited. Do not apply to a law school with the goal of transferring. That being said all that matters is your class rank. CLS has transfers ranging from nyls/pace/touro to northwestern/chicago/cornell.

1. GW will not be harder than W&M.
2. I never usually say this b/c it is way overused, by why not retake if you are that close to getting a t14 right now and are a "reverse-splitter?" Hire a tutor. You have way more control over your LSAT score than your 1L grades.

I would have to agree on both points. Unless you have already taken the LSAT 3 times you should give retaking some serious consideration.

In these situations you gotta think worst case scenario, and assume that you will not be able to transfer. It's not that GW and W&M are not great schools, but the difference in career possibilities between those schools and T14 really is pretty enormous, especially ITE. Just think, if you don't do well enough to transfer, will you be kicking yourself 3 years from now wondering why you didn't just spend $1k on a tutor or class to give yourself a shot at T14?

I'm in a very similar position to the OP. I'm in at UCLA but I'm really interested in UVA and Georgetown, both places where I was eventually rejected.

I fully understand the merits of retaking the LSAT and waiting a year. I've even considered retaking in June and trying to petition for a reconsideration (although this seems like a year where doing so would be pointless). But waiting another year is a major decision, especially with the job market being as it is.

So if you're happy at GW or WM, then go for it this year and try to transfer. As to GW vs. WM, my perspective is that they're so closely ranked and have similar enough reputations that it won't make a difference for transferring. I've also heard about GW being fairly competitive, especially because there seem to be a lot of students there going for big law but they recongnize that only so many students from GW are going to get those positions. I've also heard the opposite that it's a collegial school with cooperative students. Overall, from what you've said, I'd say go for GW this year and see what happens. Good luck regardless of what you choose to do.

UCLAtransfer wrote:I would have to agree on both points. Unless you have already taken the LSAT 3 times you should give retaking some serious consideration.

In these situations you gotta think worst case scenario, and assume that you will not be able to transfer. It's not that GW and W&M are not great schools, but the difference in career possibilities between those schools and T14 really is pretty enormous, especially ITE. Just think, if you don't do well enough to transfer, will you be kicking yourself 3 years from now wondering why you didn't just spend $1k on a tutor or class to give yourself a shot at T14?

A little easier said than done unfortunately. I have taken almost every practice test over the past 2 years (literally) and cannot break 160. Just a bad standardized test taker (SAT 1400, ACT 28, GMAT 650, etc.). I've sat twice for the test and will retake it again in June. Long story short, I work three jobs right now and have zero time to study for a standardized test when I have much more important things in my personal life.

We'll see, but from what I can tell, GW, Duke and GULC see to all have similar career outcomes if you are interested in DC/NYC biglaw or judicial clerkships. I never received a grade lower than an A- my entire life, so I don't think I'll start slacking off now.

aulburch wrote:I have taken almost every practice test over the past 2 years (literally) and cannot break 160. Just a bad standardized test taker (SAT 1400, ACT 28, GMAT 650, etc.). I've sat twice for the test and will retake it again in June. Long story short, I work three jobs right now and have zero time to study for a standardized test when I have much more important things in my personal life.

We'll see, but from what I can tell, GW, Duke and GULC see to all have similar career outcomes if you are interested in DC/NYC biglaw or judicial clerkships. I never received a grade lower than an A- my entire life, so I don't think I'll start slacking off now.

Let me just say that with those kinds of struggles on the LSAT, you should be far from sanguine about your transfer hopes, no matter how high your grades have been your whole life. Now I will say that if you got those kinds of grades in philosophy or math (or something mathematical, like engineering, chemistry, physics), as an undergrad, that's promising. Law's kind of like philosophy or logic for idiots, so if you can do the real thing, you can do the junk science. But good grades in history, in English, in literature, in political science? As a predictive matter I would say that's pretty meaningless. The ability to write well about some compelling insight you have into, say, gender politics in Austen's novels is a wonderful skill to have, but one that has very little to do with the skills needed for law. And the LSAT's far from a meaningless predictor. It's one thing if you struggle with the games, there's hardly anything quite that demanding in first-year law classes, in terms of having to make all those inferences. Maybe a tough civil procedure exam comes kind of close. But if you struggle with the other parts of the test I don't know. Reading comprehension and basic logic are pretty fundamental in law school. Many cases are fairly incomprehensible and picking out exactly what's going on in there is key. Of course, people will tell you that you don't really need to get what you're reading, you just need to get what the professor says in class about the reading. This is true to some extent - in the first week of Civ Pro you'll spend all this time trying to puzzle out the worst-written opinion ever and the upshot of all your work will be that (a) the case was basically overruled in the 30s and today is largely meaningless, and (b) if you're in a state and get served there, the courts of that state have jurisdiction over you. Reading the case doesn't add to your understanding one iota. But as a general matter, there are all sorts of doctrinal and factual nuances buried in the cases that you can use to elevate your exams from an A- to an A. The other approach to acing law school - the "skim the cases and hit the supplements hard" approach - is, while less demanding of your time and intellect, a road to, at worst, disaster (you read all sorts of stuff that you never learned in class and start spewing it out on your tests, much to the confusion of your Contracts/Property/Torts professor, who isn't actually an expert on contracts/property/torts, just a really smart expert on shareholder rights who teaches contracts out of a casebook so as to hold down a job, and therefore doesn't have a clue as to what you're talking about), and at best a spot in the top ten percent, and the latter assumes that you're really smart because half of the class will be doing the same thing.

How is 1400 on the SAT a bad score?


(I assume we're using the old out-of-1600 scale and not that new writing section crap)

aulburch wrote:

UCLAtransfer wrote:I would have to agree on both points. Unless you have already taken the LSAT 3 times you should give retaking some serious consideration.

In these situations you gotta think worst case scenario, and assume that you will not be able to transfer. It's not that GW and W&M are not great schools, but the difference in career possibilities between those schools and T14 really is pretty enormous, especially ITE. Just think, if you don't do well enough to transfer, will you be kicking yourself 3 years from now wondering why you didn't just spend $1k on a tutor or class to give yourself a shot at T14?

A little easier said than done unfortunately. I have taken almost every practice test over the past 2 years (literally) and cannot break 160. Just a bad standardized test taker (SAT 1400, ACT 28, GMAT 650, etc.). I've sat twice for the test and will retake it again in June. Long story short, I work three jobs right now and have zero time to study for a standardized test when I have much more important things in my personal life.

We'll see, but from what I can tell, GW, Duke and GULC see to all have similar career outcomes if you are interested in DC/NYC biglaw or judicial clerkships. I never received a grade lower than an A- my entire life, so I don't think I'll start slacking off now.

I completely understand having little time to study for the LSAT, having a lot of obligations, and pressing personal issues. I guess I have three main points:

(1) The school you go to matters A LOT. I don't think the data supports your assertion that GW has the same DC/NYC biglaw or clerkship outcomes as Duke or GULC. If you go to GW or W&M you should be absolutely aware that there is a HUGE difference in outcomes. They are all excellent schools, but in reality I believe the evidence shows that the opportunities afforded to graduates are markedly different.

(2) If you are interested in law as a long term career, and not just going to law school right now as an escape, then I think there is a tremendous amount of value in spending the time/money/effort to give yourself the best potential outcome. The way I see it you would be taking X amount of time or spending Y amount of money to at least give yourself a better shot at getting into the schools you ultimately want to attend. The LSAT is absolutely a learnable test, and as I'm sure you have seen on these boards a 10pt jump after taking a powerscore/testmasters course is absolutely achievable. And it is a known quantity, you aren't gambling six figures of debt on the hope that you will do better on the LSAT, as you are by going to a school hoping to crack the top 10% and transfer.

(3) Predicting future LS performance on past UG outcomes is an eminently risky proposition. And it certainly doesn't take "slacking off" to end up outside the top 10%. As tray wisely posted above, unless you are talking math/hard science/engineering/etc., I just don't believe there is much correlation between success in undergrad and LS. Even if there is some correlation, it still seems risky to base a decision to attend a certain school on the assumption that you will do just as well as in undergrad. This is especially true when that decision will both leave you in tremendous debt and dictate the general scope of your future career outcomes.

Bottom line, if you are completely happy graduating from GW or W&M you should go. If you are someone who is comfortable throwing caution to the wind and risking it big hoping to crack the top 10% and transfer, you should go. If not, I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to give yourself the best potential outcome.

aulburch wrote:

UCLAtransfer wrote:I would have to agree on both points. Unless you have already taken the LSAT 3 times you should give retaking some serious consideration.

In these situations you gotta think worst case scenario, and assume that you will not be able to transfer. It's not that GW and W&M are not great schools, but the difference in career possibilities between those schools and T14 really is pretty enormous, especially ITE. Just think, if you don't do well enough to transfer, will you be kicking yourself 3 years from now wondering why you didn't just spend $1k on a tutor or class to give yourself a shot at T14?

A little easier said than done unfortunately. I have taken almost every practice test over the past 2 years (literally) and cannot break 160. Just a bad standardized test taker (SAT 1400, ACT 28, GMAT 650, etc.). I've sat twice for the test and will retake it again in June. Long story short, I work three jobs right now and have zero time to study for a standardized test when I have much more important things in my personal life.

We'll see, but from what I can tell, GW, Duke and GULC see to all have similar career outcomes if you are interested in DC/NYC biglaw or judicial clerkships. I never received a grade lower than an A- my entire life, so I don't think I'll start slacking off now.

Well start retaking them then. And, in terms of law school admissions, the LSAT IS the most important thing.

And, like NR said, how is 1400 a bad SAT score? I got ~1200 and was still able to claw my way into the 99th%ile for the LSAT. The LSAT is highly learnable; you just have to find the time and energy to devote to it.

If you think you would be happy at GW though, then go to GW. If it was me though, I would find the time to study for the June test in hopes of getting off some WL's.

You probably have never been graded on a curve. I don't know many people at T-14 or even 25 law schools (like the ones you are talking about attending 1st year) who got a lot of Bs or even B+s before law school. Banking on being at the top of your class is risky (especially because the LSAT is still the top predictor of first-year success). If you applied late in the cycle this year I would consider reapplying at the beginning and going ED to one of your choices. The economy will probably be slightly better at the firms as well.

+1 on this.

1234567 wrote:You probably have never been graded on a curve. I don't know many people at T-14 or even 25 law schools (like the ones you are talking about attending 1st year) who got a lot of Bs or even B+s before law school. Banking on being at the top of your class is risky (especially because the LSAT is still the top predictor of first-year success). If you applied late in the cycle this year I would consider reapplying at the beginning and going ED to one of your choices. The economy will probably be slightly better at the firms as well.