Top Law Schools

Hi,
I'm a 1L at St. Johns. My first semester GPA was a 3.65. Although the rankings haven't come out yet, people have told me to expect top 15%, possibly even top 12% if I'm lucky. Do I have any shot at transferring into Columbia or NYU. In the alternative, do I have a shot at Fordham? Would Fordham be worth it? Right now I am on a partial scholarship at St. Johns - but not enough to keep me here if I can get into a better school. As for my career goals - I'm not really sure what I want to do, but my goal right now is to set myself up for the greatest possibilities, even NY BigLaw, so that I can leave as many options open as possible. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

Fordham apparently does not allow transfer students to participate in OCI. If you want biglaw, I would discourage transferring to Fordham.

Schools allegedly give some (read: not much) preference to those students who are geographically close, so your location at St. John's is a plus. My impression from this forum is that it's not going to be enough to get you in to CCN with top 12% grades, though. I admittedly don't know a great deal about either St. John's or CCN, so I'll defer to others on this one.

patrickd139 wrote:Fordham apparently does not allow transfer students to participate in OCI. If you want biglaw, I would discourage transferring to Fordham.

Incorrect. Due to scheduling, transfers cannot participate in EIW (early interview week,) but they are not excluded from the OCI process.

However, from what I've heard, most BigLaw firms come to the EIW, so your second sentence may be more accurate.

Jabramo3 wrote:Hi,
I'm a 1L at St. Johns. My first semester GPA was a 3.65. Although the rankings haven't come out yet, people have told me to expect top 15%, possibly even top 12% if I'm lucky. Do I have any shot at transferring into Columbia or NYU. In the alternative, do I have a shot at Fordham? Would Fordham be worth it? Right now I am on a partial scholarship at St. Johns - but not enough to keep me here if I can get into a better school. As for my career goals - I'm not really sure what I want to do, but my goal right now is to set myself up for the greatest possibilities, even NY BigLaw, so that I can leave as many options open as possible. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

What's the curve at SJU? I would think 3.65 would be higher than top 15%.

Top 15% from SJU is very unlikely to be enough for CN. However, it could be enough to squeak into a lower T14, depending on your geographic flexibility (and, to be clear, it would be a very prudent course to take unless you have substantial scholarship aid at the moment).

ndirish2010 wrote:

Jabramo3 wrote:Hi,
I'm a 1L at St. Johns. My first semester GPA was a 3.65. Although the rankings haven't come out yet, people have told me to expect top 15%, possibly even top 12% if I'm lucky. Do I have any shot at transferring into Columbia or NYU. In the alternative, do I have a shot at Fordham? Would Fordham be worth it? Right now I am on a partial scholarship at St. Johns - but not enough to keep me here if I can get into a better school. As for my career goals - I'm not really sure what I want to do, but my goal right now is to set myself up for the greatest possibilities, even NY BigLaw, so that I can leave as many options open as possible. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

What's the curve at SJU? I would think 3.65 would be higher than top 15%.

The mean is 3.30 - so I'm not sure where that will leave me.