Top Law Schools

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If you have legit reasons, I think you're good.

vanwinkle wrote:If you have legit reasons, I think you're good.

even if i fall to top 20%? Where do you think the cutoff would be? Thanks for your opinion

Transferring is pretty black box...but with top 20% and your compelling reasons...probably yes.

maf70 wrote:Transferring is pretty black box...but with top 20% and your compelling reasons...probably yes.

TCR. I hope you get it - tough to have serious family illnesses. Good luck.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm bumping this because I threw in a poll just to get an idea of what people are thinking the threshold is for me.

How many transfers does Stanford typically accept ? Any recent years in which no transfers have been admitted to Stanford ?

CanadianWolf wrote:How many transfers does Stanford typically accept ? Any recent years in which no transfers have been admitted to Stanford ?

based on my understanding Stanford's transfer class is usually somewhere between 10-15. This year's 1L class is about normal size from what I hear, so this transfer class will probably be about average.

bump. selfishly trying to get a few more votes in the poll. thanks everyone!

I wouldn't put too much weight on the results of your poll. I think top 10% and you're very likely in, and lower than top 30% and you're likely out, but between that it's a total black-box.

Edit: FWIW, I voted top 25%

zomginternets wrote:I wouldn't put too much weight on the results of your poll. I think top 10% and you're very likely in, and lower than top 30% and you're likely out, but between that it's a total black-box.

Edit: FWIW, I voted top 25%

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's definitely difficult to know what I need to get in, and I'm certainly not taking the poll results as the definitive statement on what I need. I just wanted some way of aggregating people's opinions on the issue to get a sense for what people are thinking. Thanks for voting, I'll try to remember after this is over to come back and let people know how my situation turns out (class rank and whether or not I got in). There's just so little data on this stuff, especially between schools near the top. It seems like if you're outside the T14 and want Stanford, you need to be top 1% or 5% and then just hope, whereas at a school like CCN it might be more strictly based on class rank since they are more peer schools.

It probably also depends in part on how many people from your school are applying to Stanford. I bet that Stanford doesn't want to admit more than 2 or 3 people from NYU or wherever it is you go to school.

BTW, I think schools take family illnesses as a reason more seriously when someone is attempting to transfer to a peer or lower ranked school. Berkeley might take that reason more seriously, and if you need to be the Bay Area because of serious family illnesses, you should also apply to Berkeley or even Hastings as well. If you "only want Stanford," then the personal issues are probably secondary to prestige, perceived improvement in legal opportunities, etc.

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cornellbeez wrote:I know a couple people who transferred from different MVPB schools to Stanford with top 1/3 grades, ties to CA (one was a Boaltie), and good recs. Someone told me that letters of recommendation are particularly important for these types of transfers. If you are able to get good letters, I think you have a great shot because your grades are better than theirs. Good luck!

pm'd you.

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It seems that geographic and family reasons are "compelling," and that rank-whoring or anything that could be construed as rank whoring is "not compelling" (unless you can specifically tie in demonstrable goals with specific programs that the law school has to offer).

My intuition is that "compelling reason" is a really high threshold, especially for non-family reasons. It needs more than "this school has a great program in the field that I'm interested in".. my guess is that they want to think you're interested in doing something really unique and original (which you can demonstrate through previous experience that you are interested in) which can only be accomplished with the resources that their school has to offer. Maybe you can convince them you're interested in a very specific/unique/original research area, and that Stanford is the only place with the academic environment necessary to understand it.

I think it doesn't take much to call bullshit on any school particular school being the "only place" where a student can understand a particular legal topic.