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EDIT: Thanks for all helpful responses. Decided not to go with addendum.

Based on this absurd thread, perhaps your sense of self-entitlement showed through in your personal statement. You can stand in line behind the other several thousand people rejected from Harvard every year despite strong letters, grades, and a self-professed love of 'the academy.'

You have got to be kidding. First of all, Harvard doesn't have a WL for transfers, and many applicants with excellent credentials got dinged a couple of weeks ago, so you made it further into the process than a lot of others. Secondly, I only recall one person from a school ranker lower than 40 get into H this year. Since you only said you are T1, I am going to assume you are at a 40-50 school. If that's the case, your stats aren't really that great compared to who was actually accepted.

Troll? If not, then lolz.

If you made law review after you applied and didn't tell the schools, you should tell them.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:Never mind; mods please delete this thread. Thanks.

Hahaha. TLS is sould crushing.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:Never mind; mods please delete this thread. Thanks.

I have a friend who was #2 at 55 - 65 ranked school and he was all but autorejected at Harvard. Unfortunately competition to get into Harvard is tough and they have a ton of qualified candidates from T30 schools, and its very difficult to get in beyond that threshhold. I know of one person from a T60 getting in, but he was #1 in his class.

Thanks, Sunynp, for the one helpful response. Contrary to what psamp says, I do not have a sense of "entitlement," but after re-reading my post I understand how I came across that way and I apologize. I'm just disappointed.

In fact, I told many people (and not just friends, but law professors, lawyers, etc.) that I believed I had quite a small chance of acceptance to HYS, and in response to this I was repeatedly and consistently told otherwise. In fact, several posters on TLS advised me likewise in a previous thread some time ago. So, I would argue that my expectations were largely fueled more by misleading encouragement from others rather than self-delusion. But the best thing for now is probably to just delete this thread.

Thanks again.

sunynp wrote:If you made law review after you applied and didn't tell the schools, you should tell them.

Thanks. Honestly, that was also my initial impression a couple months ago. But after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C -- and not just from friends and family, but from law school professors, staff, and, yes, TLS posters -- I guess I just allowed my expectations to inflate.

Total Litigator wrote:

Jacques_Bentley wrote:Never mind; mods please delete this thread. Thanks.

I have a friend who was #2 at 55 - 65 ranked school and he was all but autorejected at Harvard. Unfortunately competition to get into Harvard is tough and they have a ton of qualified candidates from T30 schools, and its very difficult to get in beyond that threshhold. I know of one person from a T60 getting in, but he was #1 in his class.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:but from law school professors, staff, and, yes, TLS posters -- I guess I just allowed my expectations to inflate.

You roped law school staff into your pointless life? Leave them alone. They're outside of the law bubble and better off for it.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C

This is kind of silly. It's probably not an unreasonable statement, except that if you only get into one, there is probably a 98% chance is it CLS. There is a huge chasm between HLS and CLS for the purposes of transferring. CLS takes more than twice as many transfers, and you are not competing with a large number of applicants from the lower T14, as with H, so it's a different ballgame. If you get dinged from CLS, then you'd be within your rights to ask what you did wrong, since plenty of people with lower credentials have already been admitted.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:Thanks. Honestly, that was also my initial impression a couple months ago. But after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C -- and not just from friends and family, but from law school professors, staff, and, yes, TLS posters -- I guess I just allowed my expectations to inflate.

Total Litigator wrote:

Jacques_Bentley wrote:Never mind; mods please delete this thread. Thanks.

I have a friend who was #2 at 55 - 65 ranked school and he was all but autorejected at Harvard. Unfortunately competition to get into Harvard is tough and they have a ton of qualified candidates from T30 schools, and its very difficult to get in beyond that threshhold. I know of one person from a T60 getting in, but he was #1 in his class.

You were absolutely a candidate, no doubt about that. Your outcome is unfortunate but not unwarranted. However, #2 at a T50 is an amazing acomplishment. I would say, unless you messed up your applications or Columbia is changing their transfer policy, you are 90% for Columbia. Stanford is a possibility and Yale is a big stretch.

Nvm.

Wholigan wrote:

Jacques_Bentley wrote:after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C

This is kind of silly. It's probably not an unreasonable statement, except that if you only get into one, there is probably a 98% chance is it CLS. There is a huge chasm between HLS and CLS for the purposes of transferring. CLS takes more than twice as many transfers, and you are not competing with a large number of applicants from the lower T14, as with H, so it's a different ballgame. If you get dinged from CLS, then you'd be within your rights to ask what you did wrong, since plenty of people with lower credentials have already been admitted.

Well, Wholigan, it may indeed be "silly." In that case, a whole lot of apparently informed people have repeated the same "silliness" to me!

Jacques_Bentley wrote:

Wholigan wrote:

Jacques_Bentley wrote:after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C

This is kind of silly. It's probably not an unreasonable statement, except that if you only get into one, there is probably a 98% chance is it CLS. There is a huge chasm between HLS and CLS for the purposes of transferring. CLS takes more than twice as many transfers, and you are not competing with a large number of applicants from the lower T14, as with H, so it's a different ballgame. If you get dinged from CLS, then you'd be within your rights to ask what you did wrong, since plenty of people with lower credentials have already been admitted.

Well, Wholigan, it may indeed be "silly." In that case, a whole lot of apparently informed people have repeated the same "silliness" to me!

Fair enough. I think transferring has become much more competitive the last few years, so profs and adminstrators may be basing this on students they know who transferred several years back. I too received information I believe was unrealistically optimistic from at least one professor. To clarify, I didn't mean it was "silly" to think you had a chance at H. You were probably under serious consideration, as evidenced by only being rejected today. I mean it is "silly" to classify "HYS/C" as one group, as if your chances are somewhat similar at each of them.

I'm by no means a transfer expert, but to answer your new question, your LSAT score should be virtually irrelevant as a transfer. At least, so says everything I've read on this board.

Wholigan wrote: Fair enough. I think transferring has become much more competitive the last few years, so profs and adminstrators may be basing this on students they know who transferred several years back.

Yes, I think this is probably right.

Wholigan wrote: To clarify, I didn't mean it was "silly" to think you had a chance at H. You were probably under serious consideration, as evidenced by only being rejected today. I mean it is "silly" to classify "HYS/C" as one group, as if your chances are somewhat similar at each of them.

I do think that the late completion of my transfer file at H really hurt me, but yes, I understand that HYS is quite harder to get into than C (and even within HYS, Y and S are harder than H due to smaller class sizes).

Though you have to admit that it's idiotic to imply that there are "several thousand" transfer candidates with my credentials and that my expectations were totally "absurd." (Not saying that you did this, but another poster in the thread did). I mean, I certainly don't expect that I'm a likely admit for Y or S (and I never did), but I definitely think I have a credible chance of getting one of them.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:In fact, I told many people (and not just friends, but law professors, lawyers, etc.) that I believed I had quite a small chance of acceptance to HYS, and in response to this I was repeatedly and consistently told otherwise. In fact, several posters on TLS advised me likewise in a previous thread some time ago. So, I would argue that my expectations were largely fueled more by misleading encouragement from others rather than self-delusion.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:But after months of repeatedly hearing that I was a "lock" for at least one of HYS/C -- and not just from friends and family, but from law school professors, staff, and, yes, TLS posters -- I guess I just allowed my expectations to inflate.

These things bothered me when I saw them. Your numbers sounded good enough to be worthy of applications, but not actually for people to say you were a "lock". So I went back and looked at your older threads. These are all of the serious responses you received on TLS:

ToTransferOrNot wrote:Y is always a black box, but you certainly have a very good chance at H, and would be a fool to not apply. You should also apply to Columbia (and Chicago, in my view, if you're serious about transfering).

And, you really should send in an application to Stanford. It's $85. Even if you don't think you would go if you got in, at least give yourself the choice to choose between Stanford and Columbia, if you get dinged at HY.

D.Wilde wrote:Definitely throw an app at Harvard. Nothing's for sure, but you're certainly within the range of past transfers who have been admitted.

Verity wrote:I'd say your a lock on at least once of HY & C. You'd probably get Penn easy.

Well, okay, Verity did say that "your a lock", but that's Verity, and even he included CLS in there. Otherwise... The opinions were encouraging, but certainly reasonable.

And I mean, that's three responses, total, telling you that applying to H is a good idea. One of them bluntly said that nothing was certain, and the one indicating you'd be a fool not to apply to H also suggested backup plans since you could get dinged there. None of this sounds like people on TLS repeatedly and consistently telling you that you were a lock for H, or that a rejection would be incomprehensible.

vanwinkle wrote: Well, okay, Verity did say that "your a lock", but that's Verity, and even he included CLS in there. Otherwise... The opinions were encouraging, but certainly reasonable.

And I mean, that's three responses, total, telling you that applying to H is a good idea. One of them bluntly said that nothing was certain, and the one indicating you'd be a fool not to apply to H also suggested backup plans since you could get dinged there. None of this sounds like people on TLS repeatedly and consistently telling you that you were a lock for H, or that a rejection would be incomprehensible.

In addition to TLS, I received a lot of feedback from law profs, a dean, and friends who are in law, and I didn't
remember exactly who said what. (I never claimed that anyone at TLS said I'm a lock for HYS, though.).

But you're absolutely right, and had I re-read that TLS thread I would have moderated my language a bit.

Mainly, I just allowed myself to get drawn into being defensive in responding to the few posters in this thread who were making insulting and often downright stupid assertions like how there are "several thousand" transfer applicants that were as good as me, my post was "absurd" etc. I was pointing out that it was not unreasonable to have been optimistic, nor to be disappointed at rejection.

I can see how some might have read my original post as exhibiting an attitude of "self-entitlement," but that was not my intention. I NEVER thought I was an absolute "lock" for Harvard -- that would be foolish.

The point of this thread was simply to help ascertain whether there was something wrong in my application that I could still fix to improve my chances (even slightly) for the remaining schools. I shouldn't have allowed it to get sidetracked by responding to trolls. I've already received a few helpful posts/pms suggesting a LOCI to update my file with law review, which I've done. And decided against an LSAT addendum. So thanks to all the helpful, non-trolling TLSers who replied.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:I can see how some might have read my original post as exhibiting an attitude of "self-entitlement," but that was not my intention. I NEVER thought I was an absolute "lock" for Harvard -- that would be foolish.

Okay. I can see that now.

Jacques_Bentley wrote:The point of this thread was simply to help ascertain whether there was something wrong in my application that I could still fix to improve my chances (even slightly) for the remaining schools. I shouldn't have allowed it to get sidetracked by responding to trolls. I've already received a few helpful posts/pms suggesting a LOCI to update my file with law review, which I've done. And decided against an LSAT addendum. So thanks to all the helpful, non-trolling TLSers who replied.

Sounds like you have gotten some actually useful advice. Really, though, keep in mind that you may not need to do anything to improve your chances at the remaining schools. It could be that your application as it stands is good enough to get you into CLS, even if it wasn't enough for HLS this year. (Adding the LR invitation will likely help, though.)

Good luck, and just try to keep a level head no matter what happens. You're still in a good position at your current school, even if you don't end up transferring.

vanwinkle wrote: Sounds like you have gotten some actually useful advice. Really, though, keep in mind that you may not need to do anything to improve your chances at the remaining schools. It could be that your application as it stands is good enough to get you into CLS, even if it wasn't enough for HLS this year. (Adding the LR invitation will likely help, though.)

Good luck, and just try to keep a level head no matter what happens. You're still in a good position at your current school, even if you don't end up transferring.

Thank you! And I agree, I am very happy at my current school and would have no problem at all staying here. It would bruise my ego to get 0 out of 4, but I'd get over it.