Top Law Schools

so im at a top 30ish school looking to transfer to davis for personal reasons. i know a lot of u will say its crazy but im not looking to do ocis really bc i want to go into public interest stuff and really want to be back in cali (where im from and im working this summer RIGHT around davis). my grades dropped this term, to like 20-25%ish. what are my chances at davis? they say top 5-10% but i know this is basically a lateral transfer.

clarebear726 wrote:so im at a top 30ish school looking to transfer to davis for personal reasons. i know a lot of u will say its crazy but im not looking to do ocis really bc i want to go into public interest stuff and really want to be back in cali (where im from and im working this summer RIGHT around davis). my grades dropped this term, to like 20-25%ish. what are my chances at davis? they say top 5-10% but i know this is basically a lateral transfer.

I'd say you have pretty good chances. Forgive me if there are app deadline issues with this suggestion, but why not shoot for berkeley? it's relatively close to Davis, your job prospects would be much improved, especially for public interest, and they may bite, especially if you play up the public interest stuff in your personal statement.

yea i missed their super early deadline cause my grades just came out. also berkeley u have to be like top 5%. im just hoping davis recognizes the rank of the school im coming from... fingers crossed !!

clarebear726 wrote:yea i missed their super early deadline cause my grades just came out. also berkeley u have to be like top 5%. im just hoping davis recognizes the rank of the school im coming from... fingers crossed !!

I'm sure you know about transfer chances from your particular school better than I do, but if you're top 20%ish from a top-30 school and you'd be a good match for Berkeley (which they definitely care more about than almost any other school), it might be worth sending an email to their admissions office just to ask if you could send an application in... nothing to lose, right? If you acknowledge that you're late and that they've already begun sending some acceptances, maybe a promise to get the app in the next day coupled with a decent excuse for being late will let you send an app in. Never know.

More generally, whatever schools say about what rank transfer applicants must have is conditioned by their school rank. Basically everyone in my transfer class at Stanford was #1 or #2 in their class at their previous school. Coming from CCN though, I definitely was not. Transfer chances are definitely a combination of rank and school rank, not purely class rank. If it were otherwise, you'd see way more T14s taking transfers who were #1/#2 at a TTT instead of top 5% types at lower T1s/T2s. I'd give you very good chances of making a lateral transfer to Davis if you're in the top quarter of your class. Why would they pass someone up who is significantly above average at a peer school? It would definitely add to the strength of their class.

Good luck.