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Do you think its necessary or proper (no pun intended*), to take a semester off to make sure you do OCI's with only 30 hrs....The situation is, Ive been accepted to SMU for transfer this spring, but if i go now, I will end up having 45 hrs by the time I do OCI instead of the usual 30...Also, I currently have a 4.0, and Im wondering if my grades will drop at SMU (from stcl), to where I should wait til Fall to transfer and interview with 30 hrs and a 4.0....hmmmm.....

Interviewer at OCI looking at your transcript: Why did you take the spring semester off?
You: ??

Do you have an answer for this? Unless you have one better than "I thought it would look better to you guys if I only had 30 hours," I wouldn't do it.

Do I understand correctly that you have taken 3 semesters of law school part time now? Are you transferring to SMU FT or PT? I think that all they care about at OCI when it comes to this issue is that you have 2 years of law school left when you are interviewing (e.g. you will be graduating in May 2015). If it's May 2015 you probably meet the check the box requirement there.

Also, it may be to your advantage to have a semester of (hopefully) good grades at your new school if you hope to find a large firm job at OCI. As I understand it, transfers to T2 schools don't generally land OCI jobs. Per NLJ, 10.29% of SMU grads are working in biglaw. I am guessing most of those spots are not going to someone who just transferred in; they are going to people who were in the top 15-20% or so at SMU, and in most cases are on LR. If you have a semester of top grades at SMU, you might be seen as someone in that latter category.

If you have a 4.0 at STCL, why are you not transferring to UT or T14?

Have not been accepted to UT yet...UT has to wait til all my grades from this semester are in, while SMU made an exception and accepted me based on the grades that I have now (which is 24 hrs so far graded, and waiting on other 2 class grades to come in which will be 30 hrs)....Not many other schools allowed spring transfers by the time I decided to transfer

Why do you need to do a Spring transfer? It seems from the premise of this thread that you can do a fall transfer.

You are right...that is the point of the thread...is it worth taking the semester off, so I could apply to transfer in fall!

outrageousresipsa wrote:You are right...that is the point of the thread...is it worth taking the semester off, so I could apply to transfer in fall!

Not to SMU