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Hi,

I am currently a student at South Texas College of Law. I finished my first semester in the top 3%. Assuming I can maintain this, what kind of chances do I have to transfer into UT? I have a very average undergrad GPA and LSAT, but I am a URM (which I know doesn't help much at this point) and have pretty decent softs. Any thoughts?

Anonymous User wrote:I am currently a student at South Texas College of Law. I finished my first semester in the top 3%. Assuming I can maintain this, what kind of chances do I have to transfer into UT? I have a very average undergrad GPA and LSAT, but I am a URM (which I know doesn't help much at this point) and have pretty decent softs. Any thoughts?

You probably have a pretty decent shot. Their 2016 1L class was 20 larger than their 2015 class (the transfer class for 2015 was about 60 students, or about 20% of the class), but still well below previous years. The largest block among the 2015 transfers appears to be from St. Mary's. Your uGPA and LSAT don't matter anymore (that's the whole point of taking transfers as opposed to admitting people with less than stellar GPA/LSAT for their 1L class). As for the rest, it will be a transfer app, so it's kind of a black box there.

Awesome info man, thanks. I wasn't sure how much they look into undergrad grades and LSAT scores because on the transfer info website it states as a requirement that you could have been accepted as a 1L (or something along those lines). Also wasn't sure how many students that take from T3 and T4 schools. Hoping I have a fighting chance!

2.2 for uGPA and "have attained . . . Law School Admission Test scores that generally meet the standard currently applicable for admission to the Law School as a first-year student"

They've accepted at least down to 155 for 1L recently and down to 2.6 GPA. But trust me, they go lower than 2.6 on transfers, so they likely also go below 155 on LSAT.

That's awesome to hear. Now I just have to take all the pressure of repeating on my second semester, but i'm hoping I can at least get the conditional acceptance before the semester ends to give me some more motivation.

They might actually be serious about conditional admission this year. They didn't seem to be previously. I see that this year's application is already online. Last year they specifically stated that the app would not be available until May 1 (and they meant it), so I don't know that they did a lot of conditional admission, since they could just wait a few weeks and actually have grades. Many of the transfers for 2015 did not hear back until too late for OCI (bids were due around July 12).

That said, they can also make quick decisions. For me the acceptance was dated the day after they received my transcript and letter of standing from my school (which was about 10 days after I got and forwarded spring grades).

You are good if you stay top 10%. That seems to be the cutoff for tier 3 schools. I was top 5.5% at a comparable school and got in and another person from my school ranked a little lower got in as well.
It also kind of depends on how large their frosh class is this year as well. In my cycle, they seemed happy to take pretty much anyone from tier 3 in the top 10% and why not? They get a good student who will pay full price to attend. If you stay in top 5%, my feeling is that you are a lock and you could probably get into GTown as well...I got into GTown with a bit lesser stats.