Transfer PS and Chances Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hey guys,

I was looking to transfer out of the University of Hawai'i after this semester, and was wondering if my potential PS topic was okay. I was considering writing about how I've never left Hawai'i for more than a week at a time (did all my schooling in Hawai'i) and I feel that I need to become more independent and explore a little more. Is this topic too impersonal to the schools that I'll be applying for? Should I try to put a spin on it by adjusting for specific schools and why I'm interested in them? Or should I just change my topic altogether?

Additionally, because Hawai'i is probably the most regional school in the US, might that affect my chances of transfer? Another thing that worried me was that UH's rank dropped from 80 to ~100. Does this make any difference?

Thanks for any and all help.

[sap]

I'd say that your PS needs to be a bit more law related generally, and that you should probably personalize it more for each school (I did for each of mine) - they're only 2 pages, and personalization takes like 20 minutes per statement. There's really no excuse for not doing it given the minimal time commitment.

As far as 80->100, nobody will really care for a drop of that size.

[Anonymous User]

I'd say that your PS needs to be a bit more law related generally, and that you should probably personalize it more for each school (I did for each of mine) - they're only 2 pages, and personalization takes like 20 minutes per statement. There's really no excuse for not doing it given the minimal time commitment.

As far as 80->100, nobody will really care for a drop of that size.

OP here.

Thanks for your help.

Would employment prospects and an interest in clerking be appropriate topics, then?

I was just worried about the rank, as well, because I know school rank and class rank are pretty important, and I keep seeing people posting stuff like "low t2" or "mid t2" in their transfer chances threads.

[sap]

I transferred from a school that's a T4 now to a T14 last year. So low T2 is fine, as long as you have top 5-10% grades (depending on where you're aiming in the T14).

Honestly, clerkship and employment chances are fine, but I'd still aim for something more inspirational than that. I talked about why SF/SV was such a good placement for me personally, my lifelong commitment to emerging technologies and the law, etc. My roommate, I think, talked about how she cares so much about women and how so many inspirational game-changers in discrimination law have come from our current school.

You should talk about career aspirations generally, probably, and how those fit in with the chosen school. This is obviously a lot easier if you have an issue-related career aspiration (like gender discrimination law or digital rights or IP or energy policy or whatever), but it can work with corporate law as well or whatever else you want to do.

Talking generally about wanting a clerkship doesn't quite work. Transfer schools aren't interested in what they can do for you - they're interested in what you can do for them, which is pay sticker while boosting their employment ratings. They want students who will be employable after graduation, which usually means competitive at OCI. You have to sell yourself as someone who is interesting to employers, and employers want to know things like "why IP?" (I had an interview with the managing partner at one firm that brought me a 150 page patent and said, "here, read this page of the spec... this stuff is tedious! why the hell do you want to do this?") or "why transactional work?"

You should also have some stuff in there generally about what makes you interesting, and you can definitely throw the stuff about being world-curious and having an insular life on the island making you driven and curious or however you were planning to sell that, but having some law-specific things about why you're interested in law school, and why you're a good fit for the law school you're applying to, is what they're probably looking for. So hit 3 points - why you're cool, why you are at law school generally, and why [x] is the bestest most awesome place for that. You didn't go to law school to become a federal clerk (probably? There are such things as career clerks). And most students looking to transfer are doing it because they want to improve their employment and/or clerkship prospects. You should try to be more unique than that.

That said, your p.s. is basically an idiot check. Is this person capable of writing an interesting two-page essay that's free of errors. They aren't using the P.S. as a tiebreaker the way they are for first-round admissions... they're not getting a bunch of identical applicants with identical scores. They're getting applicants that are distinguishable numerically. Nobody else is going to have the same GPA from the same school. Numbers mean a lot more on the transfer apps than on your regular apps, because schools simply aren't in a situation where they have 10 applicants with the same stats.