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Forgive me if this has been asked before, But how much does Undergrad GPA matter in law school transfer decisions? Follow up question if they do, Does a strong upward trend make up for a bad 1st semester in college?

uGPA and LSAT are typically unimportant for transfers. There is a small caveat if you are transferring into a school outside of the T-14. The reason that they typically don't matter is that they don't have to be reported, and therefore don't factor into rankings (or show up on 509 reports n' stuff)...however...they might be looked at if particularly low, as schools want to make sure their transfers in are capable of passing the bar.

As for upward trend...anytime uGPA is relevant, trend is probably a good thing. That being said, it is quite unlikely that uGPA will be considered.

Thank You for the quick reply! What if we are looking at a T14 school? My dream school is Stanford.

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sublime wrote:

CardinalAmbition wrote:Thank You for the quick reply! What if we are looking at a T14 school? My dream school is Stanford.

You probably aren't going to transfer to Stanford.

If anything, Harvard is more likely.

Agreed. In any case, you're getting a little bit ahead of yourself.

At any T14 school outside of YS, your uGPA probably won't matter at all. At Y, and S to some extent, conventional wisdom is that your application is viewed as if you're a first time applicant...so your uGPA may play a larger role.

But before you begin worrying about what schools care about what, focus on grades. I assume that you're a 1L, but this also applies if you're a 0L...schools are going to care most about 1) Your 1L institution, and 2) Your grades at that institution. If you're a 1L, then your 1L school is already determined...the only thing you have control over is your grades.

I think it was Arrow who set up a guide to transferring. Consider looking it up if transferring really interests you. While it's much more of a black box than regular admissions, the author of that article gave some cutoffs for grades needed to transfer into certain schools, as well as a rough guide as to how many transfers each school in the T14 accepts each year.

Thank You very much yet again. What makes you say Harvard and not Stanford?

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I know of one transfer to S, but it was from Berkeley.

The only thing that matters is your 1L grades. No one cares about your undergraduate grades. Nor do they care about anything else in undergrad, unless it wound you up in jail.

CardinalAmbition wrote:Thank You very much yet again. What makes you say Harvard and not Stanford?

I had a professor who at one time was working in admissions at Stanford. He told me that year they only accepted about 10 students as transfers. What this means is that if all the #1 students around the country applied, Stanford rejected most of THOSE students. That's why Stanford is beyond a long shot.