Transfer Chance Me - at T35 w/ Full Ride..... Or drop out? Forum

[northwood]

why give up a full tuition scholarship to pay sticker for 2 years? Best case scenario- you graduate, get a job and have 2 years worth of full price student loan debt+ cost of living that accrues interest daily. Worst case scenario- you graduate, have no job but still have the same amount of student loan debt that is accruing interest daily?

If you stay- you have time to get your grades up, graduate, get a job and not have to worry about 2 years worth of full price tuition student loan debt, and will have only the loans you take out for living expenses plus any prior student loan debt.

Drop out- what are your plans? do you have a job lined up? why did you go to law school in the first place?

IMO the choice is either stay or drop out, and I would only drop out if any when you have something lined up and you are sure you don't want to finish.

[Johann]

Yeah right now your risk is next to nothing. I don't know why you would increase your risk so much for any of the schools that don't really provide a great biglaw chance. If you could transfer to T6 I'd say maybe do it. Your URM status is the same at your T35 or wherever you transfer. I wouldn't rule out biglaw with URM status shitty GPA and T35. My TTT in the height of the recession had URM summer associate programs. URMs without great grades were the only SAs our school had. Talk to career services and see if there is any of those URM programs or anything. Mass mail like crazy. Study. Biglaw isnt out of the question yet and if you fail to get biglaw, youre still set up for good jobs with no debt and youll live like you would if you were biglaw and in sticker debt at the T20.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I suppose I was hoping that my URM status, unique W/E, and the added prestige of attending a T20 would put me in a better situation.

I know people have said this, but: going trom T35 to T20 does not net you any increased prestige. Outside of truly national schools (potentially T14, though people debate Georgetown and even higher ranked schools), there is no rankings prestige. It depends where you want to work and how people in that region view your school.

[chuckbass]

It seems like the major advantage of transferring to a T14 is the lottery system for OCI, and how this puts you in front of more employers/employers that wouldn't have previously looked at you. Transferring up a little but not into the T14 won't help in this regard, because you probably won't get any preselects.

[Anonymous User]

Thank you for this last round of replies. They are far more encouraging. Will be sure to take all of your advice into consideration.

[XxSpyKEx]

you would be better off paying someone 10k to mass mail for your and save the 90k

Are t20s really only $30k /year for tuition, where you can get out after two years with only $100k in debt (including cost of living, books, interest, etc.)? Cost of attendance at most t14s (at sticker) is more like $70-80k /year, so $100k for two years with interest sounds really low.

And your resume will say

WUSTL Law -- JD Candidate 2017
GPA 3.30

T40 Law School
Transferred to WUSTL after first year 2014-15

Sure, you can omit the GPA from the first school and include it from the second school, but if you do that, what do you think the first question they're going to ask is?

(And that assumes they're not an employer that requires transcripts to accompany an application).

Actually, it wouldn't. OP wouldn't have any grades from WUSTL during OCI, which getting biglaw seems to be his entire purpose of transferring.

Honestly, OP, your best bet is to stay put, and only because you have a full scholarship (otherwise, it would be worth considering dropping out). Paying sticker for 2 years at a t20 (assuming you could even transfer to a t20 with your grades--unlikely) is a terrible idea. You're basically going to wind up with around $150k in debt and no biglaw. At least with your current situation you can try to get some legal job that pays you $60k /year and be fine since you won't have debt; whereas, that $60k /year is not going to cut it with loan payments on $150k in debt (again, you're not going to get biglaw with your law school and grades, which is all biglaw firms are going to see during your OCI).

TL;DR

-Employers at OCI (at least at my CCN) requested 1L transcripts from all transfers
-Don't transfer. Your gpa is not high enough to justify the move.
-You're median at a T35 with a full ride. Get off the forums and go study. 3.0 + 4.0 / 2 = 3.5, which puts you in decent shape for OCI.

Lol, it would be extremely impressive if someone who got a 3.0 GPA their first semester got a 4.0 their second semester. Crazy thing is that a 3.5 from a t35 will mostly likely still strike out (3.5 is what, top 1/3 at these schools at best? You need better than top 1/3 for biglaw from a t35). I think biglaw is probably out, but OP could get other things that would still be reasonable outcome relative to waiting tables at Denny's since he's got that full scholarship going for him.

EDIT- okay, missed that OP is an URM. So if he really gets his grades up, he has some chance at biglaw, but probably still not a great one.

[BVest]

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