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Top 15% of my class, could get into top 10% after this semester's grades...maybe

Only immediate goal after graduation is federal appellate clerkship. I could take a district clerkship and move up, but it'd be cool to not do that. Not entirely sure about the future after that... I could do biglaw, but I dunno if its a good fit for me personally. Academia is appealing, but I never thought about it before coming to school.

My main reluctance to transfer is that I have good relationships with my professors. I'm certain they'd write glowing LORs for me if I asked, but I'd prefer to stay and be around them. That being said, the federal clerkship numbers at yale and stanford are intimidating. Also, I've been told that if I want any legitimate shot at academia, I need to probably kick it up.

Any advice regarding clerkship opportunities and the implications for a possible career in academia if I stay where I am would be awesome.

Although this is obviously speculative, my professors have told me I should get on law review no problem...I'm not so sure about that, but for the sake of argument, maybe orient advice around the assumption that I'll be top 15% and on LR if I stay put?

Thank you for the wisdom.

Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

Possible to transfer to Harvard with your current ranking, unlikely at Stanford or Yale due to the small number of transfers accepted.

rpupkin wrote:Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

Totally. We'd call ourselves 'GULC/Yale/Harvard' obviously.

Idk about UT but top 15% is definitely not safe for LR at Vandy. Grading on requires slightly better than top 10%, and getting in the top 16 write-on scores is a crapshoot.

Academia is largely a flame for transfers. If you had the credentials to have a shot, you'd probably already be at HYS.

Top 10%/LR at UT/Vandy is not a safe place to be for COA clerkships. If you really want one, doing a district court and then applying for COA is the more likely route, or doing it as an alum.

rpupkin wrote:Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

I actually think the poster is at GULC due to the anti-ranking policies at UT/Vandy that would preclude such precise rank identification.

BVest wrote:

rpupkin wrote:Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

I actually think the poster is at GULC due to the anti-ranking policies at UT/Vandy that would preclude such precise rank identification.

Really? Not sure about Vandy, but I've definitely seen UT resumes that listed class rank (e.g., top 5%, top 10%). Were the students lying?

They are not supposed to do that. We are told the medIan and 75th percentile GPA so you can obviously figure out where you are, but your resume can only indicate what the top 25% GPA is.

You're probably not getting a COA clerkship if you stay. And you're probably not getting one if you transfer to Harvard either. And at this point there are really only two things that will get you a real shot at academia: (1) publishing multiple high quality articles in good journals; or (2) getting a ph.d from a from a highly regarded school, and writing a great dissertation in the process.

GULC only has top 5, 10, and 33 percentiles officially I believe. Pretty sure 15 ain't in that set but this could be an approximation or self-determined number.

rpupkin wrote:

BVest wrote:

rpupkin wrote:Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

I actually think the poster is at GULC due to the anti-ranking policies at UT/Vandy that would preclude such precise rank identification.

Really? Not sure about Vandy, but I've definitely seen UT resumes that listed class rank (e.g., top 5%, top 10%). Were the students lying?

Upon graduation, honors would tell you if you were top 1% (highest honors), 5% (high honors), 10% (coif) or 35% (honors), but without an extrapolation, I'm not aware of anything that would tell you anything more precise than 25% prior to graduation. And that 10% coif GPA is certainly higher than whatever GPA would be 10% after 1L, after a couple years of some off-the-curve/normalized curve classes.

zombie mcavoy wrote:They are not supposed to do that. We are told the medIan and 75th percentile GPA so you can obviously figure out where you are, but your resume can only indicate what the top 25% GPA is.

I was under the impression you couldn't even indicate what the top 25% is. None of the sample resumes from CSO does it (although the transfer sample includes the percentage from the prior school).

It is the policy of The University of Texas School of Law not to rank its students on the basis of academic standing.
Therefore, students may not estimate class standing or indicate a percentile ranking on their resumes, cover letters
or application materials.

I suppose by listing the 25 % cutoff we are, in a sense, "indicating" what our rankings are, but I don't think that's what they are trying to prevent.

BVest wrote:

It is the policy of The University of Texas School of Law not to rank its students on the basis of academic standing.
Therefore, students may not estimate class standing or indicate a percentile ranking on their resumes, cover letters
or application materials.

I interpreted that as them barring us from estimating anything on our own, but using their provided 25%/50% cutoff was fine.

I've also had multiple CSO meetings where they looked at my resume and didn't mention that I shouldn't be using the top 25% cutoff.

rpupkin wrote:

BVest wrote:

rpupkin wrote:Everyone knows you're at UT or Vandy because no GULC student would create a "G/UT/Vandy" tier. You should just say your specific school because it actually matters to the question you're asking.

I actually think the poster is at GULC due to the anti-ranking policies at UT/Vandy that would preclude such precise rank identification.

Really? Not sure about Vandy, but I've definitely seen UT resumes that listed class rank (e.g., top 5%, top 10%). Were the students lying?

You can also indicate if you are Chancellor's, which means you are in the top 16 students. They also rank you w/in the Chancellor's with funky names like Order of the Peregrinus. But Chancellor's is only based on 1L and 2L GPA afaik.

Anyway, you can't grade onto TLR either. So top 15% could make it, but even top 10% isn't guaranteed. It's some secret formula.

just answering the title question - anecedotally, people w/ better grades at a higher ranked school didn't get H as a transfer. top 1-3% got Y but no S in my class. not trying to be mean but i don't think you'll swing H even at top 10%

I always just listed my GPA. I think some out of state employers assumed I had a higher class ranking than I did.

arklaw13 wrote: Academia is largely a flame for transfers. If you had the credentials to have a shot, you'd probably already be at HYS.

This is a little off. How would OP have credentials for academia before law school? It's not like hiring committees are going to be parsing OP's LSAT score. The only way this makes sense is if you mean OP should already have a PhD, which doesn't seem to be what you are saying, and also would not be true. Having HYS on your resume, whether or not you were there all 3 years, will get you far in chasing academia.

Br3v wrote:

arklaw13 wrote: Academia is largely a flame for transfers. If you had the credentials to have a shot, you'd probably already be at HYS.

This is a little off. How would OP have credentials for academia before law school? It's not like hiring committees are going to be parsing OP's LSAT score. The only way this makes sense is if you mean OP should already have a PhD, which doesn't seem to be what you are saying, and also would not be true. Having HYS on your resume, whether or not you were there all 3 years, will get you far in chasing academia.

I mean that academia is so damn competitive that there are people who are top 10% at HYS who try for it and can't get it. Most young academics whose resumes I see have almost perfect credentials, as is in prestigious ug, HYS with honors/coif if applicable, prominent clerkship, etc. OP couldn't even get in to HYS and he wants to compete with the cream of the crop who did? Forget it. There are supreme court clerks who would love to get academia but can't. OP's publishing ability would have to be off the charts compared to those people to even have an outside shot.

arklaw13 wrote:

Br3v wrote:

arklaw13 wrote: Academia is largely a flame for transfers. If you had the credentials to have a shot, you'd probably already be at HYS.

This is a little off. How would OP have credentials for academia before law school? It's not like hiring committees are going to be parsing OP's LSAT score. The only way this makes sense is if you mean OP should already have a PhD, which doesn't seem to be what you are saying, and also would not be true. Having HYS on your resume, whether or not you were there all 3 years, will get you far in chasing academia.

I mean that academia is so damn competitive that there are people who are top 10% at HYS who try for it and can't get it. Most young academics whose resumes I see have almost perfect credentials, as is in prestigious ug, HYS with honors/coif if applicable, prominent clerkship, etc. OP couldn't even get in to HYS and he wants to compete with the cream of the crop who did? Forget it. There are supreme court clerks who would love to get academia but can't. OP's publishing ability would have to be off the charts compared to those people to even have an outside shot.

I agree that academia is a crapshoot but pre-LS credentials for law school admissions do not factor into your chances at all. prestigious UG will do nothing for your law school app, so there was no point for you to mention that

everything is essentially dependent on law school performance. only some transfers have an acceptable shot at academia to even consider it, and those would probably be top of their class at T14 to Yale

juzam_djinn wrote:
I agree that academia is a crapshoot but pre-LS credentials for law school admissions do not factor into your chances at all. prestigious UG will do nothing for your law school app, so there was no point for you to mention that

Prestigious UG certainly gives you a bump for YS, maybe H to some extent. It's not going to make you outperform your numbers, but you honestly can't think that, when choosing among applicants with roughly equal numbers, someone who went to Princeton isn't going to get picked over someone from Ohio State.

juzam_djinn wrote:everything is essentially dependent on law school performance. only some transfers have an acceptable shot at academia to even consider it, and those would probably be top of their class at T14 to Yale

Those people probably do have a shot, since #1 at a T14 has as good a chance as most Yale grads. But they probably shouldn't transfer to Yale.

But you're wrong to think only law school performance matters. Prestigious fellowships like the Climenko look at an applicants entire resume, not just the law school part. Look at the bios of current Climenko fellows and you'll see that 80% or more had a prestigious UG. There's obviously a correlation/causation question, but to say that two magna grads at HLS, one who went to Harvard UG and one who went to Louisiana Tech, have an equal shot at academia is ludicrous. Academia is the most prestige-whoring profession out there.

It's ridiculous to think that the Princeton applicant and Ohio State applicant will be put head to head in such a scenario where the adcom literally has to pick between the two of them: If they were both 180/4.0, they'd both get admitted, if they were both 175/3.8, they'd still likely both get admitted, if they were both borderline candidates for HYS, then that is when the UG prestige might come into play, but even then the more likely scenario is that NEITHER get in. Also, you clearly aren't talking about borderline candidates since your more reasonable point seems to be that academia is reserved only for those who have excelled throughout their entire academic lives (I'm not disputing that)

I agree that UG quality is definitely a factor, I didn't mean to discount it. My whole point was that you were wrong to equate the fact that someone didn't start at HYS w/ the conclusion that they don't have the credentials for academia

arklaw13 wrote:

Br3v wrote:

arklaw13 wrote: Academia is largely a flame for transfers. If you had the credentials to have a shot, you'd probably already be at HYS.

This is a little off. How would OP have credentials for academia before law school? It's not like hiring committees are going to be parsing OP's LSAT score. The only way this makes sense is if you mean OP should already have a PhD, which doesn't seem to be what you are saying, and also would not be true. Having HYS on your resume, whether or not you were there all 3 years, will get you far in chasing academia.

I mean that academia is so damn competitive that there are people who are top 10% at HYS who try for it and can't get it. Most young academics whose resumes I see have almost perfect credentials, as is in prestigious ug, HYS with honors/coif if applicable, prominent clerkship, etc. OP couldn't even get in to HYS and he wants to compete with the cream of the crop who did? Forget it. There are supreme court clerks who would love to get academia but can't. OP's publishing ability would have to be off the charts compared to those people to even have an outside shot.

Ehh, again this is a little off. You are 100% correct that academia is a long shot, but you make a few points that are not true.

Top 10% at HYS will almost certainly get you in the door, assuming you have some sort of publication record.

Prestigious UG would help of course, but it's not do or die. Browse resumes of current hires.

It is just not true that "there are Supreme Court clerks who would love to get academia but can't." There are Supreme Court clerks who do not want academia, but a SCOTUS clerkship is pretty much the closest thing you can have to being academia-secure. You can debate the causal nature of this relationship, being that people who get SCOTUS clerkships already have stellar credentials, but its going to be tough to find a SCOTUS clerk who wants academia and cannot get it.

Lastly, OP's publishing record would certainly have to be good. But that is because publishing is probably the single most important factor (outside of having HYS on your resume, maybe) in getting hired.

So here's what I'm seeing...

1. COA clerkship is probably not happening whether or not I stay.
2. Academia is probably not happening unless I grind out some legit publications whether or not I stay.
3. Because I "couldn't get in" HYS the first time around, transferring is probably not happening. (I didn't apply to HYS for 1L, fyi).

I dunno about the comment regarding my clerkship opportunities. I think I have a decent chance where I am now of getting COA and pretty good chance of getting district, and I find it hard to believe those chances would not increase with a better school...Is this delusional?

I figured transferring was a long shot, and like I said initially, academia is more of a recent interest. You guys are probably right that I don't really have a "sustained commitment to academia demonstrated by accomplishments" etc. that I would need to really have a chance. I guess my thought was that I enjoy the research and writing, so if I focused on that, I could make something happen...but what was said makes sense, even if its not all 100% accurate.

Maybe I can slide into Florida Coastal or Arizona Summitt...

Thanks for the wisdom.

-OP

Why do you think you're in a decent position to get COA? I mean, I hope that's true, for the both of us, but I have never seen anything, in this thread or elsewhere, that says such things for dudes in top 15 percent at UT/Vandy.

OP, idk your exact odds but, rough shot, you are in the running for some COA clerkships whether you stay or go. If you want to transfer, then do it. If you get accepted, then worry about this. You have the correct information to decide this, but if your LOR are as close as you seem to say they are, I doubt they'd be mad if you attempted to transfer. In fact, ask them their opinion on it.