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Hello All:

I just finished my first year and wanted to know my chances of transferring from Touro to Columbia, NYU, Fordham. I have a goal of 4.2 and am ranked either first or second in my class.

I also want to know how I should navigate the LOR process from someone who has done it before. Touro professors are very hesitant if not outright against giving LOR for purposes of transferring. I think it is because they do not want to lose their best talent year after year.

Thanks in advance.

To start, I couldn’t speak to Fordham, I’ve never spent any time looking at their 509’s—but I’m sure you could get a ballpark if you took a dive.

NYU is probably not gonna happen. In the past 4-5 years I can’t find a record of them admitting a 3T/4T student. Columbia, on the other hand, seems to admit one or two 3T/4T students a cycle, so I think it’s worth a shot. Cornell might also be worth a shot if NYC biglaw is a priority for you—though I dunno if RD transfers can participate in their OCI program, so that’s a consideration. If you’re just generally looking to transfer into the T14 you could probably get into GULC with those numbers. Additionally, any school where you have a regional connection you should probably apply and play up the connection in your PS.

Re LoRs: a lot of Profs at a lot of schools are reluctant to write them. Find two who you get along with and plead your case. It’s a total dick move not to write an LoR for no other reason than you want the student to stay.

Anyway, best of luck!

Also, one last thing: hurry. Deadlines for some schools have already passed!

MSUN5 wrote:Re LoRs: a lot of Profs at a lot of schools are reluctant to write them. Find two who you get along with and plead your case. It’s a total dick move not to write an LoR for no other reason than you want the student to stay.

To add on to MSUN5's excellent advice above, the key is to ask for LoRs from supportive instructors. Their title/seniority matters a lot less than their willingness to write a strong LoR. If your legal writing instructor will write a great letter, use that instead of a lukewarm letter from your reluctant, hostile property professor, even if the legal writing instructor's a "mere" adjunct and the property prof holds an endowed chair.