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So I go to a T10 school and I wanted to transfer due to geographic reasons. MY school just announced that second semester will be all Credit/No Credit in the wake of Corona (Harvard, Yale, and Stanford have all done this.)

Does anyone have any insight as to how this will impact the transfer process?

Since this has never happened before, I don't think there are going to be many helpful anecdotes. Best guess is that schools only consider your fall grades.

(Obligatory reminder that you're going to be just as miserable at your new school, especially if you're taking on more debt to go there.)

Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

ryns61 wrote:Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

They won't. The fall grades and recs will still be what matter.

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:

ryns61 wrote:Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

They won't. The fall grades and recs will still be what matter.

Thanks for your thoughts. What knowledge made you come to this decision?

Columbia requires two recs. Thoughts on Contracts and Property or Contracts and Legal Writing?

Quil1947 wrote:

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:

ryns61 wrote:Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

They won't. The fall grades and recs will still be what matter.

Thanks for your thoughts. What knowledge made you come to this decision?

No one has any specific knowledge into this. But I imagine their thinking was that since undergrad GPA/LSAT have never mattered in the transfer process before, it's highly unlikely they will start mattering now.

getmeout123 wrote:Columbia requires two recs. Thoughts on Contracts and Property or Contracts and Legal Writing?

Pick the professors that know you best and are most likely to write nice things about you.

For all panicking 1Ls: No one knows how this will affect transfers. It's natural to be anxious and uncertain, but I promise you that absolutely no one has any special insight into how law schools will handle transfers during a pandemic. This has never happened before.

Quil1947 wrote:

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:

ryns61 wrote:Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

They won't. The fall grades and recs will still be what matter.

Thanks for your thoughts. What knowledge made you come to this decision?

They haven't mattered before, and the reasons they haven't mattered haven't really changed. US News still won't care about those things for transfers, so why should the law schools?

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:

Quil1947 wrote:

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:

ryns61 wrote:Would love to hear more forum feedback on this post... Thoughts on LSAT / undergrad GPA mattering more?

They won't. The fall grades and recs will still be what matter.

Thanks for your thoughts. What knowledge made you come to this decision?

They haven't mattered before, and the reasons they haven't mattered haven't really changed. US News still won't care about those things for transfers, so why should the law schools?

Oops- I didn't mean LSAT/undergrad. Sorry I wasn't clear before! I was wondering what made you come to the decision that fall grades and recs will still be what matter. Because I am worried that one semester of good grades and one semester of Ps will not be weighted equally as other applicants who have two semesters of good grades. I'm also worried I won't be allowed to apply at all. I support mandatory P/F though because some students are disproportionately affected.
I recognize that this situation is unprecedented, thank you folks for any insight you offer.

Schools that are themselves debating whether to make the semester mandatory P/F are not going to hold it against you if you have a semester of P/F grades (as long as you don’t fail anything of course). Profs will still be able to give assessments of your work even if you don’t get a letter grade for it.

Also I agree that the subject of your LOR writer doesn’t matter, whoever knows your work best and will speak more highly of it. There’s no secret code where the prof in one subject counts more than another.

I had the same question but there seems to be not many information or discussion out there. I guess it's because many schools are still debating what to do about the grading system this semester.

Our school only had advisory grades for the first semester, and I wanted to transfer which left me with no choice but to use my spring semester grades. If our school decides to do a mandatory P/F, I won't be having any grades for the first year so I have no clue what will happen to me.

I'm also worried about applying for jobs in the future without any grades in my first year. I know it's won't be easy for the school to decide one way or the other, but I'm just sitting here waiting for their decision because there is nothing I can do about it.

following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

Following as well. YLS will be holding a zoom transfer info session on the 16th, and Harvard will be hosting one on the 23rd. Hopefully, some of the uncertainty is addressed there. Spivey also released a podcast about some predictions (tl;dw it may be beneficial to transfers, but he also thinks UGPA might come into play more if there's a disparity in favor of your ugpa.)

SherlockShokralla wrote:Following as well. YLS will be holding a zoom transfer info session on the 16th, and Harvard will be hosting one on the 23rd. Hopefully, some of the uncertainty is addressed there. Spivey also released a podcast about some predictions (tl;dw it may be beneficial to transfers, but he also thinks UGPA might come into play more if there's a disparity in favor of your ugpa.)

ooooh i'm focused on purely NY schools, but the zoom sessions could still be really helpful/interesting to get a sense of what the schools are considering. how did you find out about these if you don't mind my asking?

I checked out their "transfer admission" page. They only recently added that on their page, so different schools may update their pages at different times. I've also been checking CLS and NYU's pages but haven't seen any mention of a zoom session or changes in light of COVID.

lincolninthebardo wrote:following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

NYU said normal as always, aren't requiring LOR. Will look mostly at fall semester grades (all the schools I spoke to said this)

SherlockShokralla wrote:I checked out their "transfer admission" page. They only recently added that on their page, so different schools may update their pages at different times. I've also been checking CLS and NYU's pages but haven't seen any mention of a zoom session or changes in light of COVID.

thank you!! same - i keep checking!! and thanks for the tip about the spivey podcast. it was super helpful, and i sent it to my mom who has gotten weirdly into this idea of me transferring to distract herself from CO-VID (it's a long story). anyway, i learned from the podcast, perhaps most importantly, that despite using a spivey consultant last year, i've been mispronouncing it this whole time.

zg43 wrote:

lincolninthebardo wrote:following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

NYU said normal as always, aren't requiring LOR.

wait sorry...does that mean NYU doesn't normally require LORs, or just not this cycle?? you'd think they'd rely more heavily on LORs without second semester grades, but what do i know. at least that's one (less) awkward conversation with my contracts professor haha

lincolninthebardo wrote:

zg43 wrote:

lincolninthebardo wrote:following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

NYU said normal as always, aren't requiring LOR.

wait sorry...does that mean NYU doesn't normally require LORs, or just not this cycle?? you'd think they'd rely more heavily on LORs without second semester grades, but what do i know. at least that's one (less) awkward conversation with my contracts professor haha

Apologies if I wasn't clear. What I meant is that the process this year is the same as in the past. They have never required LoRs, and still are not requiring them this year. They said fall grades/rank will have the most weight (and I'm assuming school rank/location), followed by resume/work experience. Hope this helps.

zg43 wrote:

lincolninthebardo wrote:following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

NYU said normal as always, aren't requiring LOR. Will look mostly at fall semester grades (all the schools I spoke to said this)

THANK YOU! I appreciate that you looked in and shared the info with us. What other schools said this?

zg43 wrote:

lincolninthebardo wrote:

zg43 wrote:

lincolninthebardo wrote:following because i've been wondering the same thing. someone posted on reddit that they spoke to NYU and CLS who said LORs will be given more weight, so you take that for what it's worth but remember it's like 3rd hand information from the Internet!!

NYU said normal as always, aren't requiring LOR.

wait sorry...does that mean NYU doesn't normally require LORs, or just not this cycle?? you'd think they'd rely more heavily on LORs without second semester grades, but what do i know. at least that's one (less) awkward conversation with my contracts professor haha

Apologies if I wasn't clear. What I meant is that the process this year is the same as in the past. They have never required LoRs, and still are not requiring them this year. They said fall grades/rank will have the most weight (and I'm assuming school rank/location), followed by resume/work experience. Hope this helps.

got it, thank you!

U Chicago says they will be looking at undergrad GPA and LSAT, but to a lesser degree. 1L GPA matters the most to them it seems.

zoeharts wrote: ↑

Wed May 27, 2020 6:11 am

U Chicago says they will be looking at undergrad GPA and LSAT, but to a lesser degree. 1L GPA matters the most to them it seems.

Thanks. I think most schools will be looking mainly at fall grades and class rank/school rank.