Question about law school transfers

texvd1988

I was wondering how the admissions process for transferring works. For Instance- say I went to a tier 3 or tier 2 and ranked up pretty high in my first year, but wanted to transfer to a t16 program. What do these schools take into account? Will weight be placed more on academic achievement in the first year, or will the LSAT be put in play with equal measure thus negating my performance?

Also, do companies look negatively on law school transfers?

emmanuelntow

Something that I recently learned about is the standard 509 report that every ABA approved law school releases every year. You can easily Google this and find the reports. They are available to everyone. I asked this same question to a Brooklyn Law School admissions counselor and also by looking at the reports, schools like Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt, etc. take people from other law schools that you would consider much lower ranked. I believe that because the 1st year of law school is so standard, if you can prove yourself to do well there by obtaining a high GPA, their consideration of you goes up a lot. Other things that probably make you look really good after your 1L is complete is making law review I'm sure. Of course many other people are thinking about this as well so competition is still high but it is a sort of back door that you can take to get into a better school for the last 2 years of law school.

The one caveat and big downside is that I believe transfers students really don't get much financial aid.

Alex

@emmanuelntow said:
Something that I recently learned about is the standard 509 report that every ABA approved law school releases every year. You can easily Google this and find the reports. They are available to everyone. I asked this same question to a Brooklyn Law School admissions counselor and also by looking at the reports, schools like Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt, etc. take people from other law schools that you would consider much lower ranked. I believe that because the 1st year of law school is so standard, if you can prove yourself to do well there by obtaining a high GPA, their consideration of you goes up a lot. Other things that probably make you look really good after your 1L is complete is making law review I'm sure. Of course many other people are thinking about this as well so competition is still high but it is a sort of back door that you can take to get into a better school for the last 2 years of law school.

The one caveat and big downside is that I believe transfers students really don't get much financial aid.

Credited for sure!