If you're going from a lower tier law school (say, Chicago-Kent) to a top tier law school (say, Northwestern) I would expect this kind of snark. A friend did this transfer back in the day and got all kinds of grief, including a student telling her she wasn't fit to attend Northwestern and only attended Chicago-Kent to save on a year's tuition with a scholarship.

small peepee complex maybe?

no wonder law firm criteria are so ridiculous...its a shame that it's all about your lsat/school

Actually, the reason originals resent transfers is that the transfers come in right before the interviewing process, so they get to take advantage of the interviewing platform offered by their new (better) school while being able to show their transcript from their old (worse) school, with grades presumably inflated from being awarded by the worse school. At least that was the main complaint I heard back when I was in law school. By the middle of your 2L year, everyone will forget who the transfers are anyway.

I think the reason "normal" students at elite schools don't like transfer students--particularly those that do well after they transfer--is that it's just more proof that there's really no difference between the top students at top schools and the top students at lower ranked schools.

Actually, it's the U of C class president that sounds like a d-bag. Snarkiness like this would be looked down upon at Boalt.

Transfers students often stick together, because they don't have the social bonds (usually based on small sections) that regular 2Ls have.

I transferred to UCLA in 2006 and I had no problems with the students, however, I have heard similar sentiments from students at higher ranked schools, especially from the "chosen ones" that attend schools like Harvard. If anything, I personally ran into more backlash during OCI. I actually overheard a recruiter from O'Melveny LA say "I can't stand transfers" through the door right before I walked in to the interview. Yeah...that was comfortable.

10:14 - That's pretty funny (in a horrifying way).

Nothing more humbling than facing someone with a significantly lower LSAT and realizing you're out-smarted, out-classed and of course, out-gunned. Having transfers around shatters the deilcate illusion that you are where you are because of some ineffable gift.

I personally never had a problem with any - some were cool, some weren't, just like the rest of the student body.

agreed, 10:06. the problem with transfers is that they are such gunners that they felt the need to transfer in the first place. it's not the transferring but the ceaseless gunning that's annoying.

The student body president clearly has issues. I mean, as president I hardly think it is your job to isolate a class of students in a derogatory fashion. It would be nice to see this president impeached. It would be a stand by UoC that they don't put up with this feeble childish bickering.

I transferred to Northwestern from a T-30 2 years ago. I didn't think anyone thought negatively of me. In fact, I made a lot of friends there, transfer and non-transfer. I don't think anyone really cares...

I'm at a top 10 and never had any problems with transfers. In fact, two are close friends. Nevertheless, the anecdotes about GULC students hating transfers fit everything I've heard about GULC. I wouldn't be surprised if U of C students and Columbia kids felt the same way. Wingnuts.

What is all this talk about transfer students. Back when I was at the Universitee of Al-a-bama, we had some transfer students. Momma said they were real nice people. Once, I talked to one of them transfers, and you know what, they were real nice. Momma was right.

I think I might transfer myself one day. But you know what, I will avoid the University of Chicago. I met some students from that school once when I was running across the country looking for my Jenny. And you know what, those students from that there particular school were real weird and all. They thought they were economic experts and stuff. But you know what, you couldn't carry on a conversation with those students. They were always talking about some guy named Posner and trying to make themselves feel like they were somehow connected to that Posner fellow. Now I don't know no Posner fellow, but if he is anything like these University of Chicago students, he must have a hard time in the social scene. Nobody wanted to talk to those poor folks. They had what momma calls a certain complex. Something about their mommas not really loving them too much. So, they had no firends and got good grades and all, but then nobody liked them. That is all I have to say about that.

Just like to point out that the "quarterly student newspaper" the poem appeared in is (supposedly) a humor magazine.

I transferred to CLS last year. I felt no animosity from students at all. In fact I was very much accepted. It is true that most of my friends are fellow transfers since most frienships/bonding happens during 1L year. The number of summer positions I was offered was incredible. Most from firms that didn't even recruit at my former school. I also found that I compete very successfully with "original" students. Way too much emphasis on LSATs. Presently summering at a V10 firm that would not have even looked at me at my previous school. My advice is if you are at a lower ranked school as a 1L bust your ass finish in the top 10 of your class and transfer.

I'm surprised anyone would resent transfers because of the interview process. Recruiters are, after all, lawyers who share the prejudices of the legal profession. Transfers may have done well at their original law schools, but they are regarded as unproven qualities until they earn some second year grades. Most transfer students I knew had dismal luck interviewing second year. If they interviewed third year, with a year of good grades under their belts, they did just fine.

The real reason why law students hate transfers is the same reason high school students do - transfers are new and upset the delicately balanced pecking order everyone worked so hard to establish during first year.

Of course, the real fun for transfers is when they interview with people who graduated from the school they transferred out of.

AWK-ward.

My friend, Roger Lou, told me UPenn has an amazing football program and I am considering transferring there---thoughts?

Law student egos are so fragile that even the slightest evidence that they are interchangeable with a random selection of students from other schools mobilizes the testosterone. The Chicago student body president is probably upset that he's not on Law Review (just a guess, on both points - Chi students can help out).

For the most part transfers at my school (top 10) were welcomed and well received. There was some minor resentment that they got to interview with us and use their lower tier school transcripts, but that was mostly from those who didn't get jobs. The rest of us liked them just fine and it's the U of C guy who's the d-bag.

the biggest beef at my (public 35-50) school was that grades were only curved 1L year and transfers came in with a clean slate and were able to easily graduate with grossly inflated GPA/rank by avoiding the curve entirely.

I was a transfer, and since I had to take Con. Law, I made 1L friends plus my transfer friends.

But funny story--during OCI, one transfer buddy had a firm lawyer throw said buddy's resume on the floor (with the name of his/her prior school) and STOMP on it, while saying 'this is trash.' My friend told me this over beers, months later. We were all horrified, and asked if this had been reported to career services, which it hadn't, and by this time my friend just thought it was funny, so we all had a laugh.

To those considering applying out there, realize you don't necessarily have to be in the top 10% to make it--I think I was like 12-13%. Also, don't let one bad grade make you think you won't make it--I had a C+ in Contracts (it would have been a B or B- on the grading scale at the school I transferred to) and I was still accepted to the T10 I attended and a T20. (Of course, the C+ may have been offset by my LSATs, which were good enough for a 1L applicant, or a strong grade in another class.)

Every 1L should request a letter of good standing from their current law school, especially if you have good grades and even if you have no intention of transfering. Be sure to write "For Transfer Application" on the form even if it's not requested. This will invariably make it to the Financial Aid office who will think twice before cutting your financial aid. If you have a good relationship with administrators and they question you about it, make sure you let them know that you heard horror stories about having financial aid cut after first year and you wanted to give yourself options.

10:28 - Wow. What school?

10:08 got it right. I hated the fact that kids from bullshit schools were getting the same interviews I was after having not been through the hell that was my T10 1L year.

I transferred from another D.C. law school to Georgetown. I was treated like a regular student and had no problem making friends and integrating myself. I ended up with slightly better grades at Georgetown and went on to clerk for a circuit judge. I have absolutely no regrets about my decision to transfer. Nor did I have any difficulty interviewing with people who attended the school that I left.

Who cares?

I transfered while in law school. it was hard to tap into the social scene because i was not deeply engrained in the small pods formed during 1L, but i didn't really go to law school for a social scene.

ATL is getting mad shot outs in the Chicago Trib today for reporting the Sonnenschein layoff. they even went as far as to cite them on the Hastings-gate episode a few weeks ago.

10:28 is right, at UCLA it was very hard to get into coif because the first year was curved on a 20-60-20 curve, the second and third year grades are grossly inflated. Then, the school would let in 30-40 transfers who could get into coif on second and third year grades alone. Very irritating. I don't know if this is still how it works. If not for that, I would have no objection at all to transfers. Obviously performance in the first year is a better predictor than LSAT.

Yep, who cares is right. Law school is nothing but a stepping stone to getting a job after school and every person there is doing all they can to put themselves in the best position possible. That is why people transfer. But don't forget that in many places transfer students lose out on certain benefits that many firms think are super important--like opportunities to be on law review. I transferred after my first year and was ineligible for law review, even though I was in the top 10% of my class.

10:42(2) If you transferred to HLS and missed out on law review, consider it a blessing in disguise

I transferred from a T25 to an 11-14 and just graduated cum laude... my decision was largely based on geography and had little to do with improved job prospects. I had a pretty hard time making friends outside of the transfer class, and actually had a few d-bags make derogatory comments directly to me about me being a transfer. I was kind of offput by just how aloof most people were towards me because I am naturally a very affable, social person.

Honestly, If I could go back and do things differently, I probably wouldn't have transferred. fuck this school

The problem isn't about deserving to be there, or how well a transfer does gradewise. The problem is, as the poem points out, that law students are universally total douchebags.

First

This is why normal people dislike transfers.

It is debatable whether top schools actually grant their students a decent legal education. What is not debatable is top schools grant their students status. Normal students trade their great transcripts and great LSATs to law schools (so law schools can “flaunt” this data on USNWR, etc), and in return, the law school grants them status. This the quid pro quo.

Transfer student data is not factored into the “official” data for obvious reasons; it would be dilutive. And law schools like the easy tuition money that these transfers bring. Ever here of a transfer getting a scholarship or financial aid? Didn’t think so.

Law schools get enriched, transfers get status, and normal students get nothing but more people in their class rooms.

So wait a minute, someone can get good grades at a good school and not have an high LSAT? Everything I ever believed in has been shattered.

I transferred to Harvard and experienced no snarkiness, disfavor, whatever. Maybe that's just because the school is big (and thus a lot of "normal" students don't know each other anyway if they weren't in the same 1L section), but I doubt it. I think people just did not care.

10:12 is right: at least initially, transfers stick together because their 1L friends are elsewhere. But by the end of 2L, I no longer felt like anything but a "normal" student.

If you think your career options or happiness will be improved by transferring, don't let petty crap like this discourage you.

I went from a T2 school to a T3 school, and then back to theT2 school for my final year. I can say that (in this situation), transfers do have a harder go at things, but mostly just because of not being there while everyone was going through the newness/grind of the first year. People tend to bond ya' know. My awesome grades at the T2 school, while helpful in getting me into interviews during OCI, could not overcome the general problem with having moved geographic locations (about 700 miles). Firms like to hire stationary, not nomadic, people.

People at both schools were cool when I got there/got back. I never got any snarky-ness, but that's probably due in big part to it being a T2-T3 transition rather than T2-T1 or T1-TopTen etc. transition.

GULC students routinely gang up on Widener students in appalling displays of violent mob mentality.

10:57---Brilliant!

I transferred into a T10 school from a T20 school and now am a COA clerk for an active judge. I sort of followed 10:30's advice (trying to get something out of my 1L school). They didn't give me anything. I didn't like them very much anyway. However, I mainly transferred because the school was very close to my hometown and my grandparents were in declining health.

I gained some marginal prestige. The very top students at my 1L school are also COA clerks on this circuit. I don't know if I would have finished as high as them had I continued there. I did very well at my transfer school, but was not top 2% like many of the COA clerks from my 1L school. I did experience some resentment at my transfer school partly because it is rare for a transfer student to get great clerkships (except for those transferring to Yale), but it seemed to come from lower in the class who were jealous. I will say that making friends was a bit of an issue, but I really did not have great friendships from my 1L year. It is not that I am hard to get along with---I have formed many great friendships with my fellow clerks and have many great friendships with people at my transfer school outside of the law school. I think that law school is just not an ideal place to form friendships.

The bottom line for those considering transferring is this--if you do not want to be in the area where your 1L school is, then transfer to a T10 school. It will probably make it easier to get a job in a different region and make more contacts. However, if you like where you 1L school is located, you are probably better off staying put. There are many federal district and COA judges from schools that are not T10, T14 or whatever ya'll consider are the top law schools.

10:28 and 10:42 hit it - I suspect it's primarily the severe grade inflation during 2L and 3L years that explains the originally-cited poster's comment that transfers do as well as or better with grades. Me at GULC: graduated cum laude with ~ a 3.6, with ~3.4 first year, 3.7+ during 2L and 3L. An acquaintance who transferred from AU: graduated in the high 3.6's - but of course based only on 2L and 3L grades. He got magna, even though I got higher grades during the only years we were compared for class rank purposes. Nothing to lose sleep over, but admittedly irritating.

Two things:

1) Transfers do get scholarships and financial aid. Every transfer student I knew got at least a small scholarship, some got rather large ones.

2) Although judges are different, about 20% of my transfer class got clerkships, mostly with circuit judges.

I just finished my 1L year at GULC and am considering transferring to a different school that I DID get into, and decided not to attend. I really wouldn't mind beind lumped in with the upgraders, though.

Transferred from a T2 regional school near home to a Top 5 school that I had been accepted to out of college. 173 LSAT, top 3 people at my T2.

Everyone at my new school hates me and thinks I don't deserve to be there. Little do they know that I was probably accepted before they were. No I come in and take their good grades and jobs- even though I was taking their jobs at my T2.

They're just pissed because their firm has a $50 cap on lunches and mine doesn't. Losers.

this entire thread is ridiculous. at GULC, all the transfers I knew did well, got the jobs they wanted, and had as many friends as they wanted (which, in law school, was often few).

The schools that accept a lot of transfers are simply manipulating US News statistics, by taking a small initial class that looks exclusive and highly credentialed, which is what counts in US news rankings. Then they let in a lot of schmucks in 2L, and they graduate a lot of schmucks.

Having interviewed SAs ad nauseum and sat in on committee meetings, I don't think transfers garner any advantage in being able to participate in OCI at their new schools. Maybe more firms are available to the transfer. But, your old institution is what we are going to look at. For example, if someone transfers from C-K to Northwestern, we look at that person as a C-K student, not a Northwestern student. And the hiring committee is probably going to apply the GPA cut-off applicable to C-K. Maybe its not fair, but this is what happens.

Junior lateral hires are a different story.

I agree with 10:28 and 10:42. Transfers get to skip the 1L grade competition and swoop in to graduate with honors/coif based on inflated second and third year grades. I was shocked to see transfers' names on the honors/coif list after graduation -- I thought they would be automatically excluded from those awards for this obvious advantage.

It's not so much that current students hate incoming transfers, it's that everyone hates gunners.

Most times, you have to be incredibly annoying with the hand-raising and the professor-fellating to do well enough to transfer up.

After 1L year, everyone is fairly comfortable with the gunners in their class -- nobody likes them, mind you, but everyone is used to them. Then the first day of 2L year comes, and your school dumps 50-100 more of them on you. Even the girls are terrible; everybody knows gunners don't have sex.

To the "transfers are gunners" posters: have you ever attended law school? Since when are gunners the ones who do well?

Anybody who calls a transfer a "gunner" is a douchebag who should get punched in the face. In fact, anybody who calls anybody a "gunner" is a d-bag. Law is a profession where EVERYTHING is based on class rank, quality of school, prestige, etc... not to mention the only people that get decent jobs are the top 5% of the law school world ... and yet you would fault others for striving to better their position? Fuck you. That's what you're supposed to do.

Anybody who uses the term "gunner" is a douchebag who failed at whatever they were trying to accomplish and is now trying to shoot down others for trying to succeed. Even if somebody talks a lot in class or sucks up to professors, thats none of your fucking business. Live your own goddamn life and we'll see who ends up where.

Snarky terribly overstates the quality of the poem.

At what school are people still concerned about LSATs? Once classes start, grades are all that matter. What is humiliating is when people you don't respect have better grades than you.

At what school are people still concerned about LSATs? Once classes start, grades are all that matter. What is humiliating is when people you don't respect have better grades than you.

At what school are people still concerned about LSATs? Once classes start, grades are all that matter. What is humiliating is when people you don't respect have better grades than you.

I once saw a street fight west side story style between GULC students and GW students. Vicious. It only ended when both groups saw a bunch of AU students and collectively went over and beat them up.

11:20 needs to chill out.

Gunning =/= success as a law student or attorney

Gunning = annoying as high hell and performed by the true d-wads who DO think it equates to success as a law student or attorney

God forbid someone gets into a good law school because they actually worked hard, and didn't just spend a few grand at a prep-course figuring out logic games.

Is 11:20 a widely-reviled (former?) gunner? Why all the rage?

Lat, i was at that orientation and the transfers received a warm round of applause not booing. Last year several of the EICs of our journals were transfers and the SBA makes a special point to solicit transfer students opinions and encourage their involvement. GULC is dilligent about being transfer-friendly. Not the other way around. -- GULC3L.

11:20:

Law is actually a profession where the quality of your intellect, the strength of your work ethic, and your reputation for integrity mean everything.

Your philosophy is complicit. Rise up!

11:30 -- it was GULC's EIW orientation in Fall 2006 where the booing happened -- ask anybody a year ahead of you.

I transferred from a crap school to CLS. The funny thing is that it was way more competitive at my old school and the curve was much worse. The average grade was a C when i was a 1L... It was a true curve. At CLS, a B was average. I also certainly did not see my grades go down after transferring, so don't think transfers have it easy during 1L year. It is also more competitive at lower schools because there are fewer jobs to be had.

The only d-bag in this scenario is the one who sent in something that was clearly just meant to be humorous to ATL. It was a submission to a humor paper and was just one of many poems that everyone (transfers included) thought were funny and not meant to be taken seriously.

11:20 here:

I've never been called a gunner but I just don't understand why law students fault other students for trying to succeed. It's amazing that law students at top schools who are like 26 years old still have to act like they don't care about school. I know you're a fucking nerd if you're at H/Y/S/C, stop trying to front like you're too cool to study. We're not in middle school any more, its ok to be a nerd who cares about school and doing well.
Every conversation I have with law students is like "yeah I'm too cool to study, I just get drunk, blah blah blah."

If i'm paying $60,000 a year to go to law school, I'm going to try to get the best of it, even if it means taking it up the ass from my con law professor.

To 11:36/11:20... A. Charney?

11:20/11:36, you found a non-lesbian male con law teacher? Or are you talking about ass-fisting?

At CLS, the "curve" past 1L is more like B+/A-.

Barama llama ding dong.

i'm talking about your mom 11:39

11:44- You get a "A" for originality, or maybe the A stands for something else.

Yeah, the problem here is taking the U of C law student magazine seriously. The cover of the last issue was a big picture of Jesus, with the caption: "Christ to Leave U of C: Son of Man accepts position at HLS."

That is one of the most naive and offensive things I have read. What it is more indicative of (the poem) is the general lack of compassion I've seen generally in law schools' student culture. Which, to me, tends to be filtered down from the attitudes of its faculty and staff.

I ask: what state of mind must an individual have to not only write, but publish, such a mean-spirited piece? Other than its spirit, what can such blatant classification accomplish?

11:20/11:36:

So let me get this straight: Someone who consistently raises his/her hand and makes comments that do not contribute to classroom discussion but make the student feel important for speaking in class is considered mature. Someone who is "like 26" goes to class and contributes sporadically when he/she has something constructive to say and dislikes the people described above is immature. And someone whose retort to someone challenging his/her position on a particular issue is "I'm talking about your mom" is mature.

I think I get it now. Thanks.

I found most transfers (I was one of them) had a hard time getting anything out of OCI. Most of the firms looked down on the transfers. I'm wasn't sure exactly what to make of that at the time (on the one hand, by transferring you've shown you've worked hard enough to swim with the "bigger fish," on the other hand, there's no record of how you fare directly against those bigger fish). The social aspect was hard as well, since the social networks were already made.

What I want to know, is do employers continue to hold the transfer thing over graduates heads down the road? I know everyone requests transcripts it seems even a couple years out - so when firms see that transfer school in the transcript, do they immediately pitch the application based on that LSAT score (though everything else is equal, and some experience separates an applicant from fresh graduates)?

i think people are using two different definitions of gunner: in my book, the gunners (a group of which i quietly consider myself a member) are the ones who work harder and smarter than everyone else and get higher grades as a result. the douchebags who raise their hands every 30 seconds are just douchebags... at least at BU, it's basically a compliment to be considered a gunner. if you're one of the kids that raises their hand all the time, you're called "asshole," not gunner... gunners are the ones that get the highest grades, not the ones that talk the most in class.

as far as transfers: they are definitely treated as equals here. and they tend to do really well...

I transferred from a Top 40 to a Top 5 after my first year and never encountered any anti-transfer animus, but on the other hand it does tend to be the case that transfers make social connections with other transfers more readily. I think that's because everyone else has already made friends in their 1L year, when they have classes with the same small group of people, whereas the first people transfer students meet are other transfers at orientation.

Regarding Georgetown-- their early decision program is highly competitive; I was rejected by G-town but then accepted by a much higher-ranked school in their regular decision over the summer. So don't panic if you've applied to transfer to Georgetown and didn't get in.

I transferred from Rutgers to Columbia and nobody cared one bit. Some of my closest friends now are people I met at Columbia. There were a 2 others from Rutgers that made the transfer with me and they seemed to have had the same experience.

I started law school at Cardozo and transferred to a top 20. Of the 30 or so magna cum laude graduates in my class, 10 were transfer students. Sure enough, you could argue that we benefited from having no 1L year grades to "drag us down." But taking that into account, we still kicked a lot of ass 2L and 3L years. Just about all of us ended up with good biglaw jobs.

In short, the notion that transfers are inferior to "natives" is a crock of shit, IMO. The tack about transfers being gunners is another story...

Lat - I think it would be more than appropriate for you to include in the original post that this poem was in a newspaper published by students as a quarterly "The Onion" type of satirical paper. Chances are high that the student body president didn't even write the piece - they enjoy writing pieces "by" more popular students/faculty just for fun. Seriously, people need to get over themselves.

12:05: that's highly relevant... it definitely makes president seem like less of a douchebag (if it doesn't strip him of douchebag status entirely).

I went to NYU. I got in part of the normal admissions process. I am highly resentful that NYU administrators allow 70 to 80 transfers in a given year. The reason they do it is because Columbia does it, it gives them extra tuition dollars, and it does not effect US News rankings.

However, it is very unfair to NYU students. I was an average student my first year at NYU (B's and B+'s with one A-). I got offers from a number of firms and ended up a T-25 firm. However, if instead of going to NYU I had taken a full ride at Cardozo, I am fairly certain that I could have gotten much higher grades and transferred to NYU for my second and third years of law school.

I would have saved $40,000 and I would have had offers from almost any place I wanted with the exception of Wachtell. Unfortunately, firms see great grades and NYU and don't factor into their decision that the grades were earned at Cardozo. Almost, every transfer I know had at least one t-10 offer and most had multiple offers from t-5 places that wanted them. They also have the advantage when it comes to graduating with honors. Since their 1L year does not count, they have the advtange of having only two years count and because of non-curved seminars and clinics and having LLM's in your curved clases, it is easier to get a higher GPA during your 2nd and 3rd years of law school. For example, to graduate you needed to have 52 credits to graduate in your second and third years. If you took a 14 credit clinic like the Brennan Center where the vast majority of students get either an A or A-, if you are a transfer, you have a very good chance of graduating cum laude with just average grades in other classes.

So, in essence, as a transfer at NYU you will have better job opportunities and a better chance with graduating with honors than an average student. And if you play it right, you graduate with less debt.

Does this seem unfair to anyone else?

Transfers don't compete with the rest of the group in 1L classes, which are the most competitive.

Anyway, law school exam performance does not mean that someone deserved to get into that lawschool. Being accepted as a 1L requires vetting of a lifetime of accomplishments. Transfers only have 7 grades vetted.

About as fair or unfair as anything else about hiring practices. Get over it.

unless you can transfer to a top 10 school, you are better off on Law Review at a Tier 2 school than just another student at a better school - often time transfers struggle at on campus interviews b/c employers are expecting a 2nd year student from that school, not someone with good grades from a school that the employer never hires from

I transferred to GULC and had no problems with the student body. Remember, the school is so large that its hard to delineate between transfers and non-transfers; if a student doesn't recognize you, they will just assume you were in a different section.
As for interviewing, I am pretty sure I had more call-backs and more offers then the average GULC student, so no problems there.

Transfers have an ethical duty to disclose their TTT school on their resumes.

I went to CLS. My friends and I generally felt the way that 12:13 does. We had no problems with the transfers per se but were mad the administration took so many.

I have to agree with 10:28 and the others along that line. I went to a 15-25 school, with a forced curve only for 1Ls. The transfers from the local TTT schools graduated with ridiculously inflated GPAs because our 1L curve is far lower than the grades handed out in 2L and 3L. Schools need to do something to level the playing field here. At the very least, they shouldn't be eligible for honors or order of the coif.

transfers are universally reviled because they do phenomenally well in landing biglaw. they are low risk candidates, having proven themselves by their prior academic record, and now possess a brand-named transcript. unlike organic students, they didn't have to deal with the BS of 1L at their new school, and often attended their old school on the cheap. they also do well at their new school, where curves tend to fall away in 2L &3L classes. but for US News, transfers likely would have had half the spaces in top tier schools occupied by the nitwit whiners commenting. full disclosure: T100 to CLS.

11:20/11:36 Check out the prior ATL thread(s) on gunners back in January. I think you'll understand the sentiments against gunners a bit more.

The transfer racket unfairly discriminates against low-income but talented students who receive merit/need aid during their first year and who are unwilling or unable to pay full tuition at a higher-ranked school.

And yes, echoing the comments of many above, it's irritating that schools consider transfer students when calculating honors at graduation. But for those 1L grades, who WOULDN'T graduate with distinction?

The "quarterly University of Chicago Newspaper" contains no legitimate news in it whatsoever and is purely intended to be humorous. Whoever sent that poem into ATL is a serious douchebag, its a joke, get over it.

I transferred into Chicago and found it to be quite welcoming. You did have to make an effort to find friends outside of your fellow transfer students, but it was pretty easy. I also found relatively little resentment, one person (a friend of mine) did complain about our ability to receive honors/high honors, but since Chicago had a pretty strict curve even for second and third year classes I didn't really hear too much about that issue other than the one comment. I also found people, despite Chicago's reputation, were friendly and open to accepting transfers.

The poem must have appeared in the Phoenix, which is the quarterly humor magazine and (at least when I was a student) was often full of sarcastic articles. They harassed everyone, including professors, with the same vigor, so I don't think shows any animus towards transfers as a whole. It has some truth to it too (at least with respect to me, I'm sure some people rolled their eyes when I was talking), so it's fair game.

Is my school the only T14 that maintained a strict curve through all 3 years? All this bitching about inflated grades for transfers is completely foreign to me

12:13, I get your point. I thought it was odd too that transfers have a better chance of finishing with high honors at my T-10 then those who went through the rigours of 1L year with people who got in the first time. This seems especially odd considering the weight that is placed on 1L classes. At my school, the 1L classes were worth substantially more credits than pretty much any class you could take 2 or 3L year, meaning if you did poorly 1L year, it was extremeley difficult to make it up in your overall class standing.

That being said, I stil don't begrudge the system because the benefit one has in going straight to a T-10 is that one is not subject to the pressure of absolutely having to do well. Sure, you could take the scholarship at Cardozo and finish in the top 2%, but what if you don't make the top 2%? There is always that risk, and not having to face the consequences of that risk, for me, is worth it. So maybe in some way the transfers deserve to come in with a clean slate, because they took a risk that most people with options would be afraid to take, and they succeeded.

Went from tier 2 to doing the WUSTL. Didn't feel any bias from the students because going into 2L a lot of people don't know a lot of other people anyways. School was very supportive. Generally felt that employers discounted us 10-15 percentiles during OCI (i.e., you were top 10% at your old school, you got interviews that wanted top 20-25% at WUSTL). Some got great jobs, some got no jobs about in the same proportion as the rest of the class. No one I know of got a scholly. Generally grades stayed the same or went down 10% or so from the old school. No one went up or down significantly.

I transfered from AU.

Best decision ever.

Most of the transfers to Vandy this year were unbelievable d-bags.

One convinced a clinic professor to make the class write a 20+ page paper (after said professor had told class he had decided to take it off the syllabus). He was also an unbelievable all-around d-bag.

Another has been overheard numerous times stating that he is a "master" painter, horse-back rider, in-line skater, DJ, guitarist, inventor, etc. And, he noted that he fits in equally well in upscale President's Club-type bars, redneck dives, and any gay bar in town. Because that's just the type of guy he is. Ultimate d-bag --> and a gunner to boot.

So, yes, massive resentment of d-bag gunnerish transfers at Vandy. They suck.

Concerning law firm hiring, as noted above, some law firms dislike transfers because they think that the transfers are second-rate students at that top school, and some law firms seem to only care about the GPA even if it was earned at a much lesser law school. But the market is what it is and law firms make hiring decisions that make no sense from a merit-based level. Seriously, does the Brooklyn-NYU transfer with a 3.9 1L GPA suddenly become Cravath/S&C material at NYU but wouldn't have been able to do the work at a V30 firm if he had stayed at Brooklyn? Literally, once that Brooklyn student signs to transfer to NYU, his stature in Biglaw's eyes suddenly skyrockets in the span of that one second. But what can you do? The law firms do what they want and you can't do much about it as a student. Wait until you become the hiring partner and hope that you haven't yourself become a obsessive prestige whore.

However, the concerns about graduating with honors are very valid. There is no doubt that 1L is the most competitive year in law school and top grades are much harder to come by than during 2L/3L. It is very unfair to normal-admission students to have to watch transfers scoop up the graduating honors based solely on 2L/3L grades. I personally would have graduated top 10% at my T-10 school had only my 2L/3L grades counted but ended up with top 30% honors factoring in my 1L grades. Schools are supposed to fair and merit-based (at least theoretically) and they need to change the system so that normal-admission and transfer-admission students have a somewhat similar footing.

I think a fair compromise would be to assign the mean 1L GPA to transfers solely for the purposes of deciding graduating honors. Their overall GPAs could still only consist of 2L/3L grades.

Example: Bob transfers to Columbia (mean 1L GPA 3.0) from Cardozo. Bob gets a 3.6 GPA in his 2L/3L years at Columbia. When Bob graduates:

Bob's GPA = 3.6
Bob's GPA for determining graduating honors = 3.4

12:13--you have it backwards. It's is NYU who is gaming the system in every way. In the class of '05, CLS had ~35 transfer students whereas NYU had 70-80.

Transfers should not be permitted to graduate with honors, except amongst themselves. John Smith, Transfer Magna Cum Laude.

You have to give credit to the time that Ms President and her compatriots (11.35, 12.31, 12.34 etc) are spending trying to undermine the validity of the extremely valid gripe pointed out here. However what they have missed is the simple fact that it is not funny for many students. Obviously the satire of the "poem" (really can you call that poorly written trash a poem?) is not funny for a significant part of the UofC student body, and this dreadful attempt at humor (I say this with skepticism, because really there is some level malice that underlies the writing) has only served to isolate a body of students who come into the law school already seperated and different because of their transfer status.

I transferred from a tier-4 school to a tier-1 school and I concur with many of the posters that transfers do face some discrimiation from recruiters. I contemplated leaving my transfer status off of my resume for OCI so that I would receive more initial interviews. I would also agree that transfers do have a more difficult time integrating into schools with a smaller student body and they usually stick together with other transfers. Anyone that has any ill feelings towards transfers is simply a d-bag and they are just pissed that we can compete with anyone else at top schools mostly because we are more motivated and just as intelligent.

Schools started accepting all of these transfer students about a decade ago. NYU led the way -- and it was specifically designed to inflate the LSAT / grades at entrance for US News. Others followed. But this was instrumental in NYU breaking into the top 5.

At Chicago, I think the resentment comes from the fact that the first year is way harder than subsequent years, mainly because every class is on the fixed curve 1L year. Transfers avoid going through that wringer and end out with decent grades bc they can take a high proportion of classes not on the fixed curve. Many of us would have much higher averages if only 2L and 3L grades counted. As for the transfers being the equal of regular admits, I would guess that they are close enough in intelligence and willing to work really hard so they end out doing fine, although none ended out at the top of the class, when I attended.

While I do believe the average regular admit at a top 5 or so school is quite a bit more intelligent than people admitted regularly to lesser schools, I also think that law is not rocket science, and you just don't have to be all that smart to do a good job. Working hard, diligence, etc. are more important than smarts. Some of my best associates went to really crappy schools. Some of the worst ones, went to better schools and have some inordinate sense of entitlement.

12:49 is spot on. There's normal satire and such, but consider if the same "satire" poem was about minorities getting in with lower numbers.

Also -- I think that poem is a pretty good snark.

This whole idea of giving transfers the mean 1L GPA is b.s.

I transferred into a school that had equally steep curves for 1L and upperclass students, and a less steep curve than my 1L law school. When I transferred, I still beat the pants off of the students whose school I transferred into.

Their mediocrity should not drag down my GPA, and when it comes to employers, I still have to reveal my 1L grades to them, which are lower because they are on a harsher curve.

Guess what--2 interviews, 2 big firms, 2 offers.

A classmate of mine at USF transferred to Stanford, landed in a top-tier real estate boutique which was swallowed by a tier 1 mega firm where he became a partner. No one ever suggested he was second-class.

BTW, the least likely to succeed (as I saw it—his brother owned a discount clothing outlet and he dressed for law school in suits with gangster wide pinstripes and tooled around in a van with dirty diapers) person in my law school got a tier 1 firm job then made partner without transferring.

I clerked at a medical defense firm alongside students from Stanford, Boalt, and Hastings, and some of the tier 1 law school types were incapable of anything practical.

The best trial lawyer I have ever seen, bar none graduated from Hastings then fluked the bar three times before he passed.

There is only one class of lawyers: Effective and ineffective.

Are some of you so in love with the name on your degrees you not only turn up your nose at other schools but at graduates from your school hwo did not study all 3 years there?

Good luck in life.

12:55 -- but consider if the poem was about how the Nazi's were awesome?

Clearly, the best trial lawyer "bar none" wouldn't be able to remember basic rules of civil procedure......

12:13 - I wouldn't assume you would have been at the top of your class at Cardozo. If you were a middling student at NYU you probably would have been a good, but not tip top student, at Cardozo and probably wouldn't have been able to transfer. The ability to take a law school exam and the ability to score well on the LSAT/in undergrad are not very closely correlated. If you couldn't do any better than average at NYU you probably aren't that good at taking law school exams.

1:00- Then it would make decent satire in whatever humor rag Cardozo publishes

12:57, giving 1L the mean GPA, solely for purposes of graduating honors, is not b.s. in any way whatsoever.

My proposal would be limited to GPA calculations only for deciding graduating honors. Keep your 3.7 GPA from 2L/3L on your resume. But don't think that you fully deserve that latin honor because you didn't have to go through 1L at the top school you graduated from. This seems like a more-than-fair compromise because as it stands now, people like you, Mr. Transfer, get the honors because you don't have 1L grades to drag you down. Face it, most people at top schools don't study nor care nearly as much once they get their offers and in particularly, during 3L after getting the full-time offer. I know plenty of people who had dramatically better 2L/3L grades because they applied themselves during those years when others didn't. And good for you for working hard your 2L/3L years, but odds are very strong that you would not have gotten the same grades during 1L that you got during 2L/3L if you had started at the top school.

I transferred from a 50-60 to a top 10. It was easily the best decision I've ever made.

1) I did suffer during OCI that first fall. It's true that the bottom of the barrel of your class resents you most because you are competing with them for the lower prestige firm jobs. If you're doing well, you'll get a job where you want to get a job.

2) After proving myself my second year, I upgraded my firm from a top 150 to a top 20 based on my successful 2L performance.

3) Transfers as a whole are more highly motivated than the average student at their school and therefore tend to do better during the same classes during years 2 and 3.

4) Question for transfer-haters? If we do better than you at your school during our 2nd and 3rd years (forget overall GPA), what does that say about your school letting you and not us in in the first place?

Is there anyone who can speak to transfers success in OCI when going from a T30 to Columbia/NYU?

UCLA Law Review's EIC a couple years ago was a Hastings transfer.

1:11 - are you kidding me? Do you really care THAT much about whether some other student (transfer or otherwise) makes honors upon graduation? I highly doubt that the marginal difference in curve year to year will make or break if you receive honors. There is a simple solution - focus on your own grades and if you deserve honors based on your work then you will receive it... don't cry about someone what someone else got after the fact.

1:03, although I agree that nothing is guaranteed, and that one may not end up at the very top of the class at Cardoza just because one got into NYU, I don't think it's fair to say that if you're in the middle of the class at NYU you're not good at taking law school exams, especially since the grades are curved. The truth is, the difference between students at top schools and lower ranked schools is best judged by the people in the middle of the pack at both schools, and I would venture to guess that the people in the middle of the pack at NYU are very different than those at (pick your favorite tier 3). The fact that someone is in the middle of the pack at NYU may be more a reflection of the fact that the competition is harder there, both in terms of student body and level of difficulty of the test.

"Seriously, does the Brooklyn-NYU transfer with a 3.9 1L GPA suddenly become Cravath/S&C material at NYU but wouldn't have been able to do the work at a V30 firm if he had stayed at Brooklyn? Literally, once that Brooklyn student signs to transfer to NYU, his stature in Biglaw's eyes suddenly skyrockets in the span of that one second. But what can you do?"

You may have to sit down for this...just about every top firm in NYC recruits from BLS on campus. If you have a 3.9 GPA at BLS, which would make you number one or two in the class and a grade-on for Law Review, I can assure you that you will have an excellent shot at getting an offer from your pick of NYC firms. Maintaining that a student at the top of his or her class at BLS (or any lower-tiered school) "couldn't do the work at a V30" is lunacy. It is not rocket science and everybody who is at these places (who is honest with himself or herself) knows that. Please, please stop believing your own press.

Moreover, everybody I know who went to NYU/CLS/Harvard is confident they'd have been that 3.9 student at Brooklyn. Bullshit. Those posters who pointed out that transfer students irritate some because they undermine the accepted wisdom that only a select few can excel in law school and in practice are absolutely right. Get over yourselves.

1:27-I transferred from a low tier 2 to CLS and had tremendous success at OCI. Didn't get offers from Wachtell, Cravath or S&C but got offers from DP, Latham, Quinn, K&E, and many more,

The best thing about this article is that it prompted the Forrest Gump piece.

This seems like a situation where someone couldn't take a joke (humor newspaper, people! it makes fun of everyone!) and thought it'd be a good idea to stir people up - perhaps because she was bored with finals studying and wanted to create controversy? It seemed to me that the article was mocking non-transfer students for slacking off while transfers are still engaged.

Either way, clearly transfer students should be better integrated (appropriate word?) into their destination law school.

1:35:

Good for you. Do you want a freaking cookie? Any warm body can get jobs at those firms. They are average--nothing special. Find something more interesting to do than work in a sweatshop.

Actually, it is Ms. Transfer.

And I did take a 1L class, and got the second/third highest grade in the class. (Let me put it this way--three people got the grade I got, one got the book award, so I'm not sure where I fell compared to the other two.)

Competition at non T10-20 schools is much harder, b/c everyone knows that you MUST be in the top 10% to get a highly-paid job.

One of my profs. at my T100 taught the same class at the T100 school and at a T5 school the same semester. The highest grade was from the T100 school, the lowest from the T5 school. If transfer students were so unqualified, we would not routinely keep or increase our class ranks when we transferred. But that is what happens.

I also transferred in UG, and they averaged in my grades from my prior institution (which sucked, because that school had a curve. If you think law schools, even TTTs, have curves, think again) for the purposes of honors. So I didn't graduate with honors, which is okay, but in law school, I earned them. And in law school, if they had averaged in my GPA (without correcting for the harsh curve) I would have still gotten the same honors. (That's right, even though the GPA from my prior school would have diminished my class rank somewhat, I still would have graduated with honors, even though it was HARDER to earn that GPA at my prior school.)

One thing I noticed, when comparing class ranks from my T100 and the T10 I transferred to was that even though the curve was much harsher, the top 10% at my T100 had higher GPAs then the top 10% at my T10. (And that was true for all three years--if you looked at the data for 1Ls separately, or all three years together). This means that at lower ranked schools, if mine was in any way indicative, the higher grades tend to cluster among the top students.

I think another interesting question is how transfers are perceived at their first school. I went to a local Chicago school and there was a slight sense of betrayal when a top student transferred (and some soul-searching on the part of students who "defected"). There were students who absolutely could've transferred and chose not to b/c they preferred the big fish/small pond experience. I also knew students who went to the financial aid office for an economic incentive to stay with an admissions letter from a higher-ranked school in hand and were told fine, transfer (I have mixed feelings about that).

At GULC, most of the existing students are openly cold and hostile toward transfers. But this is mitigated a bit because the school takes so many transfers that the transfers pretty much stick together.
Also, the school did a poor job of integrating the transfers into the school.

1:32 - I know what you are saying, but I can comfortably guaranty that if someone couldn't do any better than average at NYU they don't have the law school test taking ability to be one of the top 10 students at Dozo or Brooklyn which is necessary to transfer to NYU or CLS.

Sure, the middle of the pack at NYU is better than the middle of the pack at Dozo at law school exams, but I am sure that the tip top at Dozo is better than the middle of the pack at NYU at taking law school exams.

10:12 says: "Snarkiness like this would be looked down upon at Boalt." Not so! When I was a transfer at Boalt, a similarly snarky piece about transfers was published in Boalt Briefs (which I take it parallels the publication this item came from). I remember people reveling in it. Still, overall, Boalt was a reasonably welcoming place for transfers. People I know who transfered to nyu & gluc had a much worse time than I did.

Original students resent transfer students because we wind up getting better grades than they do our 2L and 3L years and getting offers from prestigious biglaw firms. At least that's how it was when I transferred; we all wound up in the top of our class at our new school, most of us wrote onto journals/law review or made it onto moot court, and every transfer I knew, including myself, wound up with an offer from a V30 firm.

The firms see our transfer status when they interview us - and they still want us - often choosing us over original students. If we weren't as smart as the originals biglaw firms wouldn't time and time and time again hire transfer students.

1:28, yes, UCLA's Law Review EIC for 2005 was a Hastings transfer. He was #1 in his class at Hastings when he transferred, and he was smarter and harder working than almost everyone else at UCLA. He's a decent guy, too; he didn't mind that I kept getting better grades.

1:31 - right, because I'm sure you wouldn't have any complaints if you were to lose out on having the 10% honor to a transfer when you worked just as hard during 2L/3L year and did better. Would you have worked that hard for purely personal satisfaction? One more transfer who gets magna means one less regular. And yes, many people care as you can see from the posts of the people who are annoyed at the current system. And the difference is not "marginal", where .1 difference in GPA is the difference between 10% and 20%. I am not losing any sleep over this, but when the topic is there, I'm going to tell it like it is. And getting people like you hyperventilating is always fun.

1:33 - read the sentence before the one quoted - "But the market is what it is and law firms make hiring decisions that make no sense from a merit-based level." If you didn't get it, my feelings are the same as yours in that the Brooklyn 1L is just as capable before and after he transfers to Columbia. I'm pointing out that this Brooklyn 1L would get offers from firms as a Columbia transfer (with the Brooklyn 1L GPA) that he wouldn't get as a Brooklyn 2L (with the same Brooklyn 1L GPA). And this shows the flawed law firm recruiting philosophy.

And no, I don't think that HYS students would automatically be top 10% (or 30%) at Brooklyn and that there are many Brooklyn graduates who would have done fine at HYS. But on another note, and this isn't a potshot at you or any other Brooklyn (or similarly ranked school) student is why, assuming that you know the law firm hiring philosophy, would you go to such a low-ranked school at such a high tuition? If you can't get into a top school with really good employment prospects, can't you re-apply at a later year or do something else for a career? Are you really dedicated to public service?

you don't make friends with salad!

Does anyone have any impressions of how transferring affects the way you would look for post-graduation clerkships/teaching possibilities down the road? That is, would it be better for a potential clerkship or career as a law professor to transfer to a top-10 school, presumably doing fairly well there, or to remain at a tier-2 school, but make law review (probably editorial position), finish top 5%, etc.?

If anything, transfer students deserve it more (no I'm not a transfer). It's no secret that competition is insane in second and third tier schools. Students who manage to transfer out are generally bright, ambitious, and dedicated. I can see how transfers' work ethic might be threatening to those who feel their LSAT scores entitles them and only them to success. Interesting how the poem complains about both transfers' preparedness (how unseemly), and their isolation from other students.

11:34 is dead-on, pretty unseemly stuff

1:53: 1:33 here. I'm disputing what I read as your contention that a BLS student with a 3.9 who remained at BLS wouldn't have a shot at Cravath or S & C - that BLS 2L would, in fact, have a shot at those places (at least the year I graduated), in large part b/c it's damn near impossible to have such a high GPA with such a brutal curve. We have the same opinion - I know CLS grads outnumber BLS grads about a million to one at those firms, but it is not impossible (just insanely competitive) to be considered for those gigs even if one stayed at BLS.

I transferred to GULC. Students were neither hostile to me nor particularly friendly. The school doesn't do a good job with integrating transfers. But I wasn't there to socialize, I was there to get a biglaw job at a V20 firm, which I did. It doesn't really affect me whether bottom of the class students at GULC who can't get biglaw jobs didn't wanted to be bffs with me.

11:05 here.

1:16 - the problem with your question #4 is that you often don't beat us during the 2L & 3L years; summarizing an earlier poster, all of us get the kind of grades (or better) that most transfers get during the last two years. So in the majority of instances, all our schools' willingness to take you says is that they're happy to take your money once your scores/pre-law grades don't hurt the rankings.

1:31 - Are you seriously that naive? In response to your doubt, I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who, regardless of personal effort, unfairly lost out on any given level of honors each year was not too different from the number of transfers the school admitted after 1L year. I'm sure if we had access to the data we could easily come up with the exact numbers of people at the margins who get screwed in this process due to the significant differences in 1L vs. 2/3L grades. 12:45's is far simpler/equitable than your vacuous platitude about just focusing on one's own grades.

1:53: I went to Cardozo because it was the highest-ranked school I got into and I legitimately wanted to go to law school. I got a fairly generous scholarship and took what was, even more so in retrospect, a serious gamble. I did very well and got a summer associate position at a big firm, which was my goal from the outset. I recognize that I was a B- away from getting no job at all, but I had confidence that I'd be fine. Foolhardy, I suppose, but I don't regret it at all.

I don't know that I'd recommend it to somebody else, but that was my logic.

Resentment over transfers at GULC is probably attributable to the night program. It's relatively easy to get into the night program and then transfer into the day program after a year. A lot of GULC day programers think that the night program is what keeps the best law school in the nation's capital - a seeming lock for top-ten status - out of the top ten.

I've never heard anyone here at the U of C say that transfer students "don't belong to be here." I'm not saying some "d-bag" (is that the term we're using?) didn't ever say this, but it's certainly not pervasive. If the admissions board lets them in, it's good enough for us.

As some of the people from U of C have posted, this is a poem that was released in the Phoenix, a student-run joke paper. It's an equal opportunity offender, frequently mocking professors, student organizations, and on-campus cliques.

The cover of this quarter's issue was a computer screen with minesweeper, free cell, and a "attempting to find a wireless network" screen.

This poem says transfer students hang out with each other, they often sit in the front row, and they raise their hand a lot in class. It also says that many transfer students have better attendance and study habits than non-transfer students. Hardly offensive, especially when we look at the other student cliques that get skewered in the paper.

Lighten up, it's finals week.

I am a transfer at Georgetown (from American) and it's been fine…if not great. In fact, the school makes absolutely no distinction between regulars and transfers. If the student was not to speak of it, only the admissions office would ever know. Additionally, from my experience sitting in class, it appears that the transfers I came in with (excluding myself!!) are out performing the general student body at Georgetown Law – this should not be surprising despite the evidence being completely anecdotal. Georgetown accepts transfers typically if they are pulling 3.5's or higher. So the transfers are the top of their classes and have proven an ability to achieve in law school.

As an aside, it's foolish for anyone to transfer thinking they are going to get a more thorough legal education at the new school -- everyone is learning torts from the same text book. The real reasons to transfer are the access to a better career services office and the ability to use the school's prestige in landing summer offers.

The Dean of a Top 20 Law School told me it's all about the $$$. The marginal cost to the school of admitting transfers is basically zero. It doesn't matter if they have crappy undergrad resumes or come from TTT schools, because their credentials never count in the U.S. News rankings. So pull in a few extra students, and you can easily bag an extra $500K / year or so for the school.

2:12, where I transferred we not only got cummulate GPA rankings to determine graduating with honors, we had rankings for that individual year to determine Deans List for that year (I imagine it may be similar at other schools). My 2L and 3L years I had a better GPA than the vast majority of the original students, as did every transfer I knew. So, from my experience, transfers did beat original students during the 2L and 3L years.

Transfers to 190! Bitches.

I transferred from a Tier 2 to a T10. My Tier 2 school didn't include one of the traditional 1L classes as part of the 1L curriculum, so I had to take it second semester of my 2L year with 1Ls from the T10 school. I was in the top 10 percent of that class. You could argue that I had an advantage because I was a 2L, but I was already in 3L slacker mode at that point, which probably cancels out any advantage I arguably had. It's a small sample size and all, but the point is that all you people whining about how transfers have it easy because they don't have to compete as a 1L at the "superior" school have it wrong. Transfers are the ones who get the top 1L grades and would have, even if they were at your "superior" schools as 1Ls.

@12:04,

I am at Rutgers and have applied to transfer to many schools. What was your approximate class rank/gpa that got you into CLS?

2:21 - fair enough, I could of course be wrong in the aggregate. I can only verify my own experience where I got higher grades, by a significant margin, than the AU acquaintance of mine during 2L/3L year. I'll admit it - it bugged me that he got magna and I did not. I already had a job at a V10, so again, no lost sleep, but it did seem pretty inequitable, and I think it's a problem that could/should be more fairly resolved.

2.19 - get back to studying Ms President, you need to, the transfers are going to cream you, isn't that what you are so worried about?

2:14, why does the night program have anything to do with GULC's ranking? Their LSATs/GPAs aren't counted in USNWR. A lot of very talented people attend the night program because they have jobs on the Hill or the Pentagon.

I know a transfer student who got taken for $40 at a carnival game throwing darts at balloons.

I went to a T-5 school. None of the transfers from tier 2 and 3 schools were getting the top grades in curved classes. The best transfers were those who went to top undergraduate institutions and just did not have time or botched their LSATs. But not a single of those top 10 and Brooklyn or Cardozo were anywhere close to the top 10 at my school. Middle of the pack at NYU or CLS is as impressive (if not more so) than law review at BLS or Cardozo.

2:46, how could you possibly know that information? Ridiculous statement

I know 2:46. 2:46 is a liar.

2:46--
I take it from the variety of grammatical errors in your comment that you also were not anywhere close to the top 10 at your school. I assume the reason you think middle of the pack at NYU/CLS is so wonderful is that you were in that middle. I suppose mediocrity would make one bitter.
To address your actual comment, I fail to see how middle of the pack at anything is impressive--personally, I wouldn't be impressed even by someone at HLS/Stanford if that person was only middle of the pack. There is nothing that impressive about doing well undergrad/acing the LSAT, then showing that you are not that talented at legal thought.

1:57--Better to transfer. (At least from my T100 to my T10.) I had a very good friend with exceptional grades who stayed at my T100, and despite a great job with a professor who had stellar connections, and a lot of responsibility on her journal, she was unable to land a clerkship.

If you want to know more about your specific school, find out how many students have been placed in clerkships, when, and with what judges. WRT to teaching, sadly, brand name is everything. A friend was on a hiring committee at a T2 (that's tier 2, not top 2) and although they all admired a former student, and thought she was one of the best students their school had produced in the past decade, they were reluctant to hire her even after an LLM from at T5 because of "the prestige problem."

My friend transferred.

1:57, if you want to teach, go to the Top-10 school, period. The only segment of the legal profession that is more snobby than law firms and top gov't poitions put together is academia.

Note: This is assuming you want to teach at a highly ranked law school.

2:46 is full of it. My admissions director told me that most transfers (who are usually top 10% or ballpark) keep or maintain their GPAs. I knew one who went to an awesome undergrad., got a bad LSAT, and transferred from a fourth tier school to a Top 10 and was top 10%. I knew another who went to an indifferent undergrad., got decent grades, a bad LSAT, transferred from a provisionally accredited school and made top 10%.

Because I actually was a transfer, and we would proof eachother's resumes, I can tell you that my transfer classmates all did very well regardless of their LSAT scores etc. (And some of us had very high ones, but other blemishes on our records. Others hadn't initially applied to our school, and later chose it because 1L year we realized we wanted to focus on certain areas of the law.)

At my school, we call this problem "Transfer AIDS"

There are two problems with the "the transfer stole my honors and didn't deserve them more" school of thought. The first is that it is easy to misperceive the number of honors slots taken by transfers. It is a bit like seeing a handicapped space in front of a restaurant. Everyone thinks they would get it if it wasn't handicapped, but only one person would. Of course it isn't possible to quantify the number of lost spots for continuing students - but assuming you graduated in a class composed of about 10% transfers - even if 1/5 of the transfers ended in the top 10% of your class, approximately 90% of the spots that would have been available to you still were. For example, if your class was originally 100 students and took 10 transfers, 2 of whom finished in the top 10%, there would have been 10 spots available to you initially and 9 spots after the transfers entered. Only 1% of continuing students would have lost a chance they otherwise would have had.

The other problem applies only to schools where the curve does not change - or is never mandatory. Speaking as a transfer at one such school I can say - albeit only anecdotally - that transfers on average have significantly higher GPAs than continuing students. This isn't suprising given that LSAT and UGPA are proxies for law school performance - and are unlikely to be nearly as accurate a predictor of future performance as actual past performance.

2:46: The transfers probably acted upon the fact that once they were at NYU all they needed to do was be a warm body to get a decent job.

3:02: I completely agree. I don't think it's such a huge deal as far as working in the private sector, but academia is notoriously prestige-conscious - even more so than judges.

I challenge the assumption in the original post that transfers students have lower LSAT scores than non-transfers. I transferred to a top six and I had a 174 LSAT -- above the 75th% at my new school. I know others with similar stories.

I transferred to a T10 and had a 169, which put me at or about the 75th percentile at my school.

@2:28

I went to Rutgers (I don't know which one you're at, though) and I would say that if you had grades like mine (top 10-15%, 3.7+) you probably should transfer, even if they offer you extra money to keep you there. I liked the people at Rutgers, and felt it was a great value, but I took the free cash then...and I'm paying for it now that I'm looking for a job after my clerkship.

That's not to say that I don't have a job - I think I could have gotten a more prestigious firm with better outside-the-USA opportunities if I had transferred. You'll probably get in anywhere you applied, though, all the transfers I know of got in (Georgetown, NYU, Columbia, etc.)

"Note: This is assuming you want to teach at a highly ranked law school."

I'd argue assuming you want to teach just about anywhere - especially in a metropolitan area. I went to a local NYC school and the hiring process (I was privy to it b/c they included certain students in the interviewing process) was prestige-crazed. Academia is very tough (except writing programs, which are a bit more relaxed).

You transfers sure do sound insecure.

Transfers practically run GULC. A bunch are cum laude or magna, they do great on all of the journals (even being elected by their non-transfer peers to be editors in chief in a bunch of cases) and there is a huge critical mass of them. It seems to me that they have a great deal and that GULC's a good place for them.

3:20: Heh. No more insecure than you non-transfers. If the thrust of the thread was an attack on the worthiness of non-transfer populations at top schools I'm sure the shoe would be on the other foot. But good shot. Use what you're given. I respect that.

I transferred to Georgetown after my first year (I actually went from a part-time evening program to a full-time day program, so my transfer occurred mid-year). The administration was actually very helpful with the transition. The hardest thing I found about being a transfer student was no longer having a first year section to bond with (a problem that never really goes away). I'm still glad I transfered though - it led to a lot more interviews for summer associate spots (my previous school did nil to help place their best students). I also found the current students to be very nice and helpful. I'm sure any resentment that exists has to do with increased competition, but I didn't experience any of this personally when I was at G'town (2004-06).

Like others have said, this poem appeared in a satirical paper which regularly mocks U of C law professors and students. It's not a big deal and anyone who is offended by it is being too sensitive. I have never heard anyone at U of C say anything that indicates that they resent transfers, and the transfers seem happy and well-integrated into the student body.

I think some ppl here said it best - many middle of the pack or bottom of the barrel guys at top schools like to think that they are inherently smarter than every single transfer student, and therefore the only possible way a transfer student could have done better in 2L would be for the transfer to be a disgusting and hated "gunner" while the "regular" student was so inherently brilliant so as to never need to study. "Remember, oh lowly transfer student, the one and only reason you got an A and I got a B was because you studied hard for the semester whereas I only touched the textbook on the morning of the final - never forget that I am inherently more brilliant than you!"

The insecurity/ego is astounding.

And before anyone jumps at me, I was top 10% at HYS, and a "regular" student. I would totally respect any transfer student who did better than me (and there were transfers who did).

3:10 -- And what were your grades like? Every transfer I ever knew well enough to ask had some serious problem with either their ug grades or more often their LSAT. The fact is that you can do pretty well in law school, epecially lesser ones but even better ones, simply by working hard. I actually think the obsession with intelligence in admissions is misplaced, but you really can't deny that LSAT is a huge factor in these people not getting into a top school in the first place.

3:06. Sure. Tranfers did fine at my school, but none ended out in the top 10% of my class at graduation and I am not the guy you are responding to. There were a ton of transfers at my T5ish and the curve is easier after the first year. That said, most transfers were totally able to cope and some did quite well, graduating with honors, etc. But it is simply untrue to say that they generally maintain the same level of class rank once they transfer.

3:34--you are absoultely correct I am a transfer at a T5 school-was ranked #3 in my low end tier 2 school, my LSAT's sucked. I think I am in the upper middle of the class now. I never thought I would be top 10% in new school.

3:34--My admissions director at my T10 told me that transfers did maintain their class-rank post transfer. I was in the top 10 students in my class, from being in the top 12-13% at my first school, and every one of my friends whose resume I proofed made top 10%. This was at a T10. I proofed 5 resumes out of 25-35 students.

Perhaps your school has lower standards for transfers, or perhaps you just didn't know that some of the top-flight talent at your school transferred in.

As an "original" HLS '06er, I had no issue with the school letting in the few transfers they do, and it never occurred to me to "resent" anything about them. If anything, I remember some of them struggling with clerkships because COA judges had issues with their split transcripts, so it never occurred to me that they'd have an advantage, let alone an unfair one. But even if they gained a recruiting benefit, who really cares? Biglaw jobs were handed out for the taking to all of us anyway, and if a few additional people could benefit from the largesse, it's no skin off my back. I transferred as an undergrad, and I know it's tough to integrate into an established social environment in a different city. Why anyone would want to make that harder for a few transfer kids because of some marginal "prestige" benefit they might be getting, I don' t know - but this sort of childishness seems par for the course for the xoxo/ATL scene.

3:34 -- why do all you douchebags claim to be top 10% at HYS. I have to imagine that this often not even true. And, while I think there is more virtue in working hard than being smart, there are tons of super smart people in top law schools who don't work very hard. I think it is probably true that the average transfer is not as smart as the average regular admit. That said, I would nearly always rather have the transfer as my lawyer.

3:06 and 3:10, you both are morons.

"2:46 is full of it. My admissions director told me that most transfers (who are usually top 10% or ballpark) keep or maintain their GPAs."

Wow, your admissions director told you that. He would have no way of knowing. I would know since it is listed who graduates magna cum laude and I have spoken with many transfers.

" I knew one who went to an awesome undergrad., got a bad LSAT, and transferred from a fourth tier school to a Top 10 and was top 10%. I knew another who went to an indifferent undergrad., got decent grades, a bad LSAT, transferred from a provisionally accredited school and made top 10%."

And how exactly does this disprove what I wrote? I specifically noted that most transfers are good students from good undergraduate institutions who got lousy LSAT scores. That seems to be in keeping with what you wrote.

"Because I actually was a transfer, and we would proof eachother's resumes, I can tell you that my transfer classmates all did very well regardless of their LSAT scores etc."

That is b.s. At most top law schools, you don't list GPA on your resume. If you went to a top law school, you would know that. Moreover, since most people accept their 2L summer position, which is based on 1L grades at your original law school, you would have no way of knowing how your friends did based solely on their resume.

Nice try. Nothing I said was offensive. Sorry to say that you don't go from being the number 1 student at St. John's to the number 1 student at CLS or Harvard. It just doesn't happen.

3:42 -- I simply don't believe your resume / admissions director story. Too convenient and too unbelievable. Sorry.

And yes you caught me on grammatical errors. Sorry, I work 60 hours a week at a top 10 firm. Sue me, if I don't proofread.

Has anybody transferred to Yale? Is it easy to get in? Did you enjoy your time there?

Okay 3:34, no one is saying that there aren't very capable transfers and most people don't care about how the transfers got there, or how much money they saved, etc. And if law firms want to hire (or not) them using their previous law school's grades, then that's how things are.

But schools can and should change how they base graduating honors based solely on transfers' 2L/3L GPA's. My proposal (12:45) isn't perfect, but its more fair than the current system. Consider it from the standpoint of a hard-working T5 law student. "A" works very hard during 1L and get grades that put A in the top 35%. During 2L/3L when many people don't work nearly as hard, A still works just as hard (as hard as the transfer) and get grades that put A in the top 5% for those years. A finishes graduating in the top 12% but miss out on the top 10%. Now consider T, the transfer, who comes in and finishes in the top 10% during 2L/3L (and yes, I very happily acknowledge that the transfer works just as hard as A). Who gets the magna cum laude that both worked so hard to get? And lets face it, if both are working so hard, then they're looking to get stellar grades and they're both very cognizant of what top x% entails.

This doesn't happen in every situation, but it happens more than enough, such that it should be rectified. I'm not looking to punish transfers, I'm just looking to "not punish" non-transfers because that is what the current system does.

Let's hear some responses - How many of you at top law schools thought that the studying/competition was easier during 2L/3L?

I'm all for hearing other proposals, but as it currently stands, the system is not optimal.

Maybe give every student the option of having their GPA calculated as the better of either their 3-year GPA or only 2L/3L GPA for purposes of graduating honors?

3:51(1)--No, they don't list gpa, but they do list if they were magna, which at my school is top 10%. (Yes, I am a few years out, so the resumes I proofed were post-grad, either to apply for jobs post-clerkship, or because they decided to move to a different area of the country.)

3:51(2)--That's okay if you don't believe my credentials. They exist independent of your belief/disbelief. I will see if any admissions directors have gone on record, mine included, saying what I reported, and if they have I'll post the link.

Why would anyone assume that a lower ranked law school would be easier? Sure, you could assume that the other students might not be as intelligent but that doesn't mean the curriculum would necessarily be easier. In fact, the opposite could very well be true, especially at newer schools who are looking to build a reputation for training well prepared lawyers in order to move up in the rankings.

4:01: I think the only solution to the "problem" you present is to not accept transfers at all. If the school admits a transfer, it's essentially recognizing that the student proved him or herself to such an extent during 1L that he or she is interchangeable with its own students. If the school takes the student's money just like it takes its "original" students' money and subjects the student to the same requirements as its "original" students, I can't see how it could then academically penalize the very same students it recognized as interchangeable.

There's all kinds of unfairness after the uniformity of 1L. Did I resent that some joker who took a p/f clinic or took only writing classes (notoriously easily-graded b/c they were off the curve) gained on me rank-wise because I got a B+ in Fed Courts or Tax? I guess, but I was willing to take the "risk" of a rigorous class because it the subject matter (at the time) was important to me.

I was top -5% at a law school so prestigious it doesn't exist in your dimension.

Try and prove me wrong!

The system at CLS helps to address the problem 4:01 laid out. CLS gives separate honors based on 2L and 3L performance such as the Stone scholar.

Is it possible to have everyone in the graduating class at CLS be a Stone scholar since it only requires one decent (3.4?) semester? Conversely, if you graduate from CLS and you're not a Stone scholar, does that mean that you were never a very successful student at CLS?

I transferred from a T-14 to a T-5 school and just graduated. You hear comments from time to time, but it helps that the new school has a massive transfer class (at least 30 students).

um, 4:12...You're retarded. Of course lowly-ranked schools are easier. You see, law school grades are based on a curve. So whether or not a school is "easy" has nothing to do with the complexity of the material (which is the same at every school, since the law is the law) and everything to do with the intelligence of the competition. Putting in X units of effort at a lowly-ranked school will yield a higher grade than the same effort at a top school because the competion at the lowly-ranked school is primarily retarded, like you.

4:12, 1L year all students are graded on a curve. The difficulty of the 'curriculum' is inconsequential, what matters is how everyone else around you is doing. It seems fairly obvious that its going to be harder to write a good exam answer relative to your classmates when all your classmates are more intelligent wouldn't you say?

I transferred and graduated cum laude (and very close to magna) and wrote on to a journal. I even won a couple CALI awards (i.e. an award for having the best grade in a class, beating out all the originals in those classes). A couple other transfers graduated magna or cum laude and most made law review, another journal, or moot court. I didn't pay enough attention to notice what percentage of all transfers it was, but certainly in the circle of transfers I knew they all wound up doing very well.

lower ranked schools grade harder- c curve

I transferred from a top 35 to a top 14. I encountered no animosity at my new school. In fact, transfers thrived at my new school. Several were on law review and moot court and the SBA president was a transfer.

The toughest part of transferring in the first semester at the law school you transfer to. Some students are cold and some employers want to see how you perform at a better law school. But after that, you sort of blend in and make your own life. At the end of the day, you finish with your degree and move on.

"its [sic] going to be harder to write a good exam answer relative to your classmates when all your classmates are more intelligent wouldn't you say?"

The top students at lower-tiered schools are not less intelligent than students at NYU, HLS, etc. They may have gotten lower LSAT scores or had lower GPAs in undergrad, but they performed so well first year that top-tier schools perceive transfers as capable of competing with their students. You're not comparing the entire student body of one to the entire student body of another, you're comparing the tippity-top of one to the whole of the other.

LSAT doesn't directly correlate to intelligence. There are people with genuis or close to it IQs and people who scored brilliantly on their SATs who wind up at non-top 14 law schools because they didn't perform well on their LSATs. Being able to take one type of test well or not doesn't define intelligence.

You really think that the people on HLS law review aren't more intelligent than those on LR at a tier 4? I find that assumption to be rather dubious.

"its [sic] going to be harder to write a good exam answer relative to your classmates when all your classmates are more intelligent wouldn't you say?"

All things being equal, sure. But intelligence is not the only factor in how well people do. Another major factor is effort. I transferred from a Tier-2 school to a T10. The Tier-2 students worked with the fear of God in them and were far more cutthroat. The T10 students took a more gentlemanly approach. It's actually tough to say which school was "harder." But the gentlemanly approach was much more enjoyable.

"its [sic] going to be harder to write a good exam answer relative to your classmates when all your classmates are more intelligent wouldn't you say?"

All things being equal, sure. But intelligence is not the only factor in how well people do. Another major factor is effort. I transferred from a Tier-2 school to a T10. The Tier-2 students worked with the fear of God in them and were far more cutthroat. The T10 students took a more gentlemanly approach. It's actually tough to say which school was "harder." But the gentlemanly approach was much more enjoyable.

"So whether or not a school is "easy" has nothing to do with the complexity of the material (which is the same at every school, since the law is the law) and everything to do with the intelligence of the competition."

This is incorrect.

fodham

"You really think that the people on HLS law review aren't more intelligent than those on LR at a tier 4? I find that assumption to be rather dubious."

In fact, it's so dubious that no one ever even argued that it was true.

Well I'll comment as a transfer student myself who did not drink the transfer kool-aid.

I transfered from a T2 to a T20 school. I got into a T10 but my transfer was purely for geographic reasons. In fact, my main motivation for doing well 1L was to transfer to this specific school.

I did find the other transfers to generally be insufferable. They weren't bad people or anything, but pretty much magnified the things I disliked most about law students during 1L- they were overtly obsessed with prestige and grades. These were the types of people that try to go to a V10 over a V20 firm just because it is more "prestigious". They pretty much all still had the 1L gunner mentality, and were gunning for prestigious firms, clerkships, law review, grades, etc.

I pretty much hated that, because it felt like being a 1L again, so I stopped hanging out with the transfers.

As for me, I took my BIGLAW job, had fun over the summer, accepted my offer. After I transferred and got my offer, I totally lost all my motivation. My only motivation was to transfer to the school I was at, and to get BIGLAW. I never wanted a clerkship or to do law review, so I let my grades tank. I think I might be lucky to be median at my new school, and I could really care less.

But I seem to be the exception among transfers

At my T-20 school, transfer students are not eligible for Order of the Coif, and 2L/3L classes (except seminars) are graded on the same curve as 1L classes.

5 25,

The LSAT is a test known to psychometricians as "highly G-loaded," i.e., it correlates very highly to general intelligence (and to performance in law school). You have to bear in mind that there will be outliers and exceptions - these things are studied in terms of trends and averages, not in anecdotes. Put another way, "I know a guy with an 170 LSAT who blew it his 1L year" is not an argument.

If you are seriously interested in this stuff, read "The Bell Curve" (and feel free to skip the icky chapter about race - it's not that relevant to the general principles).

5:37, care to explain why, or are you just thinking out loud?

students at crappy schools are dumber, as a group, than students at top schools. Because it is easier to outperform the students at crappy schools, crappy schools are "easier."

And to 5:25, of course the LSAT "directly" correlates with intelligence. (p.s. it makes no sense to say something directly correlates. Either two things are correlated or they're not. Maybe you're thinking of the phrase "directly proportional"). You might be trying to say there's not a strong correlation between the two, and I might agree, but smarties tend to do better on the LSAT than retards (like you?).

Hey guys. So I'm going to admit that I haven't read all these comments -- wow, there are a LOT of them!!! But I just wanted to contribute my two cents . . . I'm not the smartest cracker in the barrel but I've got some advice I think everyone could use. Maybe we should all give that U of C class president a break! and give the transfers a break, too. We're all just people, swimming around in the big scary ocean of life. Just take a moment and reflect.

Adam "hugs" Kirg.

6:17, do you by any chance read Tarrot cards under an alias?

6:45, you spell like a transfer

I call BS on transfers being treated poorly at GULC. If anything, they get a lot of special treatment. Every transfer I know got an Am Law 200 firm gig in their top choice city (often at a firm ranked highly in Vault) whereas many people who did their 1L year at GULC did not get jobs in their first choice cities even though they were top 1/3 or higher. Many are EICs of our journals and several got prestigious federal judicial clerkships. I've heard of some people not making a journal who wanted to, but that doesn't seem to have hurt those individuals.

Moreover, and here's the kicker: the curve at Georgetown is much more difficult for 1Ls than it is for 2Ls, 3Ls, etc. But transfers don't have GULC 1L transcripts hanging over their heads. This means that transfers can come in and bs around in easy classes for 2L and 3L years and graduate magna whereas their classmates with low 1L GPAs but high 2L/3L GPAs won't. As a result, I don't know many transfers who didn't graduate with latin honors.

For the Record:

The heroine character in the Law School Musical at UoC this year was a transfer student. SO THERE.

UoC has a hard curve for 2Ls and 3Ls, unlike slacker schools. SO THERE.

Noone at UoC cares about this poem... it's amazing you all do. SO THERE.

Saul Levmore is a GOD. SO THERE.

Transfer Horn

"But transfers don't have GULC 1L transcripts hanging over their heads." - No, they just have 1L transcripts from schools that aren't as prestigious as GULC hanging over their heads. It is mandatory that transfers give their 1L transcripts during interviewing and make it clear on their resume. No firm is being tricked. If the firm still wants to take that transfer over a GULC student with a low GPA it must be because experience has proven that high performers at other schools who transfer to GULC do well as associates.

Im a transfer from a 4th tier school to a T18.

I was not treated any differently than any other student (other than nobody knew me).

Even if I was chastised every day and beat up in the bathroom it would still be worth it.

Has anyone mentioned yet that the real d-bags at GULC are the ones that STAYED? You had a chance to transfer to Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. But no. You had too much fun partying and got some B's so now you have to stay. The doctrine of transferred intent states that your bitterness for staying is shifted to incoming transfers who know how to outperform your butts.

Currently top 10%, probably just inside the top 5% after our grades are finally out, at a school just inside the T-20, chances of getting into U of C? Anyone?

Can anyone actually defend the position of being a law student and treating a transfer student worse just for transferring up? Maybe the person actually went out in college and didnt give a a shit about GPA and then actually applied themselves when it counted. Sounds like just playing your cards right to me. I cant imagine sitting around with people and my class and excluding someone for being a transfer, and I think most people stopped doing that around third grade or so.

6:14 is there really any reason for name calling? The only adults who need to resort to name calling must not know how to argue without resorting to childhood antics and probably have the maturity of a whiny 10 year old. Is it really necessary to be pissed off and mean to someone you don't know? You don't know whether I attended a good law school, what my LSAT was, or whether I worked for a V20 firm (I worked for 2 actually).

We had trannies in my high school too. It was no big deal.

OCI for transfers at CLS is almost certain to result in better options than any school from which you would transfer. I think there was one kid who once said something negative about transfers (but no one likes him anyway - and in all fairness it was a joke). Maybe it is just a product of being a small school, but based on comments about other top schools, if you have the choice, come to CLS.

I transfered from a T14 to CLS. It wasn't a prestige thing, it was just where I wanted to be. I did fairly well at OCI, getting offers from 3 top five firms. I don't feel any resentment from my peers. I'd recommend it.

Anyone who thinks transfers are somehow lesser than regular students belongs in Slytherin house.

I transferred to NYU from a completely unknown school with a 3.98. My reason for attending the completely unknown school? Had no intentions of applying to law school while in college (so crap GPA), good scholarship from unknown school and I hadn't done my homework so I had no idea that the name on the top of my transcript would be so important. Anyway, I had no issues with "regular" NYU students. I also had no problems with OCI and got my summer/offer with the firm of my choice. The only minus for me was, no thaving spent 1st year with my classmates, I didn't meet as many people as I otherwise might have.

"Maybe the person actually went out in college and didnt give a a shit about GPA and then actually applied themselves when it counted. Sounds like just playing your cards right to me."

I beileve this is what drives the nerds the craziest. There somebody is having a normal life and suddenly - the horrors! - they have the same stature as you have. So, the long-suffering dorks go ahead and draw completely bizarre distinctions that about 99.9% of the world doesn't recognize or give a shit about ("Sure, it says HLS on her resume, but she transferred from UConn!").

What if you got really drunk every night in college but managed to not f up your grades, smoke the lsat, and go to HYS -- but still hate transfers?

Better? Or worse?

While the LSAT isn't perfect, i'd still wager to say its a far better indication of intelligence that law school exams......

6:14:

"students at crappy schools are dumber, as a group, than students at top schools. Because it is easier to outperform the students at crappy schools, crappy schools are "easier.""

You are assuming that intelligence is the only indicator for performance. I disagree with that assumption and I think any reasonably intelligent person would too.

I transferred and my class rank improved dramatically at my T10. It is total bullshit to pretend that T10 schools are harder in the first year. At T10 schools people are competing to distinguish themselves, but almost everyone is going to get a job. At nonT20 schools, students are cut throat and fighting for survival. If they screw up, it means more than "I didnt make law review." It means your ability to find work is in question. Even if the caliber of students is not as high, the competition is far more intense.

"You are assuming that intelligence is the only indicator for performance. I disagree with that assumption and I think any reasonably intelligent person would too."

Not the only indicator, but certainly an indicator. And by "certainly," I mean "without the slightest f-ing hint of a shadow of a doubt." I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, smarter people do better than dumber people by a pretty wide margin.

"What if you got really drunk every night in college but managed to not f up your grades, smoke the lsat, and go to HYS -- but still hate transfers?"

Everybody will maintain that this was their trajectory, but about 99.9% of them are full of shit.

"Not the only indicator, but certainly an indicator. And by "certainly," I mean "without the slightest f-ing hint of a shadow of a doubt." I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, smarter people do better than dumber people by a pretty wide margin."

It seems pretty clear you didn't transfer or you would not be arguing the point that you are. I'm not arguing that intelligence is not an indicator. Only an idiot would argue that and no one upthread has. But "smarter people do better than dumber people by a pretty wide margin" is an incredibly stupid comment. If "smarter" people are only marginally smarter than "dumber" people, they're only going to do marginally better (all things being equal). A person who is marginally more intelligent doesn't do exponentially better. And that "all things being equal" caveat is crucial. Your single-mindedness is pitiable.

Two reasons people don't like transfers:

1. They are mostly type-A gunners. This is because of selection. We're talking about people who went to lower-ranked schools (read: higher pressure environment) and hit the books hard and beat out everyone. Then on top of that, they went through the trouble of applying to transfer, moving to another city, etc. So gunners are annoying in all cases, but the transfer population is by necessity full of them.

2. First impressions. When's the first time you meet the transfers? At many schools its OCI. You're already in a high stress environment, mitigated slightly by the fact that practically everyone around you is a friend of yours. But then you start noticing all these strangers walking around in suits too, and gathering in groups with other strangers, talking about all the callbacks they got. These people annoy you and you're not going to like them, even though its not their fault. You meet them again after OCI and they're pretty nice and all, but first impressions are everything.

Wow. A few comments up was probably the first person to admit they think LSAT scores are a better indication of intelligence than law school grades. Anyway, if you are going to assume that any group of people (based solely on satisfying the criteria that make them a member of that group) are less intelligent or not as capable, you have some serious issues. Unless the group is a hate group - you can make judgments about them (just like my con law prof did). With regards to being gunners - I understand the reasoning behind your rationale, but I don't think it works. By your reasoning, it means that the stationary student from the transfers new school, would not have worked as hard in the transfers prior school. That seems to directly conflict with what seems to be the general consensus on these comments - that is, better schools are easier.

I think T15 schools are simply a different beast than T100 or T50 schools. If you are top of the class at one, you can probably do well at the other. However, with the different levels of stress and different emphasis on theory versus application of law, it is not certain.

I transferred from T2 to T1 and did not see much animosity from people who were there before. Generally, people were pretty friendly, and why shouldn't they be? Nearly everybody gets a good job from a top school, so the atmosphere is more relaxed.

In any event, ut is plain silly to complain about transfers coming in and getting inflated grades etc . . . If good grades are what you want, they are there for the taking if you are willing to do the work - whether there are 15 extra people or not.

I am pretty sure transferring does not provide much of an advantage. When you transfer, you find out you are in late July. Thus, you have to move to a new city, find a place to live, register for classes (six months after everyone else when the spots are full), and start school/moot court/interviewing/law review write-on contest all within the span of 3 weeks. Meanwhile, everybody else has been there for year, and knows each other, how things work and where is everything. I am really glad that I transferred and it was a great experience for me, but it was no advantage.

I can also tell you first that firms do not give you the same credit for getting good grades at a previous school (unless it is one at which they interview anyway). Nearly every firm with which I interviewed said "well, sure you did well a X school (large state school in T2), but how do you think you will do here?" One guy said "wow, you really did great in undergrad at X school, what are your law school grades like." When I explained that X school was my law school and I transferred, he basically ended the interview.

I also had a bunch of interviews where, after I explained that I transferred, they still asked me whether I had some Property, Torts, Contracts etc . . . professor that they did when they were at my new school. Anyway, I did manage to get a job at a good firm, but it was one of the only ones that did not have a huge issue with the fact that I transferred.

The bottom line is this: If you complain about transfers, then you are an idiot/wuss, and should have skipped law school all together, thereby saving your dad about $150k.

If the LSAT is a greater predictor of intelligence than law school grades, why the hell are you all whining about not being at the top of your class? If the LSAT is such a widely-acknowledged marker of intelligence and potential, isn't your very presence at a T5 school enough? Surely, you can just breeze into a SC clerkship because law school grades aren't nearly as important as your LSAT score. Right?

GULC was so big that we had no clue who the transfers were. After all, we only recognized 1/4 of the people in our 2L classes. By the time the transfers told us that they were transfers, we had already decided that they were intelligent and witty enough to be friends with. Conversely, if we thought someone was a douche, we never find out that they were a transfer because we didn't bother talking to them after class.

But I went to Georgetown Law before the advent of Facebook, so things are probably different now.

I was top 6% at a lower tier two law school. Transferred to NYU, graduated magna. Law school just isn't that hard. If you answer the questions right, you'll do well no matter what school you attend.

I was top 6% at a lower tier two law school. Transferred to NYU, graduated magna. Law school just isn't that hard. If you answer the questions right, you'll do well no matter which school you attend.

Not all schools have such a varied curve. The curve at Boalt first year vs. upper division classes isn't that different (with the exception of seminars).

My performance in curved Boalt classes shows that I would have gotten mostly HHs, some Hs and no more than one P my first year.

It's quite possible that I would have had a HIGHER class rank if I'd been at Boalt for three years. I know that's not true for everybody, but I'm not the only one.

May 29, 2:06 p.m.:

You sound like an awful human being.

You also made a very stupid decision. If you deserved to get into Georgetown as a transfer, you were doing well enough at your original law school to get a biglaw job. Look at any Big Law web site. They have tons of lawyers from crappy law schools. They just want warm bodies.

Does no one see the irony in all these T-10 grads bitching about transfers when most of them went to TTT undergrads and only got into good law schools because it is so damn easy to do well? The LSAT is totally teachable. Imo ppl are way, way smarter at H undergrad than at H law. Getting into T-10 has little to do with raw intelligence. How can anyone complain about transfers? Most of the ppl bitching did the same sort of upgrade from ugrad to law school. Why not during 1L?

I think I was taken for $20, but not $40. The stuffed animals were totally not worth it either way, though.

I transferred to GULC last year. A "regular" girl sitting next to me in a class actually told me that I didn't deserve to be at GULC, and then had the audacity to try and be friendly with me for the rest of the semester. Guess she never heard of the saying "first impressions are everything." I think she was pissed b/c she didn't get as good of an offer as she was expecting (a likely reason for a "regular" to hate transfers). Cry me a river. Besides that bitch, most other students didn't seem to really care (or at least they didn't show their resentment to my face). I have plenty of friends who did their 1L year at GULC, but the above posts are correct: transfers tend to cling together. Mainly due to the fact that 1L's make their friends w/in their section and aren't as open to befriending some kid who probably took one of the offers they so desperately desired.

Truth be told, transfers could care less if the "regulars" don't like them. We didn't transfer to make new friends; we transfered for the degree and the job...

I transferred to g'town. One of my good buddies also transferred and had a 1L roommate. The 1L treated us like second class citizens - thought he was soooo much smarter with his 170+ LSAT. Then 1st semester grades came out. Ahhhhh, look who's asking the two transfers for help with classes? How cute. (fuckin' tool)

I'd say this is a nonissue raised by transfer students to attempt to ameliorate their OWN endemic sense of inferiority which is more likely than not coupled with an abnormal sensitivity (vide the posted comments).

I'm a student at U Chicago. Honestly, I don't give a fuck if you transfered or not. I don't think most of us do. Intelligence, comprehension, humility, preparation, adaptability, quickness: these things are the currency here.

PSA to transfers: get over your unfortunate backstory that you subconsciously hang as a yoke on your heads. Shut the fuck up, work hard, and no one gives a shit where you came from.

Best,

Chicago Student

I think the people that should really be looked down upon are the ones that went to shitty undergrads and did well enough to end up at T14 law schools. I agree with 6:36. Undergrad correlates with intelligence more than law school. I may transfer after my first year at a T2, and if someone gives me any lip, we can discuss where we went to undergrad.

When I transferred to Chicago, some guy gave me a hard time about taking jobs away from him at OCI. I helped him put his loss in perspective by screwing his wife.

I'd trade my wife for a V10 job.

1:02.. I went to a very prestigious undergrad and am not dumb enough to think that my undergrad is more important than where I went to law school. At the top of your resume, it is going to say where you went to law school and how you did. Your undergraduate info might be a small bonus.

6:11, what the previous poster meant was that getting into a good undergraduate school proves intelligence better than getting into a good law school. In legal hiring your law school's name obviously trumps all other factors, but there are plenty of dumbasses in T14s who got in because of their 3.9 UGPA in fluff UG majors like polisci or gender studies, and their tutor-inflated 172 LSATs

10:50, surely those same people got into their top-rated undergradute schools because of their inflated 98.9 average at a prep institute and their tutor-inflated 1500+ SAT?

Whoever sent this in really is ridiculous. FYI- the student body president is a woman. Instead of judging others, why don't those of you on your moral high horse reflect on why you assumed it was a dude.

The GULC booing thing is true - but I saw it more like good-natured ribbing than anything malicious. I also agree with whoever said GULC students have no idea who the transfers are. There are asshats there who I'm sure have nasty things to say to transfers (as I'd expect anywhere) but I never saw any anti-transfer sentiment myself.

It's totally ridiculous to assume that you have to be smarter to attend an Ivy for undergrad than law school. I went to an Ivy for undergrad and there were PLENTY of total idiots in my classes and on campus.

5:59, college admissions committees take the difficulty of your high school courses into account when considering your application. Without taking several AP or IB courses, including science and math courses, you are extremely unlikely to gain admission to a good UG school. You must take hard courses. Contrast that to law school admissions, where an MIT engineer's 2.9 is treated on par with a state school comparative lit major's 3.2. And people, at least in the last 5 years, are WAY more hardcore about studying for the LSAT than people used to be about studying for the SAT. I didn't even take a practice SAT. So for people graduating law school right now, a poor UG school with a fluff major is a strong indicator that they may not deserve to be at a top law school. There are exceptions to everything I've said, of course, but I'm confident that what I've said is true in many cases.

i want to work for a firm that does hood rat stuff. and serves muffins in the morning. suggestions?

GULC and Georgetown generally both have ego problems. Mostly stemming from the fact that the school(s) suck balls.

SLS transfers are awesome. Excellent attendance at last night's barbri drinking session.

I transferred to U.C. Berkeley (Boalt Hall) law school from a fourth tier law school and have been a lawyer for 25 years. I never noticed attitude from other students, but the transfers did bond. There is no question you are presumed to be a smarter better lawyer if you graduate from a top ranked law school. Recruiters did discount my credentials, but once you are a lawyer for a few years your reputation is what counts. No one cares where you started, only where you graduated.

1:02 pm on May 31st, I hope you're not serious with the comment regarding undergrad. Whereas the opportunity to attend undergrad is based off of accomplishments at a level (high school) that can be based entirely off of parental guidance/encouragement and a stringent structure, success at the next level (college) shows personal discipline and work ethic, not to mention talent. Same goes for those who transfer law schools. The point is, at each step a person has the chance to turn it all around and achieve something they couldn't have just years ago. This is not just the American Way, but the human spirit. Those who deny the advancement of a candidate through his lifetime, up to acceptance into their school, is denying someone with remarkable achievement and progression in their lives that deserve a chance to realize their full potential.

While it is evident that transfer students enjoy certain advantages not available to those 'original' students, it is also clear that this is a way for schools to make themselves better places. Diversity and experiences in a learning environment allow for an enriched learning experience, and make us all the better for it. Also, July 1,2008 12:15am hit the nail on the head. It's what you do, not where you go, that ultimately defines you. While where you go/went may be up to what you DID, you still have a chance to change what you DO.

I transfered from a 3d (used to be 4th) tier to Brooklyn.

Pros: Class rank stayed roughly the same; Better career services opportunities; (I know this sounds pathetic, but...) I feel better about myself because I am proud to attend BLS.

Cons: No friends (not a gunner; not a d-bag); Persistant desire (probably irrational) to hide my transfer status from others.

All told, I'm glad I did it. My LSAT score was garbage, and I was lucky to get into my original school. However, I worked hard, showed some aptitude, and got into the top 20%. I hear some of the 'regular' arguments, but I am glad that hard work and proven results still count for something. Everyone at BLS probably has a higher LSAT than me. But, I am pretty proud of cracking the top 1/4 there, and I feel like I belong there every bit as much as the BLS 'regular'.

I was a transfer student who arrived at Georgetown Law (GULC) in 2006 (I left a top 50 school where I had a scholarship for 50% of tuition) and was in attendance when we were booed at the EIW introduction assembly. I think the booing happened because there was a crowd and people don't necessarily think rationally when acting in large groups...I don't think it necessarily reflected how the student body at GULC felt about us and I never felt discriminated against for being a transfer.

I had a great experience in my 2 years at Georgetown Law, worked hard, made some life-long friends, some of which were transfers but most were not. I graduated cum laude and I am working at a top 20 firm as an associate now.

If you are a well-rounded, social person and make friends in other situations, then law school, whether as a transfer or not, is no different. And as far as transfers being gunners, I think many of the transfers recognize how fortunate they are to be put in a situation where they are at a top school and that people will take notice if they perform well. I know that I felt fortunate because most of the friends that I made the year before as a 1L weren't in that situation and knew they were going to have trouble finding jobs. I didn't want to take my situation for granted and I know that many of my fellow transfers felt the same way. That was the reason that I worked as hard as I did, I felt like I owed it to people and myself.

I was a transfer student who arrived at Georgetown Law (GULC) in 2006 (I left a top 50 school where I had a scholarship for 50% of tuition) and was in attendance when we were booed at the EIW introduction assembly. I think the booing happened because there was a crowd and people don't necessarily think rationally when acting in large groups...I don't think it necessarily reflected how the student body at GULC felt about us and I never felt discriminated against for being a transfer.

I had a great experience in my 2 years at Georgetown Law, worked hard, made some life-long friends, some of which were transfers but most were not. I graduated cum laude and I am working at a top 20 firm as an associate now.

If you are a well-rounded, social person and make friends in other situations, then law school, whether as a transfer or not, is no different. And as far as transfers being gunners, I think many of the transfers recognize how fortunate they are to be put in a situation where they are at a top school and that people will take notice if they perform well. I know that I felt fortunate because most of the friends that I made the year before as a 1L weren't in that situation and knew they were going to have trouble finding jobs. I didn't want to take my situation for granted and I know that many of my fellow transfers felt the same way. That was the reason that I worked as hard as I did, I felt like I owed it to people and myself.

I'm at a T80-90 and just got 1st semester grades back. 3.7 and top 4%. I'm curious whether I should transfer or not and what schools those scores could get me in to. My LSAT wasn't all that great and my Ugpa was average at best. I think my good scores are mostly a credit to finally getting focused. I don't really know what law I want to get into, but I want to give myself the best opportunities I can find especially with the economy like it is. AND I am NOT a gunner, no endless handraising out of me. Thoughts?

29,
Please take a look at UCLA's Grading Curve (page 6): http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=1424. Order of the Coif requires mostly A's, and getting an A is harder in second year classes. In addition, some of us transfer students received A+'s in hard classes like, I don't know, Patent Law, Bankruptcy Law, and Trademark Law (not Indian Law or Law and the Poor).

I hate transfers. They don't face a tough 1L year at a school with better competition, come in with inflated GPAs and steal our jobs.

#222's description of his/her experience transferring to NYU is consistent with mine. I bombed the LSAT, made top 5% at a low tier school, transferred to NYU and, along with most of the other transfers I knew, absolutely killed at OCI. Dozens of callbacks and more than a dozen offers at top flight firms.

I had a uniformly excellent experience with both the "regular" students and the administration at NYU. Never felt awkward or out of place in any classes. Like #222, I also regretted not having built up that nucleus of friends as a 1L; but the flip side of that is, because the student body is so large, no one thinks twice when they don't recognize the person sitting next to them on the first day of 2L classes.