Last month’s open thread on transfer students proved very popular. It generated surprisingly substantive commentary, full of helpful advice (and the usual law student status anxiety).

Since then, we’ve received several requests for more coverage of this constituency. So we thought we’d revisit the subject of transfer students and transfer applications.

With on-campus interviewing (OCI) fast approaching, it’s a timely topic. A transfer-student tipster tells us:

The beginning to middle of August would be a good time [to talk about transfer applications]. Transfer applicants are either going to find out soon or will just have, so stress will be high for them. OCI bids will either have just gone in or will be going in, so the “legitimate” students (my name for kids that do well on the LSAT) will chime in with frustration and hatred towards transfers.

C’mon, guys — don’t hate, appreciate!

Do the “legitimate” students hate transfers out of fear? Let’s explore this theory.

The middle of the summer would seem to be a dead period for American law schools. Law students are gone, working as summer associates or interns (if they were lucky enough to snag something). On-campus interviewing won’t start for a few more weeks (or even later, if more firms adopt the Orrick model).

But the summer is a period of critical importance for one particular group: transfer students. During the summer months, transfer applicants learn what school(s) they’ve been admitted to, then decide if — and where — they’d like to transfer.

This year, transfer applications take place against the backdrop of the tanking economy. Does the Great Recession increase or reduce the appeal of transferring? On the one hand, given the super-competitive job market, you might think it’s more important than ever to attend a highly ranked school. On the other hand, if you’re at a lower-ranked school that has given you generous scholarship support, this might not be the best time to jump ship for a more expensive school (and take on more debt as a result).

If you have thoughts to share on the transfer application process this year, or if you’re an aspiring transfer student eager to compare notes with fellow transfers, this open thread is for you.

Transfer Students — The Data [Empirical Legal Studies]
Henderson on transfer students [Ideoblog]
Transfer Students, Part-time Programs, and US News Rankings: A Response to Ribstein [Empirical Legal Studies]

Earlier: Transfer Students: Second-Class Citizens?

Is it right for a law school to discourage students from transferring? Is it right for a law school to deny services to students who are considering transferring? Because it looks like that is what happening at Loyola (L.A.) Law School right now.

Loyola has moved up its on-campus interview season; it now starts in late July. Unfortunately, that is too early for most students who are transferring to have received notice of whether or not their applications have been accepted. But now, at Loyola, students who have outstanding transfer applications are no longer allowed to participate in OCI. A tipster makes the situation clear:

Many schools have had similar policies for students who have accepted a position at another school, but Loyola’s policy is targeted at students simply applying for a transfer. This puts students in the very real position of applying, missing out on OCI, and then possibly not getting in at the higher ranked schools. Basically f*cking their chances at BigLaw.

Our tipster confronts the dean, after the jump.

Last May, we held an open thread about law school transfer students as second-class citizens, based on the University of Connecticut’s Maya Angelou-inspired “Phenomenal Transfer” poem. There was quite a lot of anti-transfer-student sentiment in the thread, though some former transfer students chimed in to say that they had experienced no animosity in their new homes.

For those put off by transfer students, there were three main themes in the thread:

Transfer students are gunners.

Transfer students get to skip out on the hellish first year at a top school, and then ride the curve to graduation.

Law schools game the system with transfer students. They get the extra tuition money and avoid hurting their US News ranking by not factoring in the GPAs and LSAT scores of transfer students.

Transfer students may well be gunners, but they are also being gunned… as in hunted. In “Northwestern Unapologetically Poaches 1Ls at Other Schools,” Paul Caron of the TaxProf Blog pointed us to a recent ABA Journal article that picks up on the themes of our open thread. From the Journal:

Northwestern University Law School is actively—and unapologetically—re­cruit­­ing top-performing law students from lower-ranked schools, a practice that some deans claim is becoming commonplace at elite institutions.

Each year, 150 or so of Northwestern’s 5,000 applicants turned down for first-year admission receive letters inviting them to apply again for “conditional acceptance” the following fall. [Ed. note: Northwestern later revised these numbers with the ABA Journal, saying they only extend 15-25 conditional acceptances each year.]

Deans of lower-tier schools resent the predatory practice. The Journal quotes Northwestern Dean David Van Zandt as saying the poaching allegation is “probably true,” but that, “Chrysler and General Motors don’t agree not to poach each other’s customers.”

Really, Dean Van Zandt? You’re looking to Chrysler and GM as your business role models?

More on transfers, and a look at the number of students bagged by top schools, after the jump.

Transferring from the American University Washington College of Law to Harvard Law School is a neat trick — at least in terms of upping your prestige-whore credentials.

An American University WCL student recently pulled off this prestige jumping, and has since responded the way Jin does whenever somebody on the island asks about Jin’s father. The new Harvard student posted this message on the WCL listserve:

How do I get off this listserv? I transferred to Harvard, and have no need to continue receiving emails from WCL.

And you guys think my typos give Harvard a bad name?

Evidently, the WCL students are not sad to see this kid go. Several different tipsters independently furnished some “context” about their former classmate:

* Before answering any question in class, he would preface it with his life history.

* Before making any comment (which was frequently), he would put his feet up on the table and his hands behind his head.

* He raises his hand backwards.

Yeah, this guy is going to fit right in, up in Cambridge.

This is the type of topic we’d expect to see posted in our new Community section. But since that section hasn’t really caught on yet, we’re happy to post it here. From a law student at the University of Chicago:

The quarterly U of C student newspaper came out [last week], and the Student Body President (of all people) wrote a snarky poem about transfers. [Ed. note: The poem — “Phenomenal Transfer,” perhaps inspired by Phenomenal Woman, by Maya Angelou — is posted after the jump.]

[T]he poem isn’t terribly offensive, but it’s indicative of a general attitude to transfers that original / “regular” students often have (and the way I understand it, it’s worse at some schools than others). “Regular” students often snark transfers because transfers “don’t deserve to be there” — meaning that LSAT scores are apparently the only acceptable measure of deserving to attend a law school. It’s also fairly well known that transfer students do as well as or better than “regular” students with grades — maybe that’s where part of the problem comes from.

Update: According to several commenters, the publication that the poem appeared in is a satirical, Onion-esque newsletter.

Apparently anti-transfer prejudice varies from school to school. According to our Chicago tipster:

I’ve heard bad things about how GULC [Georgetown University Law Center] treats its transfers. Apparently at orientation last year, the current students booed the new transfers. It’d be interesting as students start preparing transfer applications for them to have an idea (from an open thread or comments) how they’ll be treated at the schools they’re considering transferring to.

Now is a good time for such a discussion, says our source:

Schools start accepting applications May 1, usually through the summer, with applications completing when grades come in (from the first school — so right about now). Acceptances go out throughout the summer, and some schools have rolling admissions. So I think it’s most topical right now, especially given that students generally send out relatively few transfer applications (usually 2-4 tops) as compared to initial law school applications.

In fact, some prospective transfer students have already heard back. From a different correspondent, who wrote us last month:

[H]ave you ever done anything on law students transferring schools? Georgetown is in the process of sending out decisions to their early action applicants. I just got accepted as a transfer from John Marshall in Chicago with a 3.93, which puts me in the top 3%. The Yahoo TransferApps group and the transfer board at lawschooldiscussion.org have been blowing up over the last few days with people getting accepted/rejected. Maybe you could get some good info for the law-student readers that are pondering a transfer.

If you have thoughts on being a transfer student or on the transfer application process, please share them in the comments. You can also check out the “Phenomenal Transfer” poem, after the jump.