<p>Your numbers don't prove that transfers fare worse in admissions. All you have demonstrated is that my example COULD be an exception to the rule, not that it IS an exception to the rule. </p>
<p>Example (completely made-up): a person who transferred to Harvard gets a 4.0 and a 178 LSAT. For the past five years, everyone with a 175+ and 3.8+ from Harvard College got into Yale Law. Said transfer does not, but gets into Harvard Law (and rejected from Stanford and Columbia). Conclusion: transfer status has a negative effect. This COULD be possible given your data (obvious data at that - that less than half of a student body is made up of transfers), but you have not demonstrated this to be true.</p>
<p>The Ivy League issue of transfer is pretty irrelevant, because you can always neutralize it by comparing the transfer student's stats and success rates against non-transfers from that school. Another example: someone transfers from Babson to BU, gets the 4.0 and 178, and gets rejected from law schools that non-transfer BU kids and non-transfer Babson with those stats normally get into. Conclusion: my hypothetical transfer kid would have been better off with his 4.0/178 had he spent four years at either BU or Babson, but the transfer hurt him.</p>