<p>Neighbor's daughter just finished first year of Law School and would like to transfer to The University of Michigan. What are her chances? How hard is it? She has a 3.8 after her first year. Not sure of her LSAT but I can find out. How many do they accept? How many apply? Any guidance would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Her chances of transferring aren’t terrible with a 3.8. What are her reasons for transferring?</p>
<p>is she willing to pay full freight? Any merit money at her current school? How much is she upgrading (USNews’ rank)? </p>
<p>She wants to transfer because hers is just a normal law school and this is UMich. She has a full ride now and would have to pay for Michigan but feels it would be worth it. Any chance of getting any merit money? I don’t know what her present USNews rank is but it’s not a name school</p>
<p>No chance of getting merit money. Transfer students are a pure cash source. Further, since she already did her 1L, employers will treat her like she’s at her old school, not at her new one (at least until she graduates). She’s essentially paying for the name and not the employment prospects. I can’t see that being worthwhile.</p>
<p>Present school is ranked 87. Umich is 10. Difference in cost for the next two years would be $100,000 just in tuition. Real question though, is how difficult is it to get in?</p>
<p>It’s not all that difficult to get in, though I don’t know of any available compiled statistics on the matter. Just prima facie, schools love transfer students. They pay full freight and don’t have to be included in the GPA/LSAT portion of USNWR. Difficulty of achieving a goal is a far second to the advisability of that goal, however. If I were her, I’d be deeply concerned about taking on 180k in debt (tuition + living + interest) for basically just a name change.</p>
<p>“employers will treat her like she’s at her old school, not at her new one (at least until she graduates)”</p>
<p>This is not true in my experience. You pay a price for being a transfer – she won’t get the same callbacks as her classmates who were UM 1Ls – but she’ll have on-campus interviewing opportunities that may far outpace those at her present school. It was not unusual, during my years at Northwestern, to see transfer students get summer associate offers that would have been stretches at their original schools.</p>
<p>She has a reasonable chance of getting into UM with a 3.8 at a tier two school, but even if it were a long shot, why not apply? And why only apply to Michigan, and not to its peers? Does she need to stay in the Detroit metro area?</p>
<p>What’s her standing in the class? As in, where does the 3.8 place her relative to the other students in her class (in %)? Does she have an SA?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I was also wondering this. If the 3.8 puts her near the top 5%-10%, I’d suggest throwing apps to HYS, Columbia, (not UChi; IIRC they have a binding transfer app), NYU, and the rest of the T14 (excluding GULC and Cornell). I heard transfers do well in their OCI’s at NYU. </p>
<p>@Hanna: Hiring people from various firms show up on TLS from time to time. They uniformly say they treat transfers as if they were at the previous school. Intuitively, that’s really the only way they even could do it. A transfer after 1L has no GPA from the new school because OCI happens before 2L. The 1L grades are all they’ve got, and those grades are from the old school, not the new one. It makes no sense for them to pretend otherwise. You’re right that she’ll have more opportunities (because UM will actually have an OCI, unlike whatever school she’s at now), though I’m not sure the chances are better than a simple mailing campaign.</p>
<p>@Demosthenes49 (Disclaimer: 0L) I rarely look at the transfer section, but here’s what I found in the sticky re: transfer students and OCIs: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>OP, I’d encourage your neighbor’s daughter to read the entire thread (found here): <a href=“Advice for Transferring to Another Law School Forum - Top Law Schools”>Advice for Transferring to Another Law School Forum - Top Law Schools; It has some great information for potential transfers. </p>
<p>“Hiring people from various firms show up on TLS from time to time. They uniformly say they treat transfers as if they were at the previous school.”</p>
<p>All I can tell you is that firms that did not hire from the previous school at all would sometimes hire my transfers. (I was a career advisor at Northwestern Law for 5 years.) I’m sure it varies from firm to firm, but I saw this happen repeatedly.</p>
<p>“Intuitively, that’s really the only way they even could do it.”</p>
<p>That’s the only way they could do it if OCI hiring were all about ranking people by intellect based on grades. It isn’t. A lot of it is about branding. The same human being, with the same 1L year at DePaul, is a different corporate asset depending on whether he’s a DePaul 2L or a Michigan 2L. That may be silly, but it’s true.</p>
<p>It’s also extremely valuable to get in front of attorneys at OCI. People who are great interviewees in person can get callbacks that they would never get by mailing out their resume. Charm is not going to get you into Cravath with a 3.1, but it absolutely will get you into firms that are just out of reach based on numbers alone.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well sure, of course they would. I’m not saying firms don’t hire transfers, I’m saying that firms report that they hire transfers as if the transfer student were at the other school. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Firms care an awful lot about grades. Anyone who takes a look at hiring statistics notices the grade floors pretty quickly. Transfers tend to have pretty great grades from the transfer school, so it’s not terribly surprising they do alright at OCI.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think there’s definitely some value to actually getting the OCI interviews. Is that value worth paying two years full tuition? I think it’s pretty unlikely to be. </p>
<p>I guess we need to learn a lot more about this. I don’t even know what OCI stands for.</p>
<p>OCI = On campus interviews</p>
<p>“I’m saying that firms report that they hire transfers as if the transfer student were at the other school.”</p>
<p>And I’m saying, that’s not consistent with many of my observations. Often, NO ONE from the other school got hired at these firms. Zero. The composition of the summer classes is known.</p>
<p>Firms do NOT report anything on this subject. According to you, your source is anonymous posters on TLS who claim to be hiring people from top law firms. We don’t know who they actually are. There may well be firms that view transfers simply as students at the first school, but many firms treat them as hybrids (which they are going to be by the time they graduate). I have observed firm hiring across markets from within a T14 school that took a lot of transfers.</p>
<p>Of course firms care about grades. You didn’t respond to my point, which is that firms care about the label on a person as well as the person’s brains. Labels matter in our profession.</p>
<p>TLS is a pretty good resource. Probably the best forum for law school admissions around. I’m far more skeptical of your claims than I am of theirs. One person’s look from a school’s OCS pales in comparison to the many people reporting from the hiring side. </p>
<p>I’ve already agreed that there’s some advantage to getting the face time OCI gives you. That is totally consistent with firms treating transfer students as if they were still at the transferring school. It just means the personal connection gained from the interview overcomes the initial barrier of the other school’s name on your cover letter. My point is that the slight advantage gained from that interview is probably not worth the 2 years full tuition, given that the student in question has a full ride where they’re going now.</p>