As law school admissions decisions continue to roll in, some applicants are faced with the difficult news that they have not been admitted to their top-choice schools. Other applicants may have been admitted to top-choice schools but have received lucrative offers from other schools that they feel they cannot turn down.
Applicants in both these camps often come to me with the question of whether to attend a law school with the intention of transferring after their first year. I generally encourage them to consider this option. Transferring after 1L year is a difficult proposition, though.
Top law schools generally have very few spots open for transfer applicants, so the competition can be fierce. In addition, the contents of transfer applications are significantly different from the contents of normal law school applications, leaving many transfer applicants unprepared to present themselves in their best light when it comes time to prepare and submit transfer applications.
In the posts for this week and next week, I will outline three things to do and three things to avoid for future 1Ls who are considering transferring to a more desirable school after their first year. I will first focus on the must-do items.
[Learn how to stand out as a law school transfer applicant.]
Do: Try your absolute hardest to get the best grades possible. When admissions committees evaluate transfer applicants, they do not give much weight to LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs.
The first-year transcript, including grades and percentile ranking among your peers, is the single most important factor for transfer admissions. It is therefore essential that transfer applicants get the best grades they possibly can during their first year.
Law school grading is different from any other type of grading in the American education system. Grades for each course are determined primarily — sometimes entirely — by a single exam at the end of the semester, and professors are forced to adhere to a strict grading curve.
Your academic performance in law school, therefore, is entirely relative. Even if you have a great command of the subject and write a great exam, you will likely get a B if 50 percent of the class wrote a better exam than you did. This depends on the curve applied at the school.
[Get seven tips for surviving the first week of law school.]
Do: Cultivate relationships with your 1L professors. Another important criterion for transfer applications is letters of recommendation from professors who have taught you during 1L year. In order to secure the most substantive and positive letters of recommendation, it is important to cultivate relationships with at least one and ideally two of your professors.
Securing a good recommendation from a professor first requires getting a high grade in his or her class. Beyond that, though, transfer applicants should attend office hours and ask questions that show a knowledge of the subject matter taught and an interest in the subject beyond simply getting a good grade on the exam.
If you connect particularly well with a professor during your first semester, also look into other campus activities that the professor is involved in and try to get some face time by participating as well.
[Check out this infographic of the 2016 Best Law Schools.]
Do: Participate in at least one law-oriented extracurricular activity. Participation in extracurricular activities serves several roles, and it’s an often – overlooked element of a transfer applicant’s profile.
First, it gives transfer applicants an additional source for potential recommenders. Second, it can provide valuable content for the personal statement and shorter essays that are part of the transfer application. Finally, it indicates a level of interest in and commitment to the legal profession and building one’s practical legal skills.
It doesn’t matter what extracurricular activity you engage in as long as it involves assisting attorneys with research or production of legal work. Participating in clinics and helping at public service legal offices with which your school has an existing relationship are great ways to boost your profile for transfer admissions.
Are you considering transferring law schools? Let me know in an email or tweet me @shawnpoconnor.
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3 Must-Do Tasks for Law School Students Looking to Transfer originally appeared on usnews.com
