Yale Transfer?

[dm21998]

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[2013applicant]

Edit: I am wrong.

[thewaves]

The biggest issue/question mark is exactly what you won’t disclose here. How will Yale view your reason and need for taking off time? You need to come up with a convincing reason for wanting to attend Yale aside from personal circumstances. Grades wise, you’re fine. Just get good LORs.

[t-14orbust]

I thought the same but apparently they do:

3. (a) The annual GPA for students who matriculated as of, or after, Fall Term 2008 will be calculated by assigning the following values to grades: Honors: 4; Pass: 3; Low Pass: 2; Fail: 0. Dean’s Scholar Prize awards will carry an additional point.

source: http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/careers/ocs/employers/hls-grading-policy/index.html

[dm21998]

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[kritarch]

@dm21998

@thewaves

The biggest issue/question mark is exactly what you won’t disclose here. How will Yale view your reason and need for taking off time? You need to come up with a convincing reason for wanting to attend Yale aside from personal circumstances. Grades wise, you’re fine. Just get good LORs.

Thanks. I thought that grades would be largely determinative and didn’t realize that a leave of absence would be a big issue. I’m not comfortable with airing things out on a public forum, but I feel my reasons for the leave itself are pretty valid. Did you mean that I would need to explain why I am looking to transfer to Yale specifically?

As for LORs, I have a few professors in mind whom I could ask. Of course, I’m not sure how they would feel writing an LOR for a rival school, but I suppose I would just have to present my case as honestly as I can.

Rival school? Most of your professors went to Yale, they will not see it as a ‘rival’ by any stretch. They will be sad to see you go because they won’t get to have you in their classes anymore, but that’s different I suspect.

You don’t need to have a mind-blowing reason to want to transfer, though it does mean that you need to have other aspects of your application shine. Every year one of the transfers to Yale is from HLS/SLS, and while occasionally that student is also among the handful of top students at HLS/SLS that has not always been the case. It depends. Why not also apply to transfer to SLS/HLS (whichever is the off-school?) and/or CLS? If it’s a location issue, CLS is pretty close to YLS by train.

[dm21998]

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[kritarch]

@dm21998

@kritarch

Rival school? Most of your professors went to Yale, they will not see it as a ‘rival’ by any stretch. They will be sad to see you go because they won’t get to have you in their classes anymore, but that’s different I suspect.

You don’t need to have a mind-blowing reason to want to transfer, though it does mean that you need to have other aspects of your application shine. Every year one of the transfers to Yale is from HLS/SLS, and while occasionally that student is also among the handful of top students at HLS/SLS that has not always been the case. It depends. Why not also apply to transfer to SLS/HLS (whichever is the off-school?) and/or CLS? If it’s a location issue, CLS is pretty close to YLS by train.

Good point about the professors.

I would also apply to transfer to the other school of HLS/SLS, possibly CLS. It’s early yet, so the only application I’ve examined at this point is YLS. It’s also the one place I didn’t apply as a 0L, which I’ve very much regretted since, as I’ve come to realize that I’d like to pursue academia.

Did you mean that Yale tries to limit their transfers from HLS/SLS such that it could actually be more difficult for me coming from HLS/SLS?

There is definitely not a conscious effort to limit who gets in, but it does seem like transfer applicants to YLS are subjected to careful scrutiny, and that has generally resulted in fewer “horizontal” admits than one might at first expect. I don’t think this is a bias, though, it has more to do with the fact that the pool of candidates in contention is both incredibly diverse and incredibly accomplished, making it difficult to take three SLS/HLS transfers to be successful all at once when they each have very good grades from very good schools and interesting backgrounds. I would say there probably enough transfer applicants who are #1 in their class to fill the entire transfer class twice. This makes inter-school comparisons difficult (this student was #40 at CLS, but this one was #1 at WUSTL, which do we choose?). I think it also means as a byproduct that intraschool comparisons–why should both of these SLS students be admitted?–become that much tougher as well.

You can see how it would also make more holistic factors much more relevant than you might at first suspect. I imagine there are probably (at least) 30 students who form the “tier” of students who are academically acceptable to admit because they have similar-ish enough academic credentials from law school. (A lot of #1 students, a few #2s, then maybe a kid who’s top 5% at NYU, YOU, etc.). Well, it could be a lottery system after that. Seriously it could be. But it seems like it might also factor in reasons for wishing to transfer, age, disposition, the written portions of the application, and pre-law school experiences rather heavily.

Also, it is not entirely set in stone that you have to have superstar academic credentials to succeed in the process, so what I have outlined is even a little too rigid. But you get the idea.

[dm21998]

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[thewaves]

http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/admissions/archive/2009/05/04/transfers.aspx


More information on the YLS transfer process.