Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)? Forum

A forum for those current students who are or may be transferring from one school to another. Post any questions, advice, or other transfer related comments here.
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notellewoods

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Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by notellewoods » Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:00 pm

Stop trying to create a dilemma where none exists and go to Harvard. Your needless equivocating is annoying.

nls336

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by nls336 » Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:21 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Stop trying to create a dilemma where none exists and go to Harvard. Your needless equivocating is annoying.
dang yo let these high achievers live

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paradiselost9

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by paradiselost9 » Mon Oct 15, 2018 5:22 pm

any career paths where Penn w/law review is better than HLS at median? assuming equal loans at end of either 3L yr

JohnnieSockran

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by JohnnieSockran » Mon Oct 15, 2018 6:38 pm

paradiselost9 wrote:any career paths where Penn w/law review is better than HLS at median? assuming equal loans at end of either 3L yr
I assume this is probably dependent on the individual and some luck of the draw. Since I didn't go to HLS I can't comment on that aspect, but I can say that typically the top of the class at Penn still has a shot at firms like Wachtell, so being top at Penn certainly is a good outcome (just not sure how good relative to median at HYS).

And yes, not everyone on law review is at the very top of the class, but I assumed that was basically what you meant.

QContinuum

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by QContinuum » Mon Oct 15, 2018 9:27 pm

Ordinarily, the main reason for going to Harvard over Penn is downside protection: Better to be median at HLS than median at Penn. The supplemental reason being it's also better to be top 10% at HLS than top 10% at Penn.

(In a sense, going to Penn with $ over Harvard - the species of question we often see - also involves downside protection, albeit a different sort: lower loans generally translate into greater flexibility post-graduation.)

The hypo - median at HLS vs. top 10%/LR at Penn - is unhelpful, because you're never going to be able to predict law school performance ex ante. Someone with an HLS offer is not necessarily (by any stretch) guaranteed to land in the top 10%/LR at Penn.

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nixy

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by nixy » Mon Oct 15, 2018 10:18 pm

paradiselost9 wrote:
paradiselost9 wrote:any career paths where Penn w/law review is better than H at median? assuming equal COA
Pretty sure people saw the question the first time?

Not sure what kind of scenario you're working with here, because it seems entirely hypothetical - if you're at Penn with LR it's too late for you to be transferring, and if you haven't yet missed the boat for transferring you don't have any grades/LR yet to be able to compare the two scenarios. If you're talking about transferring, wait till you have grades/LR to ask this question. If you're making a decision about where to attend, you can't assume LR at Penn and median at H - you just don't have any idea yet how you're going to do, and the different between the students at the 2 schools isn't so great that you can assume that kind of difference in outcome (i.e. plenty of people who go to Penn and succeed at Penn would end up at the top of the class at H too; plenty of people who end up median at H could end up median at Penn too; you just have no way of predicting). So really this all seems way too cart before the horse.

However, Penn w/law review presumably means you have very good grades and possibly have developed relationships with profs who might go to bat for you in the future. Depending what you want to do with your career, those things will serve you better than being a generic median grad at Harvard. It's very hard to say in a vacuum, without knowing what work you want to do.

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paradiselost9

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by paradiselost9 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:41 am

Presumably someone transferring from Penn to H would be dealing with this scenario or something similar.

It’s a question in a vacuum to counter the assumption that H is always the choice if accepted as a transfer from a lower T14 (barring Y or S w/lofty career goals or specific geographical preferences)

nixy

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by nixy » Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:36 am

Yes, but my point is that no one is currently making the actual decision to transfer from Penn to Harvard, because of where we are in the school year, so it’s a question in a vacuum until someone is actually accepted to H as a transfer. And people aren’t supposed to ask about transfers here until they have at least one semester of grades back, because it’s entirely hypothetical till then. (Is the OP going to work less hard if they’re told that Penn with LR is absolutely sufficient for many career paths? That would be stupid.)

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paradiselost9

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by paradiselost9 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:43 am

nixy wrote:Yes, but my point is that no one is currently making the actual decision to transfer from Penn to Harvard, because of where we are in the school year, so it’s a question in a vacuum until someone is actually accepted to H as a transfer. And people aren’t supposed to ask about transfers here until they have at least one semester of grades back, because it’s entirely hypothetical till then. (Is the OP going to work less hard if they’re told that Penn with LR is absolutely sufficient for many career paths? That would be stupid.)
if that’s the rule then obviously my question is misplaced. thanks for explaining why you aren’t going to answer instead of just not answering and leaving me in perpetual suspense

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nixy

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by nixy » Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:22 am

paradiselost9 wrote:
nixy wrote:Yes, but my point is that no one is currently making the actual decision to transfer from Penn to Harvard, because of where we are in the school year, so it’s a question in a vacuum until someone is actually accepted to H as a transfer. And people aren’t supposed to ask about transfers here until they have at least one semester of grades back, because it’s entirely hypothetical till then. (Is the OP going to work less hard if they’re told that Penn with LR is absolutely sufficient for many career paths? That would be stupid.)
if that’s the rule then obviously my question is misplaced. thanks for explaining why you aren’t going to answer instead of just not answering and leaving me in perpetual suspense
I actually did answer this earlier - you'll notice that I pointed out that being on LR at Penn will put you in an excellent position for almost all jobs because you will have excellent grades and probably have developed relationships with profs, and median at Harvard is unlikely to offer any additional benefits, but it will depend on what it is you actually want to do. And you have to actually be facing this situation so counting your chickens before they've hatched is a waste of time.

QContinuum

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by QContinuum » Tue Oct 16, 2018 12:08 pm

paradiselost9 wrote:
nixy wrote:Yes, but my point is that no one is currently making the actual decision to transfer from Penn to Harvard, because of where we are in the school year, so it’s a question in a vacuum until someone is actually accepted to H as a transfer. And people aren’t supposed to ask about transfers here until they have at least one semester of grades back, because it’s entirely hypothetical till then. (Is the OP going to work less hard if they’re told that Penn with LR is absolutely sufficient for many career paths? That would be stupid.)
if that’s the rule then obviously my question is misplaced. thanks for explaining why you aren’t going to answer instead of just not answering and leaving me in perpetual suspense
It's not a "rule" per se, but it is good general practice. The regulars post on TLS because we like to help. But we don't enjoy wasting time/energy debating pure hypotheticals, because the hypotheticals may never happen in reality (and thus may never help anyone). It's kind of like standing doctrine - we prefer to only address actual cases & controversies.

JohnnieSockran

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by JohnnieSockran » Tue Oct 16, 2018 12:19 pm

Now I just want to know what the situation is. Is paradiselost a 1L hoping to transfer to H next year?

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paradiselost9

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by paradiselost9 » Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:09 pm

JohnnieSockran wrote:Now I just want to know what the situation is. Is paradiselost a 1L hoping to transfer to H next year?
no. can't really say what variables would line up where i would transfer to another law school

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paradiselost9

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by paradiselost9 » Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:13 pm

QContinuum wrote:
paradiselost9 wrote:
nixy wrote:Yes, but my point is that no one is currently making the actual decision to transfer from Penn to Harvard, because of where we are in the school year, so it’s a question in a vacuum until someone is actually accepted to H as a transfer. And people aren’t supposed to ask about transfers here until they have at least one semester of grades back, because it’s entirely hypothetical till then. (Is the OP going to work less hard if they’re told that Penn with LR is absolutely sufficient for many career paths? That would be stupid.)
if that’s the rule then obviously my question is misplaced. thanks for explaining why you aren’t going to answer instead of just not answering and leaving me in perpetual suspense
It's not a "rule" per se, but it is good general practice. The regulars post on TLS because we like to help. But we don't enjoy wasting time/energy debating pure hypotheticals, because the hypotheticals may never happen in reality (and thus may never help anyone). It's kind of like standing doctrine - we prefer to only address actual cases & controversies.
noted. will try not to waste anyone's time

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Pneumonia

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Re: Harvard or (insert lower ranked school)?

Post by Pneumonia » Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:46 am

paradiselost9 wrote:any career paths where Penn w/law review is better than HLS at median? assuming equal loans at end of either 3L yr
Idk how Penn does LR, but Top 15% w/LR from Penn will be better than HLS at median for almost any career path where there is a difference.

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