Harvard to Yale? 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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Veil of Ignorance

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Harvard to Yale?

Post by Veil of Ignorance » Thu Dec 27, 2018 6:50 am

My case is specific, in that I am a 1L at HLS who is interested in transferring to Yale. I was a fool and didn't apply to Yale the first time around, although my GPA might have been slightly too low anyway. Basically, though, I now know that I want to be a legal academic as a career, and that I would also prefer a smaller school environment. Plus, Yale seems great for obvious reasons. How would you assume my grades have to be this year to have a shot at YLS?
Thanks a lot.

Npret

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Npret » Thu Dec 27, 2018 10:09 am

Sorry I don’t know the answer to your question but I expect you would need top grades. Just looking at LST, Yale had accepted only 9 transfers with the graduating class, so it seems competitive. I don’t think I’ve seen much here or in admission blogs about transferring into Yale.

Your best bet is to find out what it takes to get into academics from Harvard. Work those contacts and apply to transfer to Yale but don’t expect it.

All that said, legal academics is competitive and difficult career path. You should read the Faculty Lounge Blog to get more information on academic hiring.

Wubbles

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Wubbles » Thu Dec 27, 2018 10:27 am

The grades needed to transfer into Yale would meet the threshold for getting into academia from Harvard, so I guess just finish at the top of the class.

QContinuum

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by QContinuum » Thu Dec 27, 2018 2:10 pm

While academia certainly cares about prestige, a Harvard J.D. is more than prestigious enough. Even a CCN J.D. is prestigious enough. No hiring committee will look down on a candidate who graduated with honors from Harvard. You can certainly consider transferring to Yale if you do well in 1L, but far more important for your future academic prospects will be your grades (all three years), research & publications (definitely try to get on Law Review and publish as much as you can), and connections (try to network with your profs as much as possible).

In fact, given the importance of networking, I might actually be in favor of staying at HLS all three years. It's hard to start all over from ground zero at a new law school as a 2L. Yale traditionally has a much higher placement into academia than HLS, but IMO that's due in large part to self-selection (law school applicants with academic aspirations disproportionately choosing to attend YLS).

Have you looked into the general routes for getting into academia? YLS has some very good guides posted online. Currently the two most common routes involve completing a post-J.D. academic fellowship or obtaining a graduate degree in a field related to the area you'd like to do your future research in (e.g., an Econ Ph.D. if you'd like to focus in law and economics). Of course, the traditional requirements - a CoA clerkship, a post on Law Review, stellar grades - all still apply as well.

Bingo_Bongo

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Bingo_Bongo » Thu Dec 27, 2018 3:53 pm

Honestly, if I saw a resume where somebody transferred from Harvard to Yale, that would raise all sorts of red flags to me. There just doesn't seem to be that good of a reason to do it, so I would start assuming reasons. Did they not get along with their class? Are they overly picky? Will they leave me after a few months? But then again, I don't do academia's hiring.

As has been said, I'm sure graduating with honors from Harvard is good enough a credential to get you into academia. I'd focus more on doing really well, networking, and publishing than worrying about transferring within HYS.

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QContinuum

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by QContinuum » Thu Dec 27, 2018 3:56 pm

Bingo_Bongo wrote:Honestly, if I saw a resume where somebody transferred from Harvard to Yale, that would raise all sorts of red flags to me. There just doesn't seem to be that good of a reason to do it, so I would start assuming reasons. Did they not get along with their class? Are they overly picky? Will they leave me after a few months? But then again, I don't do academia's hiring.
This is rank speculation and frankly very bad advice from someone who attended a T3 and has never had any exposure to academic legal hiring. Every year a few students transfer between the various T13s. Transferring certainly wouldn't raise any red flags, because the T6 are very picky about who they're willing to take as a transfer. Further, Yale is known to be a significant step above Harvard in prestige and placement power. No one would look askance at someone transferring from Harvard to Yale.

As I noted in my previous post, transferring may be bad for other reasons - principally, the fact that OP would have to start over from ground zero making new connections at YLS. But transferring won't raise any red flags in hiring committees' eyes.

Bingo_Bongo

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Bingo_Bongo » Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:05 pm

QContinuum wrote:
Bingo_Bongo wrote:Honestly, if I saw a resume where somebody transferred from Harvard to Yale, that would raise all sorts of red flags to me. There just doesn't seem to be that good of a reason to do it, so I would start assuming reasons. Did they not get along with their class? Are they overly picky? Will they leave me after a few months? But then again, I don't do academia's hiring.
This is rank speculation and frankly very bad advice from someone who attended a T3 and has never had any exposure to academic legal hiring. Every year a few students transfer between the various T13s. Transferring certainly wouldn't raise any red flags, because the T6 are very picky about who they're willing to take as a transfer. Further, Yale is known to be a significant step above Harvard in prestige and placement power. No one would look askance at someone transferring from Harvard to Yale.

As I noted in my previous post, transferring may be bad for other reasons - principally, the fact that OP would have to start over from ground zero making new connections at YLS. But transferring won't raise any red flags in hiring committees' eyes.
Yeah, I'm not pretending like I know anything about academic hiring. That's just my lay opinion on the subject.

And another lay opinion is this: what if somebody making a hiring decision down the road was a proud Harvard alum who sees that you ditched his school to go hang out with the Yale kids? Riddle me that.

But in all seriousness, if the only concern is making new friends at YLS, I don't think that's too big of a problem. After the Yale kids get tired of hanging out with the same few students their 1L year, they might get excited to see a fresh face. Contribute in your 2L classes so you can get some recs from professors, and you'll be fine. Only you know how extroverted you are, but I'm not sure (if this was the only concern) one to get too hung up on

Npret

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Npret » Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:15 pm

Bingo_Bongo wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
Bingo_Bongo wrote:Honestly, if I saw a resume where somebody transferred from Harvard to Yale, that would raise all sorts of red flags to me. There just doesn't seem to be that good of a reason to do it, so I would start assuming reasons. Did they not get along with their class? Are they overly picky? Will they leave me after a few months? But then again, I don't do academia's hiring.
This is rank speculation and frankly very bad advice from someone who attended a T3 and has never had any exposure to academic legal hiring. Every year a few students transfer between the various T13s. Transferring certainly wouldn't raise any red flags, because the T6 are very picky about who they're willing to take as a transfer. Further, Yale is known to be a significant step above Harvard in prestige and placement power. No one would look askance at someone transferring from Harvard to Yale.

As I noted in my previous post, transferring may be bad for other reasons - principally, the fact that OP would have to start over from ground zero making new connections at YLS. But transferring won't raise any red flags in hiring committees' eyes.
Yeah, I'm not pretending like I know anything about academic hiring. That's just my lay opinion on the subject.

And another lay opinion is this: what if somebody making a hiring decision down the road was a proud Harvard alum who sees that you ditched his school to go hang out with the Yale kids? Riddle me that.

But in all seriousness, if the only concern is making new friends at YLS, I don't think that's too big of a problem. After the Yale kids get tired of hanging out with the same few students their 1L year, they might get excited to see a fresh face. Contribute in your 2L classes so you can get some recs from professors, and you'll be fine. Only you know how extroverted you are, but I'm not sure (if this was the only concern) one to get too hung up on
OP - Yale is different enough from Harvard that Yale grads kind of exist in their own world- Transfer if you want; you might be happier there. No one is going to look at you strangely for transferring to Yale. You most likely won’t be going after the typical big law job anyway.

You will be a year behind making contacts with professors for recommendations and for getting on the academic fellowship track. I think you can overcome that lag.

The question I see being tricky for you is why you didn’t apply to Yale in the first place.

Veil of Ignorance

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Veil of Ignorance » Thu Dec 27, 2018 9:24 pm

Npret wrote:
Bingo_Bongo wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
Bingo_Bongo wrote:Honestly, if I saw a resume where somebody transferred from Harvard to Yale, that would raise all sorts of red flags to me. There just doesn't seem to be that good of a reason to do it, so I would start assuming reasons. Did they not get along with their class? Are they overly picky? Will they leave me after a few months? But then again, I don't do academia's hiring.
This is rank speculation and frankly very bad advice from someone who attended a T3 and has never had any exposure to academic legal hiring. Every year a few students transfer between the various T13s. Transferring certainly wouldn't raise any red flags, because the T6 are very picky about who they're willing to take as a transfer. Further, Yale is known to be a significant step above Harvard in prestige and placement power. No one would look askance at someone transferring from Harvard to Yale.

As I noted in my previous post, transferring may be bad for other reasons - principally, the fact that OP would have to start over from ground zero making new connections at YLS. But transferring won't raise any red flags in hiring committees' eyes.
Yeah, I'm not pretending like I know anything about academic hiring. That's just my lay opinion on the subject.

And another lay opinion is this: what if somebody making a hiring decision down the road was a proud Harvard alum who sees that you ditched his school to go hang out with the Yale kids? Riddle me that.

But in all seriousness, if the only concern is making new friends at YLS, I don't think that's too big of a problem. After the Yale kids get tired of hanging out with the same few students their 1L year, they might get excited to see a fresh face. Contribute in your 2L classes so you can get some recs from professors, and you'll be fine. Only you know how extroverted you are, but I'm not sure (if this was the only concern) one to get too hung up on
OP - Yale is different enough from Harvard that Yale grads kind of exist in their own world- Transfer if you want; you might be happier there. No one is going to look at you strangely for transferring to Yale. You most likely won’t be going after the typical big law job anyway.

You will be a year behind making contacts with professors for recommendations and for getting on the academic fellowship track. I think you can overcome that lag.

The question I see being tricky for you is why you didn’t apply to Yale in the first place.
I will probably try to work in biglaw for a few years before doing an appellate clerkship, then going the fellowship route (Bigelow, Climenko, etc), so I figure I can apply for the clerkship during my 3L year. That's a good point about explaining why I didn't apply first time around.

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YaoBird

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by YaoBird » Fri Dec 28, 2018 8:45 pm

I don’t think your rationale for transferring to YLS is great.

YLS’ comparatively strong placement rate into academia is primarily a product of self selection rather than hiring committees’ preference or bias - at least compared to other high end schools. Nobody on a law school hiring committee will judge your FAR form any differently for having an HLS degree vs a YLS degree.

What really matters is your portfolio of writing (both published and unpublished) and your connections within the academic fields you want to work in. You need to think more like a PhD student and less like a professional school student - what topics and methodological approaches are you interested in? There MIGHT be better faculty for your areas of interest at YLS than at HLS. But the reverse might also be true. Just as prospective PhD students will select a program based on an individual PI or supervisor, you should think about law school similarly - who do you want to work with on the faculty?

If you don’t have any idea what field, methodologically or topic-wise, you’re interested in, then I wonder how you can possibly be so set on an academic career. Legal academia is very research oriented - there isn’t the equivalent of the community college or liberal arts college professor track that is more teaching oriented, in the law school world. So if you don’t have any real research interests then I don’t see how you can have a genuine or viable interest in legal academia just yet, especially to the point of transferring schools in order to pursue that interest.

I would also be cautious about advice pertaining to law review, clerkships, and the like. These things are nice on an academic CV, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for landing a tenure track law teaching job. For many, your time might be better spent on other things - most obviously, research. That is the game you are trying to be part of, after all.

You can’t actually publish anything in law reviews that will “count” as a law student - student notes do not count much if at all for a prospective law professor. But you can begin crafting your research agenda during this time, and if you are especially good with time management you can publish in peer reviewed journals, which are mostly blind reviewed (so they won’t hold interest against you that’s you’re still a student). That would likely be a better use of your time than being on law review, doing grunt work (e.g., bluebooking) for others peoples’ articles, or publishing a student note in your own schools’ law review.

QContinuum

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by QContinuum » Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:13 pm

Almost entirely agreed with YaoBird's post above, except the following quibble:
YaoBird wrote:I would also be cautious about advice pertaining to law review, clerkships, and the like. These things are nice on an academic CV, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for landing a tenure track law teaching job.
I disagree. While certainly research is critical, and the single most important factor, my understanding is that the traditional "prestige indicators" like LR membership and CoA clerkships are still expected (even if they bear little to no relation to actual research ability - also see law school grades).

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by nixy » Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:31 pm

Re the above - mostly about not publishing a student note on your own law review - there are journals which will consider students for publication as regular articles (not notes), which could be an option to pursue (I can’t say whether any of those journals are low enough on the LR totem pole to not be worth it, though). The other thing to do is try to find a prof you might be able to co-publish with. Overall I absolutely agree that the focus is on publishing and developing a research agenda.

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by WinterComing » Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:42 am

QContinuum wrote:Almost entirely agreed with YaoBird's post above, except the following quibble:
YaoBird wrote:I would also be cautious about advice pertaining to law review, clerkships, and the like. These things are nice on an academic CV, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for landing a tenure track law teaching job.
I disagree. While certainly research is critical, and the single most important factor, my understanding is that the traditional "prestige indicators" like LR membership and CoA clerkships are still expected (even if they bear little to no relation to actual research ability - also see law school grades).
For the sake of maybe casting a tiebreaking vote here: I don't think these traditional metrics hurt (that is, grades, clerkships, law review), but I'm with YaoBird that they aren't nearly as important as they used to be. Twenty or thirty years ago, every law professor had a clerkship. Look at the most recent hires at YLS, and almost none of them have clerked. Instead, they have PhDs. As legal academia has moved more in line with other academic fields, t's all about publications. That should be your focus.

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nixy

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by nixy » Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:57 am

I agree generally (including that PhDs are more the norm), but are recent hires at Yale really representative? Obviously academia is hugely competitive so even at lower-ranked schools you have profs with stellar credentials, but I wonder if Yale hires really look like hires at, say, Tulane or Pitt. (That is, there may still be a place for the traditional clerkship in some academic hiring.)

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Re: Harvard to Yale?

Post by Npret » Sat Dec 29, 2018 9:59 am

nixy wrote:I agree generally (including that PhDs are more the norm), but are recent hires at Yale really representative? Obviously academia is hugely competitive so even at lower-ranked schools you have profs with stellar credentials, but I wonder if Yale hires really look like hires at, say, Tulane or Pitt. (That is, there may still be a place for the traditional clerkship in some academic hiring.)
The faculty lounge has all the info regarding recent job openings. From that OP can find who is being hired.

OP one caveat I’ve seen with academics is that getting back into biglaw from an academic position - such as a fellowship- can be difficult. Usually academics have at most a few years of biglaw, PI or other practical experience. Just pay attention throughout your career.

I do agree with the good advice that you should be finding your research interests now and finding professors who can be mentors.

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