Top-Tier Law Schools Poaching Transfer Students

Upper echelon law schools are accepting an increasing number of transfer students after their first year. Those students boost revenues without dinging program rankings and generally receive less scholarship money than first-year enrollees. Law school rankings generally look at first-year student scores as a key measurel For the first time last year, the American Bar Association required law programs to give more details on transfer students, and the data showed many of the more than 2,000 transfer students shifted from lower-tier to higher-tier institutions, at a time when law school applications are plummeting and lower-tier programs are scrambling to make ends meet. American University’s associate dean for academic affairs, Anthony Varona, called the practice a “bait and switch.”