Transfer Students

I see that FSU has been outed as the leading transfer student admitting school from the USN&WR second tier. In the past I have been quite critical of the transfer student method of raising a school's LSAT and GPA scores in the rankings. One thing I did this summer was examine the impact of such a strategy on the ranking of my own school. I balanced the possible negative impact on bar passage against the increases in other categories and it seemed clear to me that such a strategy would be a relatively risk free way of moving up or at least not losing ground. On balance, I do not support the strategy but I can also see some benefits.

My own feelings are informed by two impressions of the transfer student strategy. First, the strategy is really a means of not disclosing numbers. It hides the "entering" numbers of a portion of the first year class. Is that really a bad thing when the system of aggregating and reporting is already a mess. Maybe the best reaction to an irrational system is to make it even more irrational and to make sure all is made public. To the extent hiding numbers and gaming the system work to discredit both the the rankings and those gaming, isn't this a good thing?

Second, at most second tier law schools, the bottom fourth of the class is guess work. There is little basis for picking one person over another. Rather than make that decision before any law school performance, why not wait to see which of the borderline student do succeed?

Don't misunderstand. I am not saying that anyone engaging in the transfer student game is actually doing it for education enhancing reasons. If that were the case, the transfer shuffle would have been around for years. Still, in a world where few things are simple, perhaps it is for the best.