I transferred to a t14. If you are going to contact career offices, my advice would be to try to get info on hiring of transfers from 2000-2001 fall OCI b/c that is the closest thing we have right now to the employment situation for big firms. The problem is that some schools do not track transfers in OCI. I know my school does not.
Absolute worse case scenario, as a transfer you are going to be treated like a student who go whatever grades/rank you got at your old school, period. Transfers are not going to be treated exactly like a student at the new school who started there. I already said this. However, you will be treated better than a student with the same rank/gpa at your old school who chose to stay behind and not transfer. This is because firms value prestige (i.e. they are elitist) and it means a lot to them that they get to list a Columbia grad vs. a t50 grad on their website.
They are going to adjust your gpa/rank based on what they perceive to be equal to students who started at the old school. At my school, the word from many transfers was that they were treated like top 25% to top 50% students depending on what school they transferred from. Coming to a top 50 school, worst case scenario is that they are going to equate you with a top half student. I highly doubt they are going to treat you like a bottom half student, even in this economy. Historically, many transfers have done well at 2L OCI, even a lot of students who went from a tier 2/3 to a T14.
Spouting off numbers of what people went to what schools at firms in what cities doesn't give the whole picture because you don't know what the selectivity scale for a particular firm is or what grades those people got in order to get those summer offers. GULC is right behind Harvard, but 58 students really isn't that many compared to GULC's class size. Over 650 JDs graduate from GULC each year. I would not be surprised if many of those 58 students had quite high grades due to the grades/school snobbiness of the DC market in general.
Add to the mix that many students this summer and next summer are going to be no offered and it complicates things further. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those no offerred are from lower ranked schools.
Another thing to keep in mind is that DC is a much smaller market and has smaller summer classes even in a good year. Also, those numbers tiesto posted are from 2006, which was a much better year for legal hiring than this upcoming OCI.
Bottom line is that a Columbia degree will be worth more now, and in the future, even if you graduate in the middle of the class there. Like I said, unless your t50 wants to cough up the serious money you really have no reason to stay.
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