Transfer Students: Admission with Advanced Standing
A student who has successfully completed at least one full academic year in an American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law school, or two semesters, at another ABA-accredited law school, may apply for admission with advanced standing to either the full-time or part-time law program. Students currently in a part-time program must have completed at least 20 credits and legal writing and research. Transfer students are admitted in the fall and spring. Persons attending unaccredited law schools do not qualify for transfer.

Applications for transfer are available on the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) website. Over 100 applications for transfer are received each year, with the vast majority applying for the fall term. In general, the admissions committee will give serious consideration to transfer candidates who have earned a law school GPA of at least a 3.0 in their first full year of legal study. Recommendations from law school faculty, original Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and undergraduate GPA, and personal reasons for requesting the transfer are also strongly considered. The number of available seats for transfer varies from year to year. Credit may be granted for classroom law courses and in-house law clinics in which the student has either earned a C or better on a letter grade system or earned a grade above the lowest passing mark on any other grading system. No credit will be awarded for courses completed on a pass/fail basis. Residency points may be granted for semesters in which the minimum number of credits has been earned. The number of course credits and residency points awarded varies from case to case.

Transfer students are not able to determine an anticipated date of graduation until after receipt of the formal advanced standing statement. A transfer student receives credit for all in-class graded courses taken at the law school from which he or she is transferring, even when no equivalent course exists within the Rutgers curriculum. In order to receive a Rutgers-Newark degree, transfer students are required to successfully complete a minimum of 42 credits at Rutgers-Newark, and all required courses in the Rutgers curriculum unless excused by the senior associate dean. In all cases, the final year must be spent at Rutgers.

Each candidate for transfer admission must have taken the LSAT and be registered with the Credential Assembly Service (CAS). An official law school transcript, dean's letter of good standing (academic and disciplinary), and recommendations from law school professors must be sent directly to the law school and not to LSAC in order to facilitate the timely review of the file. We will accept additional letters of recommendation already on file with LSAC, but this is not a substitute for a letter from a law professor. A CAS report will be automatically ordered. Detailed application instructions for transfer applicants can be found on the law school website: http://law.newark.rutgers.edu/admissions-financial-aid/admissions-overview/transfer-visiting-applicants.