Seeking information about OCI Forum

[Paul Campos]

I'm doing research on the current state of legal education and its relation to the employment market for lawyers. As part of this work I'm gathering information about how various schools conduct on campus interviewing. I would very much appreciate it if TLS readers who are current law students or recent graduates would answer the following questions

(1) What school do you attend/did you graduate from recently?

(2) Does your school allow employers to pre-screen potential OCI interview candidates by GPA and/or class rank?

(3) If the answer to (2) is no, how does your school distribute interview slots when there are more candidates who wish to interview with an employer than the employer is scheduled to interview?

(4) Is there anything else you want to relay about the process?

People who want to respond but don't want to post in a thread should PM me. Thanks in advance.

[bdubs]

1) Northwestern
2) No
3) Lottery/random selection
4) It seems like not screening for grades is only a ruse to get employers to interview more candidates. I haven't been through the process yet, but I'm told that competitive candidates can usually get an interview even if they do not get selected for one through the bidding/lottery process. That is only effective at the margins though because most non-competitive candidates self-select out of bidding on firms that they won't get a callback at.

[John Denver]

(1) Harvard, actually
(2) No
(3) Lottery system. OCS says that we should get interviews out of about 75% of the firms we bid on, basically all of the firms we put high on the list.
(4) I don't have much else to say. Our OCS sends us emails every day with podcasts and other stuff, I really don't pay any attention to it but I guess some people actually go through all of the material.

[Anonymous User]

(1) BU
(2) Yes, but it's a hybrid pre-select/lottery system (80%/20%, I think) for non-IP employers.
(3) n/a
(4) As far as I know, our CDO doesn't indicate whether your individual interviews came from pre-select or lottery, nor do they notify you of you've received any interviews through lottery.

[shock259]

(1) Columbia
(2) No
(3) Lottery system. We get 30 bids and rank the firms we want to interview with from 1-30. The employer designates the # of slots they want interview with on campus. The system assigns interview slots to all of the students who ranked the firm the highest. More desirable firms require you to rank them really high to get an interview. (like 1-5). Less desirable firms don't fill up at all.
(4) OCS advises that most students get 15-20 interviews. There's a lot of midlaw/lower vault firms that come here and don't fill up slots. We can then add them later on. I ended up with ~35 screeners total (20 from initial bidding, 15 through adds).

Fun fact: if you are the real Campos, you taught me Property last spring at CU.

[Anonymous User]

* was supposed to be PM'd

[kwais]

(1) Harvard, actually
(2) No
(3) Lottery system. OCS says that we should get interviews out of about 75% of the firms we bid on, basically all of the firms we put high on the list.
(4) I don't have much else to say. Our OCS sends us emails every day with podcasts and other stuff, I really don't pay any attention to it but I guess some people actually go through all of the material.

lulz

[thegrayman]

(1) NYU

(2) No

(3) Lottery system, you can end up with ~30 screening interviews at OCI

(4) NYU career services is phenomenally helpful. They made a very stressful process much less so by giving very candid advice and helping me out a ton.

[beachbum]

(1) Columbia
(2) No
(3) Lottery system. We get 30 bids and rank the firms we want to interview with from 1-30. The employer designates the # of slots they want interview with on campus. The system assigns interview slots to all of the students who ranked the firm the highest. More desirable firms require you to rank them really high to get an interview. (like 1-5). Less desirable firms don't fill up at all.
(4) OCS advises that most students get 15-20 interviews. There's a lot of midlaw/lower vault firms that come here and don't fill up slots. We can then add them later on. I ended up with ~35 screeners total (20 from initial bidding, 15 through adds).

Same system at Duke.

[Anonymous User]

I'm doing research on the current state of legal education and its relation to the employment market for lawyers. As part of this work I'm gathering information about how various schools conduct on campus interviewing. I would very much appreciate it if TLS readers who are current law students or recent graduates would answer the following questions

(1) What school do you attend/did you graduate from recently?

(2) Does your school allow employers to pre-screen potential OCI interview candidates by GPA and/or class rank?

(3) If the answer to (2) is no, how does your school distribute interview slots when there are more candidates who wish to interview with an employer than the employer is scheduled to interview?

(4) Is there anything else you want to relay about the process?

People who want to respond but don't want to post in a thread should PM me. Thanks in advance.

1) Chicago
2) No
3) Pure Lottery. 50 bids; most students get around 20 - 25 interviews.
4) OCI is held over 8 days (Tuesday - next Thursday), and is typically one of the latest OCIs in the country. If you're interested in smaller markets, it's practically a necessity to apply outside of OCI.

[JamMasterJ]

(1) NYU

(2) No

(3) Lottery system, you can end up with ~30 screening interviews at OCI

(4) NYU career services is phenomenally helpful. They made a very stressful process much less so by giving very candid advice and helping me out a ton.

all this. And add that we have a separate OCI process for some gov/PI employers that's a bit smaller than our regular EIW.
Our lottery system is also based on the rank you give a firm a la CLS.

[Lincoln]

(1) Cornell
(2) No.
(3) We rank employers for each of the three days. Interview slots are distributed in the order of who ranked the firm highest, and after that by lottery.
(4) The main OCI is in NYC, rather than in Ithaca, so I suspect more employers attend since there's no need for travel. We can sign up for empty slots every day. Our OCS is generally good at placing students with firms, but my friends who want public interest are less than satisfied with the office of public service (which is a separate office).

[Anonymous User]

(1) Vanderbilt

(2) Half and half.

(3) Employers get to sift through the resumes of everyone who bid on them and fill half their interview slots with the students of their choice (everyone lists their GPA on their resume but class rank is not available). Then the school runs their algorithm to fill the rest of the interview spots based on how high the students ranked them etc.

(4) Nothing else to add.

[Anonymous User]

(1) Columbia
(2) No
(3) Lottery system. We get 30 bids and rank the firms we want to interview with from 1-30. The employer designates the # of slots they want interview with on campus. The system assigns interview slots to all of the students who ranked the firm the highest. More desirable firms require you to rank them really high to get an interview. (like 1-5). Less desirable firms don't fill up at all.
(4) OCS advises that most students get 15-20 interviews. There's a lot of midlaw/lower vault firms that come here and don't fill up slots. We can then add them later on. I ended up with ~35 screeners total (20 from initial bidding, 15 through adds).

Same system at Duke.

+1 for Michigan.

[kalvano]

1) SMU
2) Yes
3) SMU is 100% preselect, so employers choose who they want to interview
4) It works great if you're in the top 10%-15%. Those kids got 20+ interviews, but anyone outside that gets basically nothing, and OCS is pretty much useless for you.

[YankeesFan]

1) Wake Forest
2) Yes
3) Wake is 100% pre-select and employers get to choose who they want to interview.
4) Top 20%-25% seemed to get all the interviews they wanted, while those around median only got a couple if they were lucky. After top third its pretty much a crap-shoot, you generally have to have something really appealing (language skills, relevant WE) to pull OCI interviews.