Columbia students taking questions Forum

[John_Luther1989]

Any good barbershops near the campus?

No one asked the threshold question. Are you the kind of person who walks in and says "give me a 3 on top and a 2 on the sides" or "high caesar"? If the former, idk, go anywhere. If the later, I'm partial to Levels.

[doctorjuris]

Assuming average softs, what firms are generally out of reach for low-stone students during EIP? Trying to see which firm receptions I don't need to bother attending. Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight!

[smaug]

Assuming average softs, what firms are generally out of reach for low-stone students during EIP? Trying to see which firm receptions I don't need to bother attending. Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight!

don't make this assumption. grades change and you might be able to pull it back. it's only a few firms that are super grade selective anyway.

[jbagelboy]

Assuming average softs, what firms are generally out of reach for low-stone students during EIP? Trying to see which firm receptions I don't need to bother attending. Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight!

don't make this assumption. grades change and you might be able to pull it back. it's only a few firms that are super grade selective anyway.

+1
Also use search function when the time comes, lots of good threads on this

[John_Luther1989]

The CLS EIP threads from the past two years are treasure troves.

[smaug]

The CLS EIP threads from the past two years are treasure troves.

(ignores that they stole everything from the stunningly charismatic and intelligent Ted "Theodore" Logan, whoever that man of mystery may have been)

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

The CLS EIP threads from the past two years are treasure troves.

(ignores that they stole everything from the stunningly charismatic and intelligent Ted "Theodore" Logan, whoever that man of mystery may have been)

The 1Ls never listen anyway. I littered the last EIP thread with advice about maximizing the number of safe chances, and proceeded to watch with zero sympathy as they all fucked it up.

I laid out a fairly detailed DIY guide for how I got 47 interviews, then stared blankly as they all came back with 15 and 16. But hey, it's only your career.

[smaug]

Frankly, I think OCS made a massive mistake in putting out the first failed bid information. They changed the rules of a game that they didn't understand.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

[Tiago Splitter]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

But didn't the numbers completely change from one year to the next once this was introduced? I thought some people's bid lists got completely blown up but maybe it was limited to just a few firms.

[smaug]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

But didn't the numbers completely change from one year to the next once this was introduced?

Yes, because people started using the FFB as baseline so you had to move up from FFB.

The system worked before because there were people who didn't understand the game. You had to account for imperfect information. Now it's just weird coordination game bullshit.

[RSN]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

Wait, just to be clear, 40+ is from bidding smart and also mass mailing a crapload of firms before EIP, right?

[GreenEggs]

Can you guys explain what you're talking about with FFB and how that changed things?

[RSN]

The referenced discussion in last year's thread: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&start=25

[Tiago Splitter]

Can you guys explain what you're talking about with FFB and how that changed things?

OCS released the "first failed bid" for each firm, which means for example if Kirkland's first failed bid had been 5, anyone bidding it 6 or lower did not get an interview through the bidding process. Armed with this knowledge people changed their bidding strategies but it caused some people to miss on a lot more firms than usual. Apparently some firms that usually required a bid in the top 2-3 didn't even fill up because so many people didn't bid on those firms, assuming they'd have no shot.

[jbagelboy]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

Wait, just to be clear, 40+ is from bidding smart and also mass mailing a crapload of firms before EIP, right?

You don't need or want more than 30 interviews

[RSN]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

Wait, just to be clear, 40+ is from bidding smart and also mass mailing a crapload of firms before EIP, right?

You don't need or want more than 30 interviews

I definitely don't, I'm just curious how that's humanly possible

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

Wait, just to be clear, 40+ is from bidding smart and also mass mailing a crapload of firms before EIP, right?

I bid 28 in the lottery and picked up 25 more in post-lottery adding. OCS called me in hysterics and I agreed to drop six of the long-long-long shots to shut them up, but held firm on the rest.

Mass mailing is something separate, and I mailed upwards of 200 firms.

If any part of the process seems hard, I promise you it's not as hard as the feeling strikeouts have knowing there was something they could have done that might have made a difference. Two of my callbacks came from firms I picked up in the post-lottery adding. I was lucky enough to be able to pick between firms in the end, but if things had been different you can bet your ass I would've been over the moon to not have overlooked them.

[GoneSouth]

What's the deal with doing semester internships, say with a public interest org, that aren't through one of Columbia's official externship programs? Can you get credit for these? And what's the hiring timeline for trying to get one for fall semester?

[almondjoy]

I bid 28 in the lottery and picked up 25 more in post-lottery adding. OCS called me in hysterics and I agreed to drop six of the long-long-long shots to shut them up, but held firm on the rest.

Lol the thought of OCS calling you up in a panic because you were hoarding all the interview slots is hilarious

[smaug]

The FFB list took away any excuse anyone had for not hitting 27+ of their bidlist. I endorse any change that favors people who have their shit together at the expense of people who don't take time to figure out how important things work.

If you don't have 40+ interviews and you didn't do every practice interview you could get your hands on, I don't have anything to say about your strikeout other than "we warned you."

Wait, just to be clear, 40+ is from bidding smart and also mass mailing a crapload of firms before EIP, right?

You don't need or want more than 30 interviews

I definitely don't, I'm just curious how that's humanly possible

10 a day is do-able but not fun. I know I said this in thread last year, but I really recommend that people try to get some early offers and winnow their list pre-EIP. It would be much easier to go through the thing only with the idea of potentially trading up.

[kingpin101]

Does anyone know if PLIP (patent fair) overlaps with EIP at all? Is it even worth going as a Columbia student?

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I bid 28 in the lottery and picked up 25 more in post-lottery adding. OCS called me in hysterics and I agreed to drop six of the long-long-long shots to shut them up, but held firm on the rest.

Lol the thought of OCS calling you up in a panic because you were hoarding all the interview slots is hilarious

It was even funnier than it sounds.

I wasn't really hoarding the spots because I had a lot of lower-interest firms who regularly don't fill a full schedule. A decent chunk had fewer than 10 interviews. At one firm I was literally the only interviewee. The guy effectively said the firm just needed bodies, and actually looked at my transcript and said "everything looks fine here." I couldn't believe I didn't get a callback.

But yeah, Lois Jeffers called me and said something to the effect of "you can't do this" (even though the only one I actually for sure had zero chance at was STB, which I dropped). I told her that it would be stupid to drop interviews when I was already that terrified of striking out. When other people found out about my schedule in the month or so after EIP, multiple people told me that OCS had mentioned that "some crazy kid" had done 47. To this day OCS still doesn't like me.

[pa1901]

10 a day is do-able but not fun. I know I said this in thread last year, but I really recommend that people try to get some early offers and winnow their list pre-EIP. It would be much easier to go through the thing only with the idea of potentially trading up.

Yeah once you get above 7/day it gets real exhausting. I had 30 total EIP interviews due to targeting a few cities and my first three days were all like 8-9 interviews per day, and then my last day was only around 5. That last day felt so much more relaxed and made it easier mentally since there was more time.

But of course more interviews is usually better than less especially when trying to hit non-NY markets. I really wish I had a pre-EIP offer in hand so I could cut out some of the filler interviews and really just go for the real target firms.

[Tiago Splitter]

I support the MO philosophy but I think the toughest thing about so many interviews is that you'd have to get there ridiculously early to add more each day. Doing 7-8 pre-scheduled ones in a day isn't anybody's idea of a great time but it's very doable. Having the weekend in the middle makes things easier.