IzziesGal wrote:cornellbeez wrote:IzziesGal wrote: Those of us who wanted big law, got it.

We shouldn't delude 0Ls. The market is still brutal, and apparently even 1/3 of Harvard struck out last year. (Not to mention, people who bid on California, including LA, had an especially difficult time unless they had really good grades or were IP-focused.)
It's not deluding 0Ls when it's true. Again, I stress that there's admittedly a smaller number of Boalties interested in big law since so many want public interest, so it's definitely not the same as an entire class of Harvard, for example, gunning for a few big law spots. But I can honestly say that every single person I know who wanted a big law job, got one. People took the economy seriously and applied up and down the entire Vault list, were geographically flexible, etc. People from CA who wanted the Bay Area applied all over the country and landed offers that they took in NY. No one was naive enough to only apply to the top 15 firms or the top firms in the Bay Area and think the jobs were theirs. People approached OCIP with caution, and I think it paid off. Biglaw does exist outside of the top 20 firms. 1-100 all start at 160k.
I've heard of a few transfers striking out, but I don't know them personally. The one transfer I know had 3 V20 offers to choose from.
Boalt historically places 11% into PI. That's not much higher than some other T-14 schools with better biglaw placement. I have no reason to think that the Class of 2012 is any different from previous classes.
Again, if most of your friends or people you associate with (again self-selecting group) have biglaw, that's great, but I bet there are a lot of people who don't have biglaw who never talk about it. Most of my friends have biglaw, but I'm not going to extrapolate from this that most of the class has biglaw. Unless you poll all 320 2Ls at Boalt (this number includes transfers), you can't say that "nobody" did this or "nobody" did that. I'm willing to put my money on Boalt2L's impressions, rather than yours, considering the most recent NLJ statistics, and the further decline of biglaw since then. If only 50% had "NLJ250" firms after going through OCIP a couple years ago, which counts firms that don't constitute biglaw anyway, and biglaw has shrunk since they had OCIP, I am willing to bet that, at the very least, less than half have biglaw.
As for applying up and down the Vault list, I question the effectiveness of this strategy if you don't have a unique background, as many people don't, including me. I did that, too, before OCI. It didn't help me at all though because I wasn't top 10% nor did I have a military or IP background. While I landed callbacks at ~1/2 of my OCI interviews, I didn't get a single callback from a biglaw firm after mailing in an application beforehand. Many of the firms simply ignored my application, and then sent me a rejection letter 4 months later.
I understand that you are providing your experiences, but your sample simply isn't a representative sample of the 2L population. And as I understand it, you have a unique background with impressive work experience, too, which many of us simply don't have.