Alright—I'll bite the bullet.
OneLisfun: everything you've said so far is laughably wrong.
OneLisfun wrote:
Well, for me, if I have to make my decision of which is an easier firm to get a job at, and one makes a posting saying their minimum gpa they want is a 3.0, and the other says their cutoff is 3.4, if I were a person from the state that says they want a 3.0, common sense leads me to believe getting the job that requires a 3.0 when I have a 3.2 would be easier than getting the job that requires a 3.4. Call me crazy...
I know that this is a bit of a side issue but published "grade cut-offs" are trash and you should treat them as such. If you are at a lower T14 then your CSO should have GPA median call back data for previous classes. At my own school (lower T14), comparing our GPA CB data with Symplicity "notes" postings from firms is actually pretty fun. Firms do not put much thought in these postings. They'll demand a top 25% student and almost exclusively interview those in the top 40%/median. Seriously, if I recall correctly Jones Day posted that they wanted a top 20% student/law review preferred student in their CCBA job fair listing. Lol just lol.
OneLisfun wrote:
I think part of the issue with what you're saying is you're not getting that supply and demand are both involved here, not just supply. Additionally, there are some secondary markets where no T14 students are ever from, so they are salivating to get a T14 student who happens to be from that area. The supply of students who fit the criteria for these firms in obscure areas is very small, whereas while there are more NY firms, their supply of students is endless.
We'll need to talk concretely here. You're assuming that tertiary markets where no T14 students are ever from have robust Summer Classes that they fill with TTT law school students but would love to have a T14 student at their firm instead. How many 101+ attorney firms exist in Idaho or New Mexico? And how many of those 101+ firms have robust Summer Associate programs and hire directly out of law school (as opposed to tapping the lateral market)? Do you think a firm like
http://www.crowleyfleck.com/ really cares about T14 students? Check to see how many people from your school is employed by them.
But I'm going to be fair to you. I believe you're mostly talking about opportunities in midlaw. It's a good outcome, sure. But that's not the reason why most people came to a T14. So for now on I'm only going to be generally speaking about firms in the AmLaw 200 (or really just v100).
A true secondary market—Colorado—as I mentioned before will have several AmLaw 200 satellites. And, my god, working in Denver biglaw would be an ideal outcome. But you are deluded to think that you have a better shot at Colorado with a 3.4 because you have ties there and because no one else in your 250-person large lower T14 class is from Denver too (there's one guy from Colorado Springs but you heard that he's going to NYC). The fact of the matter is that the entire Colorado SA class size for all NALP-reporting AmLaw 200 firms will probably be less than 20 people. And that top 40% good looking all american UC Berkeley kid who grew up in Southern California and has never been to Colorado but is now dating a bombshell advertising account executive looking to move back to Boulder? He's going to take your spot.
I happen to have GPA CB data from my school on CO. Holland & Hart—basically the Cravath of Denver BIGLAW—is impossibly selective. So much so that I'd wager that a 3.4 at my school who shows up to her Schulte interview in sweatpants is more likely to receive an offer. Yes, it is unfair to compare the top firm in CO to Schulte (actually, it's not, I think we on TLS all uniformly agree that SRZ is god). But, damn it, there are only four firms (in 2012) that have over 100+ attorneys!
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/ ... st-63.html
OneLisfun wrote:I understand there are certain secondary markets you shouldn't be bidding on instead of NYC.
But, I see what you mean. You're arguing that if you had a 3.4, went to a lower T14 (which one?), and had ties to an obscure tertiary market you should bid said market. What I'm just trying to say is this: you can get a biglaw from median at a T14 if you're smart. Not bidding NYC effectively means you won't get biglaw. Maybe you'll get some midlaw gig in North Dakota—and maybe that's a desirable outcome, sure—but we're on a forum called top law school discussing BIGLAW+FEDERAL CLERKSHIPS employment data.
OneLisfun wrote:
I also understand that not every law student should be bidding on whatever 30% of the SA class is getting, that's simply wrong, not right in any way at a lower T14. If that firm at your school has had median 3.65 over the last X years and you have a a 3.3, I would suggest you bid elsewhere for your top 10. You need to look at how many people bid on the one you're looking at last year, the number of interview slots there were as a proportion of how many bids there were, the number of students they're taking, their records on median GPA. You're over simplifying a (somewhat) complicated process.
I see that you're back tracking, which is fine, as long as you're doing this as an acknowledgement that you've been wrong this whole time.
This is what the board is arguing about:
OneLisfun wrote:
Also, just to make clear, the typical advice at lower T14s is not to target NYC with lower grades. NYC is considered harder to get than secondary markets that you have ties to. At a lower T14, they will advise students with lower grades that the best move is to target secondary markets that they have ties to, as those are easier to get than NYC. That is the classic advice from career services
This advice is wrong. NYC, as we've repeatedly said before, will dig deeeeeeep into a class for candidates that they like. I'm talking about the Fried Franks, the Milbanks, the SRZs, Kaye Scholers, the Weils, the Kirkland NYs—god damn even Cahill Gordon, who pays above market bonuses, seems attainable with a 3.4 from my school given our data.