5H/5P at HLS; reaches, targets, safeties? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Dean's Scholar prizes are just tie-breakers for latin honors' purposes. They have no GPA effect otherwise. I'm sure employers are happy to see them, but they all they do in terms of ranking is bump you above those with identical H-and-P grades, i.e. 5H (no DS)/5P < 5H (all DS)/5 P < 6H (no DS)/4P.

I personally doubt DS amount to anything more than strong interview talking points.

OP here (I think!). I don't think this is really true, but DS prizes tended to cluster around people with a lot of Hs anyhow.

I think you guys are being a bit too optimistic about my rank and chances, but I appreciate the encouragement!

I used to think that, but then I had a semester with only DSs and Ps, no regular Hs.

Yes, I know people this has happened to, too. But it's not the norm. And I know people with good grades are more likely to talk about them, but I believe Hs are given to nearly fifty percent of students in certain classes. I do know that LPs were given in at least half of my classes this semester, but those cluster at least as much as the Dean's Scholar prizes.

So we're really thinking V20 range? I haven't researched anything about the mechanics of EIP yet. I'll probably apply to to Cleary NYC, WilmerHale DC, and Jenner DC as reaches. I've also been giving real thought to staying in Boston recently. Will I be pretty safe at top Boston firms?

[Anonymous User]

Dean's Scholar prizes are just tie-breakers for latin honors' purposes. They have no GPA effect otherwise. I'm sure employers are happy to see them, but they all they do in terms of ranking is bump you above those with identical H-and-P grades, i.e. 5H (no DS)/5P < 5H (all DS)/5 P < 6H (no DS)/4P.

I personally doubt DS amount to anything more than strong interview talking points.

OP here (I think!). I don't think this is really true, but DS prizes tended to cluster around people with a lot of Hs anyhow.

I think you guys are being a bit too optimistic about my rank and chances, but I appreciate the encouragement!

I used to think that, but then I had a semester with only DSs and Ps, no regular Hs.

Yes, I know people this has happened to, too. But it's not the norm. And I know people with good grades are more likely to talk about them, but I believe Hs are given to nearly fifty percent of students in certain classes. I do know that LPs were given in at least half of my classes this semester, but those cluster at least as much as the Dean's Scholar prizes.

So we're really thinking V20 range? I haven't researched anything about the mechanics of EIP yet. I'll probably apply to to Cleary NYC, WilmerHale DC, and Jenner DC as reaches. I've also been giving real thought to staying in Boston recently. Will I be pretty safe at top Boston firms?

Honestly, I have no idea. I'd be curious to find out how selective firms are for Harvard students too. OCS is pretty vague about this kind of stuff. FWIW, in 2009, JennerDC gave 10 callbacks for 69 interviews last year, WilmerDC was 20 for 92, ClearyNYC was 76 for 174, and the top Boston firms seem to give callbacks to around 40% of the people that had interviews. So if you're around top 30%, you probably have a very good shot at ClearyNYC and top Boston firms. DC from everything I've heard is kind of a crapshoot, though people who really want to go there always find at least something.

[Anonymous User]

Predicting EIP is not like predicting law school admissions. The interview counts for a lot, and employers don't really know what grades mean either. The Vault rankings are also not really selectivity rankings. They skew towards New York firms, even though it's much tougher to get jobs in DC, Chicago, or SF.

As far as the randomness goes, I'll offer my own, somewhat unsettling experience as an anecdote. I had 2 Hs first semester and I worked my tail off. Last semester, I had 5 Hs, and I worked literally less than half as much as I did first semester.

From the EIP website:

How do you know who is most selective with regard to grades? Consider the following:

* Vault Guides: As a general rule, the most selective firms are those that are listed in the top 10 to 15 in the Vault Regional Guides. For the most competitive markets such as Washington, D.C. or San Francisco, consider firms even beyond the top 10 to 15 as being the most competitive based on grades for those regions.
* American Lawyer: You can also get a ballpark sense of firm selectivity by viewing the American Lawyer rankings by Profits per Partner. These firms are known to be most profitable and therefore more popular with candidates. Consider the top 50 to be most selective with regard to grades, again, noting regional variances.
* Chambers and Partners: Consider firms listed under Bands One and Two to be most selective.
* EIP Statistics: Some firms also tend to be very popular with HLS students and therefore receive many bids. Review the 2009 EIP statistics to find out how many bids those employers received last year.

We cite these resources to provide you with general guidelines when formulating your bid list. You should note that there are outliers in each of these rankings but taken together, they should provide you with a good start.

When bidding, keep an open mind about all firms as we do not recommend bidding exclusively on top ranked firms. Recognize that each employer that comes to campus is worthy of your attention and may be an excellent place to work and gain experience in your chosen practice area. Ranking is not necessarily the most accurate gauge of these factors.
Grades No. of selective Firms on Your Bid List
1 or more LPs and mostly Ps No more than 5 highly selective firms on your bid list of 25-35 firms. Make an appointment with an OCS advisor.
Mostly Ps No more than 7-8 highly selective firms on your bid list of 25-35 firms.
Mix of Ps and Hs More evenly split your bids between highly selective and other firms on your bid list of 20-30 firms.
More than 5 - 6 Hs and no LPs Bid list can be focused on more highly selective firms but have a few safety firms on your bid list of 15-25 firms


Another method to unlocking the selectivity mystery is to consider what other qualities might make you more marketable in the process. Firms consider much more than grades in determining whether to invite a candidate for a callback interview.

If you have one or more of the following characteristics, you can add a virtual “H” to your transcript:

* Relevant work experience
* Advanced degrees
* Geographic ties to the area
* Diversity
* Language abilities
* Strength of your undergraduate institution and relevant course of study. For example, if you majored in business or economics, you might have a slight edge in the process. Similarly, those with a background in one of the hard sciences, may more easily market themselves to EIP employers
* Strength of your interviewing skills

Conversely, if you are bidding in regions known to be particularly competitive, such as Washington, D.C. or San Francisco, subtract a virtual “H” from your transcript.

[iagolives]

Yeah, I think, in the end, a lot of it is a game of darts. Assuming you have the requisite grades to get your foot in the door (which is somewhere I think the stats can be helpful), I think its all about whether you click with your interviewers.

Something I haven't seen much on this thread but is something I'm doing and would recommend is to send resumes to firms in the region you want who aren't coming to EIP. Especially in smaller markets, there are great firms that do awesome work that don't think its worth it to come to HLS because they don't traditionally recruit from there. I would imagine that, as the applicant pool of HLS applicants is substantially less, they would be more forgiving with grades.

[Anonymous User]

5Hs (~50% H) is fairly well above median at Harvard. I'd be shocked if it were worse than top quarter.

Well, be shocked. At Columbia, the curve is 20%-25% A/A-, 7%-15% B- and below, and the rest B/B+. This is roughly translatable into H/LP/P, except the Columbia curve is actually stricter than the Harvard curve because it gives out fewer "Hs" and more "LPs." I have more than half "Hs" (i.e., A/A- grades) and I am just inside top 25%. Given the relative leniency of the Harvard curve, OP is probably sitting around top third, but almost certainly not higher than that.

As to your original question, OP, I think like others have said your targets are roughly V10-25, reaches roughly V10, and safeties below V25. There are obvious exceptions - Weil is probably a target, not a reach though it's V10, and W&C is obviously a huge reach (arguably out of the question) thought it's a V20. But you get the idea.

[Anonymous User]

How do you know you are just inside the top quarter? I have never seen rankings by GPA at Columbia and I know no such rankings are officially published. Are you just estimating your rank or did someone in OCS actually tell you your rank privately?

[Anonymous User]

Well, be shocked. At Columbia, the curve is 20%-25% A/A-, 7%-15% B- and below, and the rest B/B+. This is roughly translatable into H/LP/P, except the Columbia curve is actually stricter than the Harvard curve because it gives out fewer "Hs" and more "LPs." I have more than half "Hs" (i.e., A/A- grades) and I am just inside top 25%. Given the relative leniency of the Harvard curve, OP is probably sitting around top third, but almost certainly not higher than that..

i'm also at cls and am interested in how you know this. do you mind sharing your thought of the 25% cut-off? it would be very helpful. i'm inside stone, but unsure of where i am. many thanks!

[Cleareyes]

5Hs (~50% H) is fairly well above median at Harvard. I'd be shocked if it were worse than top quarter.

Well, be shocked. At Columbia, the curve is 20%-25% A/A-, 7%-15% B- and below, and the rest B/B+. This is roughly translatable into H/LP/P, except the Columbia curve is actually stricter than the Harvard curve because it gives out fewer "Hs" and more "LPs." I have more than half "Hs" (i.e., A/A- grades) and I am just inside top 25%. Given the relative leniency of the Harvard curve, OP is probably sitting around top third, but almost certainly not higher than that.

As to your original question, OP, I think like others have said your targets are roughly V10-25, reaches roughly V10, and safeties below V25. There are obvious exceptions - Weil is probably a target, not a reach though it's V10, and W&C is obviously a huge reach (arguably out of the question) thought it's a V20. But you get the idea.

I would agree that 5 Hs is probably not top quarter, but I do think that it's slightly hard to compare H schools to grade schools directly, because the extra levels of distinction in those schools do matter. Someone with 3 B+s and 1 A has about the same GPA as someone with 2 B+s and 2 A-s (depending on the numerical value of the grades.) Then there's the weighting of classes, which exists at HLS too but is less clear to employers when there's no GPA. It's a somewhat different system and I don't know exactly how that changes the way the breakdowns work.

[iagolives]

So, what do you think, Cleareyes? Top 1/3?

[Cleareyes]

So, what do you think, Cleareyes? Top 1/3?

My guess would be somewhere around there. My guess based on people whose grades I know and intuition is that median is around 3 Hs. I think Hs tend to cluster and I think there are a good number of people with like 1 or 2 Hs or even all Ps. I also think there are more than most people would expect with like 9-10 Hs.

Honestly it doesn't really matter where specifically he is because employers don't have a great curve either. They only have a couple years of data and only know what the transcripts of those who apply to them (a smallish and nonrandom sample for any given employer) look like. I think the EIP bidding guidelines are about as good as we're going to get, supplemented by knowledge of the grades of those who actually got offers at given firms last year (if you can find any of those out) and Latin Honors info starting next year when the first class to come in under the new system graduates. Other than Latin Honors and a few other things it doesn't really matter where you sit numerically, just how you will be perceived. I think firms will perceive OP as a good but not outstanding student.

[Anonymous User]

i'm also at cls and am interested in how you know this. do you mind sharing your thought of the 25% cut-off? it would be very helpful. i'm inside stone, but unsure of where i am. many thanks!

It is an estimate, but I think it's pretty accurate. If you take the three data points we know - 3.27 = median (posted on a doc a few years back), 3.41 = top 30% (stone), 3.8 = top 2%-3% (kent), the top half of the curve fits pretty perfectly into a normal distribution with median 3.27 and stdev 0.27 (I am guessing the bottom half of the curve is flatter and not normally distributed).

If you plug that into a calculator, it means roughly:

Top 30% = 3.41

Top 25% = 3.45

Top 20% = 3.50

Top 10% = 3.62

Top 5% = 3.72

Obviously these aren't exact values, but they should give you a rough idea of where you stand.

[Anonymous User]

lol, I feel pretty awkward about this much discussion of my grades. I think Cleareyes is right that employers don't know much about what's going on either. It's nice that I'm probably still in the range for Latin honors.