UVA - Top 40% - Bidding Strategy? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hey OP, I'm a UVA 3L with an EE degree but no relevant WE and a similar 1L GPA (maybe very slightly higher - it was between 3.4 and 3.45). That may be enough to out me, but I guess I don't really care.

My OGI experience:

DC: No connections. Bid on about 10 DC firms (including IP boutiques like Finnegan) and got interviews at precisely 0. Also got 0 interviews for offices in other cities of firms that interviewed for both DC and the city I applied to in the same interview room (I know that's horribly worded, but hopefully you know what I mean). People are not exaggerating. DC was brutal last year.

CA: Good but not great connections. Bid on about 15-20 CA firms and got interviews at all but 6. I got bids at all of the IP boutiques I bid for in the area of CA I had ties to and at about half of the ones in the other part CA. Percentage-wise, I did almost equally well with big, general practice firms (everywhere from V10-V100 level). Got a handful of callbacks.

NYC: No interest; didn't bid on it.

Secondary Home Market: Bid on about 15 firms and got interviews at about 10. Got a couple of callbacks. Not many IP boutiques here, so most of the firms were bigger, general practice firms.

Hey, OP here. Thanks for that information. Very useful, especially the part about California because I don't have a good sense of the level of competition.

If you don't mind me asking, did the order of your bids make any difference? In other words, for the CA firms, were the interviews you received pre-select or lottery? Also, did you rank the DC firms at the top or did you mix it up between CA and DC firms?

I realize that this year is different than last year (60% pre-select, 20% top-5 list, 20% lottery), but I'm curious how you received your interviews. This is valuable just so I know whether it's worthwhile to put certain firms in the top 5 or top 10 bids. If I can receive a preselection (I have no idea if this is remotely possible), then I might as well put them on the bottom of my list.

Thanks again for your post. It was very helpful. Again, very good food for thought in terms of applying to DC.

[Anonymous User]

Hey, OP here. Thanks for that information. Very useful, especially the part about California because I don't have a good sense of the level of competition.

If you don't mind me asking, did the order of your bids make any difference? In other words, for the CA firms, were the interviews you received pre-select or lottery? Also, did you rank the DC firms at the top or did you mix it up between CA and DC firms?

I realize that this year is different than last year (60% pre-select, 20% top-5 list, 20% lottery), but I'm curious how you received your interviews. This is valuable just so I know whether it's worthwhile to put certain firms in the top 5 or top 10 bids. If I can receive a preselection (I have no idea if this is remotely possible), then I might as well put them on the bottom of my list.

Thanks again for your post. It was very helpful. Again, very good food for thought in terms of applying to DC.

Well, I apparently did not bid very intelligently. 7 of my top 8 preselected me, and the 8th made me an alternate. As a result, I only ended up getting 2 lottery picks. I lucked out something like 20 or 21 preselects, though, so it wasn't a big deal. My strategy was to put the biggest, best-known CA firms first because I thought that's where I had the worst chance of getting preselected. I put IP places , regardless of where they were, lower because I didn't think there'd be many people bidding on them. That didn't end up being the case. More people apparently bid on the IP firms in DC than bid on the big firms in CA just because they were in DC, and I guess a 3.8 with an English major is more attractive than a 3.4x with a BSEE even to Finnegan. I put lower ranked DC/ East Coast firms lower down because I figured somewhere like Venable or Bryan Cave would less selective than, say, GDC in LA. It didn't work out that way.

With non-IP firms, I also didn't take into account which offices were sharing rooms with popular cities like DC or how many interview rooms the firm had reserved, and that turned out to be a mistake. Obviously a bid to a firm that has 80 interview slots gives you more of a shot than a bid to a firm with 20. I'm not sure why that didn't occur to me when I was setting my bid list, but it's big factor.

[Anonymous User]

1) DC
IP - Chances for one of the IP boutiques (e.g. Finnegan, Fish) are decent, especially in the Northern Virginia area. Chances for the patent prosecution firms are pretty hight too.

I'm a rising 2L at CCN with first semester grades slightly higher than median and was not preselected by Finnegan at the Loyola patent law fair. A few others at my school I spoke with were not either. FWIW, I'm EE w/ M.S. and WE in engineering. I've passed the patent bar and have been doing patent prosecution work (as a patent engineer / agent) for a small firm for around one and a half years. I'm not sure what Finnegan's looking for but it doesn't seem so easy to get ITE.

Wow, I was selected by Finnegan, and I go to a school ranked in the 80s, though my GPA was 3.7. Also EE, and work experience, but not in the patent field.

How many interviews did you get selected for overall?

[Anonymous User]

Wow, I was selected by Finnegan, and I go to a school ranked in the 80s, though my GPA was 3.7. Also EE, and work experience, but not in the patent field.

How many interviews did you get selected for overall?

I was preselected for 12.
Your grades are very impressive, and with that EE background I'm sure you'll do great this recruiting cycle.