Anonymous User wrote:Anonymous User wrote:I wouldn't blame the transfers. Admissions did their part in taking substantially less than normal.
Blame OCS. They don't engender OCI fear well enough into students. They also didn't give the best advice to people because it would either make Chicago look bad to the bottomers, cause top students to squelch opportunities away, and incite struggles at the median.
I am a little over median (barely) and have 8 callbacks. I attribute this to my OCI fear and willingness to do whatever I had to to get callbacks. I am not hot and I am not a great interviewer-- I sometimes say weird things when I am nervous in interviews. I did have a pretty good resume, as most do at Chicago. I treated OCI like a full-time job, pushed forward with common sense.
Specifically, I ignored the OCS smoke and mirrors, which are calculated attempts to maximize the number of jobs the class yields, while sacrificing some who should get jobs (ie. non LR-grade-ons with median to high grades bidding NYC and Chicago only might not get jobs, while the very, very bottom of the class bidding into Texas or Silicon Valley with ties (two current booming areas) will absolutely get jobs.
This doesn't make any sense to me. You think people didn't take OCS seriously enough because OCI didn't put enough "fear" into them about it? Our school is supposed to be full of some of the
smartest people in the country, yet the students need OCS to explain to them that they need to try really hard to get a job to pay off their hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt? How is that even remotely the fault of people at OCS?
this is a bit glib. treat it like a full-time job? push forward with common sense? come on.
My thoughts exactly.
I would say that there are a lot of people who don't understand that OCI success goes to the hustlers. It is almost necessary if you aren't a grade-on. For example, I watched as one dude asked OCS: "Why would I want to bid more firms than those I really like?" I also have a friend who ended up with 17 bids in mostly one struggling market and had no idea how the add process worked during OCI. Another guy called me a "liar" for bidding firms in an area that I had few ties to (NYC) because it would be dishonest to feign interest in an area.
I spoke with two people who cancelled their interviews to around 10 from 25 (who were around median) because "they only want to interview with the firms that they could see themselves working at."
When I said "full-time job," I mean that it is amazing how many people just kind of show up with little knowledge about a firm or interviewer and expect to do well.
By "fear" I mean that there is a substantial segment of the class that bought in to the "Chicago is a unique place and employers will want you because our class size is so small and they all want one" mentality. The process is random, and a lot of employers are just going to latch on to something on your resume and give you a callback, or may ding you because they have already met their callback quota for the day, or were tired and hungry when they interviewed with you. A lot of firms are still having money problems as well, so those that you might have been a lock at are really there for marketing reasons, and to maybe bring back two people instead of their usual 10.
I'm sure that the people posting on here without callbacks do not have the complacent mentality, and will likely end up with SA jobs by hustling if they got shut out at OCI through mass mailing, cold calling, and generally fighting for jobs-- if you look at the data from last year, it appears that around 20% of the SAers got their jobs this way. However, many still are suffering from this.
