All my grades are in from UVA. Fell from Top 10% to Top 33% Forum

[Anonymous User]

Anyone want to post a sample bid list for a 3.4 bidding only NY?

This would be very helpful not only for myself but for others from UVa.

[joeshmo39]

I won't quote it all, but in regards to the 3.4: I know a guy who went to Career Services and said, "I want to work in NY at a firm that pays market, prestige is not the biggest concern." Career Services told him 3.4, that is your bar, go jump over it. So I'm assuming 3.4 is a decent representation of what it will take to get yourself into the room with a lot of NY firms. YMMV.

[RVP11]

Anyone want to post a sample bid list for a 3.4 bidding only NY?

This would be very helpful not only for myself but for others from UVa.

See my earlier post:

If you're bidding NYC, then:

Definitely still bid on Davis Polk, Simpson Thacher, Skadden, Weil, and most any non-V10. They all dip down into the 3.5s and occasionally 3.4s. Maybe pick one or two of these to put in your "top 5" (I assume they're still doing a Top 5 system) as reaches.

Decide how risk averse you are with regard to bidding on Cleary, Debevoise, and Paul Weiss. You are probably outside of their range, but it wouldn't hurt to throw some bids at them near the bottom of your bid list, where you're not risking much.

Definitely don't waste a bid on Cravath or Sullivan & Cromwell. And a huge percentage of DC firms are also off limits.

[RVP11]

I won't quote it all, but in regards to the 3.4: I know a guy who went to Career Services and said, "I want to work in NY at a firm that pays market, prestige is not the biggest concern." Career Services told him 3.4, that is your bar, go jump over it. So I'm assuming 3.4 is a decent representation of what it will take to get yourself into the room with a lot of NY firms. YMMV.

But just because a 3.4 is probably what it takes to be virtually assured of getting a NYC offer that doesn't mean that 3.4 is a common cutoff point.

[Anonymous User]

I won't quote it all, but in regards to the 3.4: I know a guy who went to Career Services and said, "I want to work in NY at a firm that pays market, prestige is not the biggest concern." Career Services told him 3.4, that is your bar, go jump over it. So I'm assuming 3.4 is a decent representation of what it will take to get yourself into the room with a lot of NY firms. YMMV.

This would mean that 70 percent of the class is out of luck in terms of getting a firm job. People keep throwing around this top 1/3 ranking like its nothing, do people not realize that this automatically precludes 70 percent of the class from working at a firm? Only 30 percent of UVA is eligible for a firm job--is that what you're trying to say?

[Anonymous User]

3.4 for NYC is pretty dam good. People got v10 offers with a 3.4, granted if you have the intangibles: good interviewer, work experience, good undergrad, etc who knows what you can get. I know a decent amount people with less than 3.4 with V25 offers in NYC as well.

[09042014]

3.4 is the GPA cut-off for a lot of firms from what I've seen and researched so a 3.4 can get you in the interview room with a lot of firms. Is it a 3.67 or so? No, but it won't preclude a successful OGI. My impression, correct me if I'm wrong people who know what's going on, is that GPA is sort of a screening device. A guy with a 3.5 and a guy with a 3.8 can both get in the room, but once there, the GPA gap matters less.

IDK about 3.4 being a common cutoff or where you're getting that information from.

But you are right that once you're above a firm's soft cutoff that it doesn't really matter how much you are above it. At a firm with a soft cutoff of 3.3, the person with the 3.5 and the person with the 3.8 are on pretty much even footing. This is how some VLR grade-on people can end up offerless while someone with a 3.4-3.6 could get over a dozen callbacks.

Some firms really gun to get as many VLR people as possible (like Gibson DC) and set a correspondingly high cutoff, while most just don't care that much (even though they are at the same "prestige" level as Gibson).

Most firms set arbitrary soft cutoffs just because it's an easy sorting mechanism for when you have 150 people who want to interview and only 40 slots. They don't set arbitrary soft cutoffs because they really believe that a person with a 3.6 is capable of something that a person with a 3.4 isn't. So it wouldn't not be logical for most firms to discriminate much, based on grades, within the group of people who clear their cutoff, when they don't seem to otherwise believe that it grades correspond strongly with ability.

This is why I think pre-select for OCI is harmful.

[Anonymous User]

I won't quote it all, but in regards to the 3.4: I know a guy who went to Career Services and said, "I want to work in NY at a firm that pays market, prestige is not the biggest concern." Career Services told him 3.4, that is your bar, go jump over it. So I'm assuming 3.4 is a decent representation of what it will take to get yourself into the room with a lot of NY firms. YMMV.

This would mean that 70 percent of the class is out of luck in terms of getting a firm job. People keep throwing around this top 1/3 ranking like its nothing, do people not realize that this automatically precludes 70 percent of the class from working at a firm? Only 30 percent of UVA is eligible for a firm job--is that what you're trying to say?

What? IF this were true, it would only mean that ~70% couldn't get a MARKET PAYING job IN NEW YORK. That's all that the poster is "trying to say."

[omg]

^ Oops, that was me. Didn't mean to post anon.

[BruceWayne]

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