Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing. Forum

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Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:22 pm

I posted in the bid list critique thread, but I figured this would get more views (the deadline for bidding is approaching). I got on the OCI train kind of late and I don't really know what I'm doing. I've been reading around about bidding strategies on here though.

I'm at BC or BU. Top 10% and on Law Review. OCI is 70% preselect and 30% lottery. Does this list seem decent? I more or less ranked them by a combination of interviews, class size, and my interest in working at the firm.

All of the firms are in Boston unless I say otherwise.

Jones Day (DC)
Cooley
Proskauer Rose
Arnold Porter (NY)
Skadden (NY)
Foley Lardner
K&L Gates
Bingham McCutchen
Weil Gotshal & Manges
Ropes & Gray
Wilmer Hale
Goodwin Procter
foley hoag
Dechert (DC)
Mintz Levin
Choate Hall
Edward Angell Palmer
Brown Rudnick
Nutter McClennen
Cadwalader (NY)
Skadden
Hahn Hessen (NY)
Sullivan & Worcester
McDermott
Holland & Knight
Nixon Peabody

Aston2412

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Aston2412 » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:31 pm

Some of what I'm assuming you consider your "safety" firms being so low on the list may work against you. Your bottom four, for instance, will likely be applied to by a larger number of applicants as they are relatively less selective than some of your top and middle tiers - this means the lottery bids will be more highly competed for and you might miss out on those safety firms if other students bid them higher.

That said, I don't really know how schools reconcile % pre-select / % lottery.

GW (where I am) is 100% pre-select, so there's no bidding hierarchy to worry about.....instead we get to worry about out-right rejection.

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:38 pm

OP, I am at BU as well, and there is probably something you should know about the bidding that wasn't immediately clear to me. The CDO sets a threshold figure (which varies by year) of screening interviews. If you get above that threshold figure, you are taken out of the running for lottery spots. If you get below the threshold, you may get a lottery spot or 2. I am also right around top 10%, and they hinted to me that my bidding order really didn't matter because I would likely surpass the threshold figure of screening interviews. So don't worry about the bidding order. Just put your top picks up top to ensure that, should you fall just below the threshold, your one or two lottery spots are top choice firms.

Anonymous User
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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:42 pm

Anonymous User wrote:OP, I am at BU as well, and there is probably something you should know about the bidding that wasn't immediately clear to me. The CDO sets a threshold figure (which varies by year) of screening interviews. If you get above that threshold figure, you are taken out of the running for lottery spots. If you get below the threshold, you may get a lottery spot or 2. I am also right around top 10%, and they hinted to me that my bidding order really didn't matter because I would likely surpass the threshold figure of screening interviews. So don't worry about the bidding order. Just put your top picks up top to ensure that, should you fall just below the threshold, your one or two lottery spots are top choice firms.

This makes me rethink some things. I really want to make sure I get an interview with Ropes, but I ranked them lower because they interview a ton of people. Should I rank them higher if this how the CDO rolls?

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:53 pm

Aston2412 wrote:Some of what I'm assuming you consider your "safety" firms being so low on the list may work against you. Your bottom four, for instance, will likely be applied to by a larger number of applicants as they are relatively less selective than some of your top and middle tiers - this means the lottery bids will be more highly competed for and you might miss out on those safety firms if other students bid them higher.

That said, I don't really know how schools reconcile % pre-select / % lottery.

GW (where I am) is 100% pre-select, so there's no bidding hierarchy to worry about.....instead we get to worry about out-right rejection.

I'd rather have 100% pre-select. It would be nice to go into an interview knowing for sure that the firm wants to interview you.

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kaiser

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by kaiser » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:55 pm

Anonymous User wrote:
Anonymous User wrote:OP, I am at BU as well, and there is probably something you should know about the bidding that wasn't immediately clear to me. The CDO sets a threshold figure (which varies by year) of screening interviews. If you get above that threshold figure, you are taken out of the running for lottery spots. If you get below the threshold, you may get a lottery spot or 2. I am also right around top 10%, and they hinted to me that my bidding order really didn't matter because I would likely surpass the threshold figure of screening interviews. So don't worry about the bidding order. Just put your top picks up top to ensure that, should you fall just below the threshold, your one or two lottery spots are top choice firms.

This makes me rethink some things. I really want to make sure I get an interview with Ropes, but I ranked them lower because they interview a ton of people. Should I rank them higher if this how the CDO rolls?
If this is the OP again, then it likely doesn't matter where you rank Ropes. You are likely to get enough pre-selections that you won't be part of the lottery. So go ahead and rank Ropes first, but it will likely come down to whether or not they pre-select you (which they almost certainly will). They interviewed all 3 days at BU last year, and saw 57 people. Of course they will talk to a top 10% kid on LR.

Aston2412

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Aston2412 » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:00 pm

Anonymous User wrote: I'd rather have 100% pre-select. It would be nice to go into an interview knowing for sure that the firm wants to interview you.
The downside is that you might get 0 screening interviews. Sometimes holding on to hope can motivate you to, you know, keep living. I would imagine that GW suicide rates peak around the time interviews are posted.

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Jul 13, 2011 4:37 pm

A few years ago, MWE was getting summers from the top 10% from BU/BC. If you consider it a safety firm, I don't know if you want to rank it so low.

alumniguy

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Re: Boston bid list help. I have no clue what I'm doing.

Post by alumniguy » Thu Jul 14, 2011 2:59 pm

Anonymous User wrote:A few years ago, MWE was getting summers from the top 10% from BU/BC. If you consider it a safety firm, I don't know if you want to rank it so low.
Which is absolutely mind-boggling...no top 10% student from BU/BC should end up at MWE. They don't even pay market salary anymore. They also instituted multiple rounds of associate layoffs during the downturn...certainly not a firm I would be stoked to be interviewing with if I was top 10%.

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