OCI firm requirements Forum

[Anonymous User]

I was browsing Symplicity for early interview OCI information and I noticed that most of the firms have pretty strict requirements such as top 5%, top 10% plus journals.

I am at median and will not be doing a journal. I know my shot is low (if not impossible), but is it even worth applying to these firms?

[Anonymous User]

i believe TCR is never to ding yourself

[Anonymous User]

I saw that too. When firms say they have a top 20% threshold, does that mean someone in the top third of their T-14 class is sidestepped by top 20% students at a Tier 1-2-3. I doubt it, curious nevertheless.

[de5igual]

A wise and insightful person once wrote:

PSA - when a firm lists its GPA preference and requirements, you should do the following: Ignore them entirely and mother fucking ask career services.

Firms lie through their god damned teeth on those things, and I want to keep harping on it, because it is VERY IMPORTANT TO YOUR CAREER PROSPECTS. The firms are lying or naive or outsourcing their symplicity profiles to India or who knows what, but if you ask a 3 year old with a box of crayons to draw you the cut off for a firm you'll get a better answer than the firm's published cutoff on your OCI software.

Firms aren't consistently high, or consistently low - they're just consistently full of shit. A firm that says "top third required" might hire to median, it might hire from the top 3% without exception, and there's even a remote chance it will hire from the top third. But those pieces of data simply cannot be relied upon at all. Not even in a cursory way. Not for comparison's sake, not when nothing else will do. You need to completely disregard them, and beg/borrow/steal data from career services. Your (and that's the royal 'your' for everyone out there reading in paranoid law student land) career depends on it.

[FeelTheHeat]

A wise and insightful person once wrote:

PSA - when a firm lists its GPA preference and requirements, you should do the following: Ignore them entirely and mother fucking ask career services.

Firms lie through their god damned teeth on those things, and I want to keep harping on it, because it is VERY IMPORTANT TO YOUR CAREER PROSPECTS. The firms are lying or naive or outsourcing their symplicity profiles to India or who knows what, but if you ask a 3 year old with a box of crayons to draw you the cut off for a firm you'll get a better answer than the firm's published cutoff on your OCI software.

Firms aren't consistently high, or consistently low - they're just consistently full of shit. A firm that says "top third required" might hire to median, it might hire from the top 3% without exception, and there's even a remote chance it will hire from the top third. But those pieces of data simply cannot be relied upon at all. Not even in a cursory way. Not for comparison's sake, not when nothing else will do. You need to completely disregard them, and beg/borrow/steal data from career services. Your (and that's the royal 'your' for everyone out there reading in paranoid law student land) career depends on it.

This is interesting. What data should I be trying to get out of the career services office? Class ranking of SAs the firm has hired in the past?

[Sauer Grapes]

Also keep in mind that the "official" cutoffs in simplicity are not the actual cutoffs. The real cutoff is usually lower, but firms won't advertise that because they think it'll hurt their reputation by making them look less prestigious.

[DallasCowboy]

Completely ignore Symplicity. For example, Fried Frank claimed top 15% then called back people at exactly median

[Judge Philip Banks]

Do you think those cut-offs are stricter for T2 students, and those students at median getting interviews from firms that state top 15% or whatever are at T14 schools?

[de5igual]

Do you think those cut-offs are stricter for T2 students, and those students at median getting interviews from firms that state top 15% or whatever are at T14 schools?

Perhaps, but a T2 is likely 100% preselect, so someone there should apply to all firms regardless and hope for the best.

[flcath]

Also keep in mind that the "official" cutoffs in simplicity are not the actual cutoffs. The real cutoff is usually lower, but firms won't advertise that because they think it'll hurt their reputation by making them look less prestigious.

Sometimes. Cravath was also at ND asking for (IIRC) top 20%, and they (obviously) only ended up CB-ing three dudes in the top 10 of the class.

They seem to be arbitrary.

[kwais]

My CSO provides a list of the percentage of offers that went to honors students from each firm in the last OCI. This is probably the only reliable way to answer this question. As someone said above, you will see firms on this list who say on Simplicity or Chambers that they only consider top 20% but then give out ALL of their offers to people outside of the top third. Look at what they do, not say. And obviously if a firm goes to 25 schools they have different cut offs for those schools, so Simplicity quotes might be a way of approximating the average of those approaches.

[Anonymous User]

If you're fudging the listed Symplicity cutoff, is it best not to include your school's cutoffs on your resume?

For example, my school doesn't rank individual students but gives gpa cutoffs for top 10%, top 33%, and top 50%. If my gpa is safely within the top 33% cutoff but nowhere near the top 10% cutoff and I'm applying to firms whose OCI directions require top 20% or top 25%, would it be best not to include the gpa cutoffs on the resume and just go with the (only mildly impressive) gpa? Or should I list my gpa as well as the top 33% cutoff and have the firm think to themselves "well, he could be close to top quarter"?

[jess]

.

[Anonymous User]

I was browsing Symplicity for early interview OCI information and I noticed that most of the firms have pretty strict requirements such as top 5%, top 10% plus journals.

I am at median and will not be doing a journal. I know my shot is low (if not impossible), but is it even worth applying to these firms?

Funny. I was suprised by how low a lot of the requirements were at our school - most were top 30%. I'm not at a great school, either.