Can somebody explain the lottery system to me? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I had no idea this even existed and I thought all OCI interviews were through preselect. I don't understand...if its a lottery then literally someone with a 1.5 GPA can get an interview?

[arklaw13]

At my school half the slots are lottery. The lottery slots are filled with everyone who bid the firm #1, then everyone who bid #2, etc. until all the spots are filled. Dunno how ties are broken.

[jimmywho]

I had no idea this even existed and I thought all OCI interviews were through preselect. I don't understand...if its a lottery then literally someone with a 1.5 GPA can get an interview?

Yes even someone with the lowest grades can get interviews in a lottery system. One reason I've heard for the lottery system is to prevent firms from just preselecting the top X% and nobody else getting interviews. The thing almost all of the interviews are screeners (20 minute interviews), which if they like you and your credentials can land you a call back interview that is more thorough. Most if not all offers result from a call back and not directly from a screener. Therefore, if you bid way above your weight (in terms of grades, etc) then you might get screeners with the firms, but will almost certainly fail to get a call back. For the bottom of the barrel candidate, that person would likely not make any progress towards a job during OCI, but should have been mailing other firms and markets that don't come to their school's OCI.

[Cicero76]

At my school it's 100% lottery. You rank firms, and the higher you rank them the better your chance of getting an interview with that firm. Not that complicated really.

[09042014]

Lottery is sort of a poor name for it. It's more of a ranking system. It's only a small part "random." If the firm has 20 slots, and 5 people bid it 1. They all get it. If another 7 bid it 2. They all get it. But if 10 people bid it 3, they randomly pick 8 out of the 10 to get the last spots. Someone who bid 4 has no shot.