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I'm thinking of bidding mostly NY with a few DC sprinkled in. What should my strategy be for my top 10-15 bids? Should I go conservative and mix in some firms that hire in the 3.5- mid 3.6 range, or should I just blanket the top firms in my top 10? Do I include any firms that have low median GPAs?

Also should I use all 50 bids? I read somewhere that if I used all 50 I would risk firms lower on my list using preselects on me, which would hurt my chances of getting interviews with my top firms.

I was just under 3.8 - so take my advice with that difference in mind. I bid exclusively DC, and only bid a total of ~22 firms (I, uh, don't recommend that strategy though. I got lucky). I did not have a choice in bidding outside DC (family, mortgage, etc.), but if you do and want to work outside DC then it can't hurt to hit NY.

With your GPA you'll have a strong shot at pretty much every firm at OCI. Do you want to be in DC or do you not care? Do you want one of the more prestigious/hard-to-get firms? Figure out what you want before figuring out how to strategize your bid.

If you use all your bids, there is a chance that your lower ranked options will pre-select you and you won't get any interviews with your top choices. A. I've never heard of this actually happening, B. you can (and should!) email the firms you are most interested in expressing interest in interviewing with them even if you don't get an EIW interview (and with your GPA, they'll make room for you for an interview), and C. firms do their own yield-protection - they're looking for people that they think will be a good fit AND will actually say yes to an offer. Firms aren't just gonna give you a preselect because of your grades if they're well above the threshold they tend to hire at (but maybe they will - it's kind of a black box to me. I know that I had some firms that hired well below my GPA threshold and I didn't get preselected for them - data point of 1 and all that).

Happy to share more specifics via PM of my EIW experience and what I'd do differently if I had to go through it again (shudder), but make sure you get a plethora of views because I don't claim to have all the answers on this shit.