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At a T14, curious about what to change for future interviews. Looks like I struck out with OCI (17 screeners, zero callbacks so far).

My story is a little strange - was diagnosed with lymphoma during my 1L spring, and ended up dropping three of my five classes. My grades also dropped to around median second semester. I ended up taking two of my exams. This also kept me from doing the 1L summer job that I had lined up.

I have no idea how to approach this in future interviews, and my career services counsellor is beyond worthless in helping me. During OCI, I only wanted to bring it up if someone asked about the withdrawn classes on my resume, but every interviewer ended up asking about that. I tried to run through it as quickly as possible and move on with the interview, but it's looking like that didn't work.

It's also not something I can easily hide (I'm a woman and currently have no hair). Finally, it's not a problem anymore - no more treatment, and complete remission.

I doubt this is 100% the reason I'm striking out, but I think I'm a normal person otherwise who can interview decently.

Any advice?

Assuming you can make it work financially (and maybe the school can work with you on this) this is basically the perfect scenario to take a leave and re-do OCI next year. If you can take the fall semester off for example, come back in the spring and take a reduced course load such that you will basically have a year's worth of grades under your belt and then go into OCI with (in theory) better grades plus the story of "I took a leave of absence to deal with health issues that are no longer an issue" you should do better. The hair would be better then too to the extent that is being implicitly held against you.

Talk to your dean of students ASAP. There's precedent on these boards for people getting help in exceptional circumstances. I know of someone at my school who did OCI twice. That isn't necessarily going to be your outcome, and you may not need it to be... but people are literally paid nice salaries and benefits at your school for the specific purpose of helping you when you need it. Maybe it won't work out, but you should talk to someone about your situation sooner rather than later, just in case.

I wish you would out the school, because it is completely terrible that you are not getting more explicit, structured support with this.

I had a serious health issue 1L year and my OCS was very helpful, ran through all the scenarios (skipping OCI, doing OCI twice, etc.), and they have helped me frame it with employers. This is the level of help you deserve.

As a result of that, I can tell you a little of what I was told: If you drop classes, some employers don't see you graduating "on time." At some number of classes dropped, it doesn't make sense for firms to hire you for the upcoming summer as a 2L. Some of that is firm dependent, but when you're a full semester behind your cohort (or close), most firms do not really consider you a 2L for hiring purposes. In that case, the best thing to do is to expect to apply for next summer as though it were your 1L summer, meaning that you bill yourself as a class of 2019 grad, and then look the summer after next summer as being "the" 2L summer. You might end up graduating earlier than the class of 2019, but that's not as relevant to firms as you graduating substantially later.

That advice was tailored for my situation and my school, so I can't guarantee you're in the same spot, but that's what they told me. Good luck with this.

Edited to add: I did not end up needing to drop classes, so I am not sure what impact it would have had for me, the above was the hypothetical if I had needed to drop classes.