GW bidding list critique Forum

[Anonymous User]

GPA 3.62 ~top 20%
Prefer DC, NY, CA (lol, no tie at all), will take Texas (good tie) and CHI/PHL (no tie), don't really consider other places.
non-IP
Only considering big law firms.
I like tech and finance, but honestly who knows whether I'll enjoy the work. Don't really like lit, probably because I dislike writing and research.

GW only has stats on 1) 25th, 50th, 75th GPA percentiles of students given screener for each firm, and 2) number of bids and screener for each firm, 3) number of callbacks and offers for some firms. For my bid list, I relied heavily on the stats and NALP. I avoid any firms for which I'm below the 25th GPA percentiles by 0.1, or which expect to hire too few people according to NALP.

GW has a NY regional interview program - 20 bids. Current list:

My GPA is 1~25th GPA percentile for screeners:
Paul, Weiss
Davis Polk
over 25th percentile
Proskauer Rose
Covington & Burling
Ropes & Gray
Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Kirkland & Ellis
Goodwin
Jones Day
over 50th percentile
Mayer Brown
Hogan Lovells
Cahill Gordon
Schulte Roth
Akin Gump
Arnold & Porter
over 75th percentile
Linklaters
Dechert
Milbank, Tweed
Paul Hastings
White & Case

Reasons for not bidding:

GPA - Cleary; Cravath; Skadden; Simpson
Too few hires - Morgan; Seward
less than 1 screener per 10 bids historically, GPA under 25th percentile - Allen & Overy; Freshfields - Not sure if I should bid on these two instead of some firms on my list.

GW's OCI - 35 bids. I avoided offices with less than 4 expected offers in non-lit/IP (=Expected offers in 2017 * proportion of associates working in non-lit).

Unless noted, all bids are for DC office only.
1~25th percentile: 12 bids
Akin Gump
Covington - huge DC class
Pillsbury
Sidley Austin
Jones Day (DC)
Jones Day (NY TX CA CHI)
Arnold & Porter
Hogan Lovells
S&C
Willkie Farr
Steptoe
Holland & Knight
over 25th percentile: 9 bids
WSGR (DC)
WSGR (CA)
Cooley (DC, VA, CA, NY)
Baker Botts
Goodwin
Baker & McKenzie
Crowell & Moring
Paul Hastings LLP (all offices)
Wiley Rein
over 50th percentile: 11 bids
Fried Frank
Foley & Lardner
Sidley Austin (DAL)
Hunton & Williams (all offices)
McDermott
Venable
K&L Gates
Dechert
Norton Rose Fulbright (TX NY)
Perkins Coie (all offices)
Morgan, Lewis
over 75th percentile: 4 bids
Pillsbury Winthrop (CA)
Alston & Bird LLP (all offices)
Seward & Kissel LLP (DC)
Sheppard, Mullin

Reasons for not bidding

lit - King; Kirkland; O'Melveny (all offices); Ropes; Milbank;
too few hires - Debevoise; Drinker; Orrick; Clifford; Norton; Denton; Perkins; BakerHostetler
GPA - Cleary; W&C; Cadwalader; Gibson (all offices); Simpson; White & Case; WilmerHale; Latham (all offices); Skadden; Paul, Weiss; Winston & Strawn

Suggestions on individual bids and general bidding strategy are welcomed. I know DC is hard to land and try to bid on as many non-DC listings as possible, but there are very few.

[Anonymous User]

I had similar stats to you. For NY, you should cut Davis Polk and Paul Weiss and put on Morgan Lewis and Skadden.

For DC, you are not getting a job from Covington, S&C, A&P, you should probably put on Ropes and Millbank.

[bananaphone]

Literally same GPA as you and from GW

Def put Ropes back on, they are really easy to get CB from our school.

Honestly GW pulls better in DC and NY than most people think, but we have absolutely ZERO presence in Texas so if it were me I wouldn't even bother at it besides maybe Baker Botts.

[Anonymous User]

Literally same GPA as you and from GW

Def put Ropes back on, they are really easy to get CB from our school.

Honestly GW pulls better in DC and NY than most people think, but we have absolutely ZERO presence in Texas so if it were me I wouldn't even bother at it besides maybe Baker Botts.

I'm also a GW alum and generally agree with the above. I wasn't in a similar position (I had a 3.9xx at OCI) but I had many friends who were.

I think this bidlist is fine as long as you understand that it's very aggressive/risky. Ignoring the NYC bidlist (not as familiar with the nyc market for gw), the DC bidlist has 21 bids for firms where you're below median, and 15 where you're above median. And that's median for screeners, not offers or even callbacks. From what I remember of OCI, people with your GPA would get a lot of interviews but that's mostly because GW makes firms fill up their day (so they interview however many slots there are), rather than only interviewing the candidates under serious consideration. My impression was that people who interviewed with a GPA<50th percentile had a tough uphill climb, and didnt get many callbacks (or offers) from those firms unless they had some special skill (IP degree, fluency in foreign languages, extensive experience in gov't contracts, etc.). Even with firms where your GPA is more competitive, it's still difficult to turn an interview into a callback into an offer.

Just to give you my personal experience (at the risk of sounding very douchey, but I think this is all relevant), I was above the 75th percentile for every firm with whom I interviewed, and only received callbacks from approximately half of those firms. I don't think it was because I interview poorly, but I guess that's subjective. To be fair, most of my callbacks were with V20 firms, so maybe firms with lower GPA reqs felt like they didn't want to "waste" callbacks on me, thinking I'd be less likely to accept an offer from them. I ended up with several offers from V20 firms, but I definitely went into OCI thinking every firm would give an offer to me (given my high GPA) and it simply wasn't like that. It's hard.

If I were you, I'd weight it more heavily toward firms where your GPA is above median. You're more likely to get multiple offers, which means you can then choose the firm you think is the best fit for you. It also means you're less likely to land a unicorn offer at a highly ranked DC firm, but I don't think the marginal difference between Morgan Lewis and Steptoe really justifies the risk. I'm fairly risk-averse though, and maybe you really value landing a gig at one of the most prestigious DC shops to the point where the risk is worth it.

TL;DR: Yes it's fine as long as you're aware that it's a semi-risky approach.

[Anonymous User]

The above guy is dead on. One of my buds who had a 4.xxx GPA only got a few offers b/c his bid list was so risky.

GW's biglaw % is smaller than your class rank. Think about that in context, and then remember that middle of the class IP kids inflate GW's numbers, and that at least a couple transfers will get offers.

[Anonymous User]

Literally same GPA as you and from GW

Def put Ropes back on, they are really easy to get CB from our school.

Honestly GW pulls better in DC and NY than most people think, but we have absolutely ZERO presence in Texas so if it were me I wouldn't even bother at it besides maybe Baker Botts.

OP here

Are you taking about Ropes' DC or NY office? I am bidding on Ropes' NY office, not DC office, because the DC office is IP and lit focused.

Lol mind sharing how you did? Just from reading screener GPA stats, I feel 3.8 is safe for GW, but 3.6 is peculiar - still might strike out. TX and CA is definitely hard from our school. Some listings say they recruit for all offices through our OCI, but I don't know if that's true without a tie. I only bid on these because there aren't better choices - most offices coming to our OCI say they expect to hire like 2 people on NALP.

The only other change I could make is to bid on lit focused offices such as King, Kirkland and O'Melveny. I'm not into lit (but didn't seriously try either), but these offices actually hire like 20 people.

[Anonymous User]

TL;DR: Yes it's fine as long as you're aware that it's a semi-risky approach.

OP here

Thanks for the help and I definitely appreciate your point. I don't care about the difference between Morgan Lewis and Steptoe at all as long as they pay the same and have work that interests me. The only reason I bid on many offices where my GPA is below medium is they seem to hire more people. Case in point, Morgan Lewis DC hires 5 and Steptoe DC hires 12. In fact, it seems that offices with low medium GPA hires way less people. I am not sure about how to balance the two factors.

These are some DC offices that I didn't bid on where I'm above medium because they hire few people. Would you recommend bidding on them?
Norton (3); Denton(2); Perkins(3); BakerHostetler(3); Eversheds(6); Shearman (5); Bracewell(2); Axinn(6); Fox(2); Arent (5); Weil(4); Reed Smith;

I plan on mass mail early and hit up all NYC biglaws at Lavender Law so that might mitigate some risks. Another thing I noticed is that the medium GPA for screener went up by 0.06 on average between 2015 and 2016. I don't know if this is a trend or an anomaly. GW OCI really isn't easy.

[Anonymous User]

TL;DR: Yes it's fine as long as you're aware that it's a semi-risky approach.

OP here

Thanks for the help and I definitely appreciate your point. I don't care about the difference between Morgan Lewis and Steptoe at all as long as they pay the same and have work that interests me. The only reason I bid on many offices where my GPA is below medium is they seem to hire more people. Case in point, Morgan Lewis DC hires 5 and Steptoe DC hires 12. In fact, it seems that offices with low medium GPA hires way less people. I am not sure about how to balance the two factors.

These are some DC offices that I didn't bid on where I'm above medium because they hire few people. Would you recommend bidding on them?
Norton (3); Denton(2); Perkins(3); BakerHostetler(3); Eversheds(6); Shearman (5); Bracewell(2); Axinn(6); Fox(2); Arent (5); Weil(4); Reed Smith;

I plan on mass mail early and hit up all NYC biglaws at Lavender Law so that might mitigate some risks. Another thing I noticed is that the medium GPA for screener went up by 0.06 on average between 2015 and 2016. I don't know if this is a trend or an anomaly. GW OCI really isn't easy.

I'm the quoted TL;DR anon.

Are those general numbers for general hiring or for GW hiring? For example, I know W&C hires 20ish people for their summer, but only ever give one spot to a GW student (not sure if that's changed recently, that's how it was when I was at GW). So, them having 20ish summers wouldn't benefit you because you only have a shot at one spot. Assuming your numbers are for general hiring (I don't think NALP breaks it down by law school) then I wouldn't read too much into those numbers. Just because a firm has 10 summers doesn't mean you personally have a shot at 10 spots, and just because one Firm A has 10 spots and Firm B has 5 spots doesn't mean Firm B is less likely to hire a GW summer. Also, summer class size fluctuates fairly often, especially at the lower end (firms go from 2 summers to 5, or from 12 to 7), so one year's numbers may not be as predictive as you think of summer class size. And even more narrowly, a firm's specific numbers for GW aren't that predictive. I know of multiple firms who had 3+ GW summers one year and none the next (and vice versa). In contrast, I've never heard of a firm going from hiring students with 3.9x GPAs to hiring students with 3.5x GPAs (barring some special circumstance, like IP, foreign language, etc).

That's my opinion, and it's admittedly not based on much more than anecdotal evidence. I'm not sure there's a correct way to resolve your concern (safety of large class size vs safety of being above median gpa) but my opinion is that a lower gpa makes it harder to get a position than a smaller class size.

As to your '15 vs '16 concern, I wouldn't really pay that any attention. I'd look more closely at quantity of screeners than average median GPA. If one class is 400 students and the next is 500, firms aren't going to screen/hire 25% more summers from GW just because GW increased class size. But the class size difference will mean that the top 100 students from the 400 person class will have a lower average gpa than the top 100 students from the 500 person class.

[Anonymous User]

Recent GW alum went through OCI with a 3.5xx and got an offer from a firm on your list. I skimmed your list and cannot stress enough what the other people said about overshooting with firm choice. I know many people who had 3.75+ who got very few callbacks (and no offers) because they went for only those firms that were reaches (considering their GPA). One thing you should consider is how many offers each firm historically gives out. If you really don't care where you get an offer from, its worth it to see if a firm you weren't considering happens to give many offers to GW students. When I was going through the process I took a number of firms off my bidlist that I was above 50% for because I saw that the past year they ended up giving only 1 or even 0 bids. I would recommend that you reserve 3-4 bids for places that you think you could get an interview (>25%), 3-4 that are a reach, and the majority where you are right around average.

[Anonymous User]

Recent GW alum went through OCI with a 3.5xx and got an offer from a firm on your list. I skimmed your list and cannot stress enough what the other people said about overshooting with firm choice. I know many people who had 3.75+ who got very few callbacks (and no offers) because they went for only those firms that were reaches (considering their GPA). One thing you should consider is how many offers each firm historically gives out. If you really don't care where you get an offer from, its worth it to see if a firm you weren't considering happens to give many offers to GW students. When I was going through the process I took a number of firms off my bidlist that I was above 50% for because I saw that the past year they ended up giving only 1 or even 0 bids. I would recommend that you reserve 3-4 bids for places that you think you could get an interview (>25%), 3-4 that are a reach, and the majority where you are right around average.

OP here. Thanks.

Haha well the career service in their infinite wisdom no longer publish offer stats. I only have offer stats on about 2/3 of firms in 2015. With this little stats, I don't know what conclusion I can draw. The number of offers in a given year probably fluctuates.

On another note, even the number of bids changes a lot. Sidley got 180 more bids in 2016 than 2015, and Steptoe got 100 less. I can't find an explanation.

[RaceJudicata]

Recent GW alum went through OCI with a 3.5xx and got an offer from a firm on your list. I skimmed your list and cannot stress enough what the other people said about overshooting with firm choice. I know many people who had 3.75+ who got very few callbacks (and no offers) because they went for only those firms that were reaches (considering their GPA). One thing you should consider is how many offers each firm historically gives out. If you really don't care where you get an offer from, its worth it to see if a firm you weren't considering happens to give many offers to GW students. When I was going through the process I took a number of firms off my bidlist that I was above 50% for because I saw that the past year they ended up giving only 1 or even 0 bids. I would recommend that you reserve 3-4 bids for places that you think you could get an interview (>25%), 3-4 that are a reach, and the majority where you are right around average.

OP here. Thanks.

Haha well the career service in their infinite wisdom no longer publish offer stats. I only have offer stats on about 2/3 of firms in 2015. With this little stats, I don't know what conclusion I can draw. The number of offers in a given year probably fluctuates.

On another note, even the number of bids changes a lot. Sidley got 180 more bids in 2016 than 2015, and Steptoe got 100 less. I can't find an explanation.

Because they are afraid they'd get out and folks would run for the hills. (I went to a non-t14 school as well -- hide the ball is OCS's primary job.)

[Anonymous User]

You will come to fully appreciate what an irredeemable dumpster fire GW is over the next 90 days.

[bananaphone]

Literally same GPA as you and from GW

Def put Ropes back on, they are really easy to get CB from our school.

Honestly GW pulls better in DC and NY than most people think, but we have absolutely ZERO presence in Texas so if it were me I wouldn't even bother at it besides maybe Baker Botts.

OP here

Are you taking about Ropes' DC or NY office? I am bidding on Ropes' NY office, not DC office, because the DC office is IP and lit focused.

Lol mind sharing how you did? Just from reading screener GPA stats, I feel 3.8 is safe for GW, but 3.6 is peculiar - still might strike out. TX and CA is definitely hard from our school. Some listings say they recruit for all offices through our OCI, but I don't know if that's true without a tie. I only bid on these because there aren't better choices - most offices coming to our OCI say they expect to hire like 2 people on NALP.

The only other change I could make is to bid on lit focused offices such as King, Kirkland and O'Melveny. I'm not into lit (but didn't seriously try either), but these offices actually hire like 20 people.

I got 15/15 screeners in NY to which half were CB's and 1 fewer than the max from normal OCI to which 7 or so are CB and 4 were wack firms that I declined. Our normal OCI program is garbage because they require most firms to screen the maximum and the interviewers stop caring after a while.

I would still keep Ropes NY because it seems more likely than some of the others you had on there. A lit job is better than no job.

[Anonymous User]

You will come to fully appreciate what an irredeemable dumpster fire GW is over the next 90 days.

Not as bad as you think. Our school does poorly because it is full of weirdos that cannot hold a decent conversation without being 5 drinks in. I've never seen such a collection of 40 year old washouts, GDI's, and HR nightmares ("I have 6 genders!")

For example, we had a "serious town-hall meeting" demanding the Dean on the stake because students thought he admitted too many people and therefore they can't get a job. The irony is that these people are arguing for admissions standards that would exclude them if they were implemented.

[Anonymous User]

You will come to fully appreciate what an irredeemable dumpster fire GW is over the next 90 days.

Not as bad as you think. Our school does poorly because it is full of weirdos that cannot hold a decent conversation without being 5 drinks in. I've never seen such a collection of 40 year old washouts, GDI's, and HR nightmares ("I have 6 genders!")

For example, we had a "serious town-hall meeting" demanding the Dean on the stake because students thought he admitted too many people and therefore they can't get a job. The irony is that these people are arguing for admissions standards that would exclude them if they were implemented.

I'm an alum with a preftigious job outcome, I'm just reflecting on my experience.

GW's transfer practice is unconscionable. The student body is too big. And the career counseling is basically useless if you aren't one of the IP Dean's cronies or way at the top of the class.

[Anonymous User]

You will come to fully appreciate what an irredeemable dumpster fire GW is over the next 90 days.

Not as bad as you think. Our school does poorly because it is full of weirdos that cannot hold a decent conversation without being 5 drinks in. I've never seen such a collection of 40 year old washouts, GDI's, and HR nightmares ("I have 6 genders!")

For example, we had a "serious town-hall meeting" demanding the Dean on the stake because students thought he admitted too many people and therefore they can't get a job. The irony is that these people are arguing for admissions standards that would exclude them if they were implemented.

I'm an alum with a preftigious job outcome, I'm just reflecting on my experience.

GW's transfer practice is unconscionable. The student body is too big. And the career counseling is basically useless if you aren't one of the IP Dean's cronies or way at the top of the class.

Yes I agree. I don't mind when career services is useless as I think those jobs are destined to be pointless anyway at any school. What I do mind is that we have a bad reputation for being snowflakes with a vocal minority that isn't very smart, goes to trash undergrads, and gets in through transfers like you mentioned.

As long as OP differentiates himself from that kind of group, he/she should be fine.

[BlendedUnicorn]

*Ahem*

*steps up to mic*

*clears throat*

Please remember that anon is to protect people who want to disclose potentially outing information about themselves in regard to the topic of thread. It is not for shitting on your classmates for being too progressive for your taste.

Good luck with OCI. Keep it on topic. Come to the lounge if you want to be mocked for having bad opinions on issues you don't understand.

[runinthefront]

Yes I agree. I don't mind when career services is useless as I think those jobs are destined to be pointless anyway at any school. What I do mind is that we have a bad reputation for being snowflakes with a vocal minority that isn't very smart, goes to trash undergrads, and gets in through transfers like you mentioned.

As long as OP differentiates himself from that kind of group, he/she should be fine.

What does someone's undergrad have to do with anything?

[Anonymous User]

As to your '15 vs '16 concern, I wouldn't really pay that any attention. I'd look more closely at quantity of screeners than average median GPA. If one class is 400 students and the next is 500, firms aren't going to screen/hire 25% more summers from GW just because GW increased class size. But the class size difference will mean that the top 100 students from the 400 person class will have a lower average gpa than the top 100 students from the 500 person class.

OP here

That's the thing though. The '15 OCI had 80 more students than the '16 OCI. So, if firms hire the same number of people from GW, '15 OCI should be more selective - medium screener GPA should be higher. But '15 medium screener GPA is in fact lower than '16 GPA by 0.06 on average. What caused this?

BTW, I asked my math doctorate buddy to analyze all the data for lolz. I'll see what strategy he can come up with.

[Anonymous User]

As to your '15 vs '16 concern, I wouldn't really pay that any attention. I'd look more closely at quantity of screeners than average median GPA. If one class is 400 students and the next is 500, firms aren't going to screen/hire 25% more summers from GW just because GW increased class size. But the class size difference will mean that the top 100 students from the 400 person class will have a lower average gpa than the top 100 students from the 500 person class.

OP here

That's the thing though. The '15 OCI had 80 more students than the '16 OCI. So, if firms hire the same number of people from GW, '15 OCI should be more selective - medium screener GPA should be higher. But '15 medium screener GPA is in fact lower than '16 GPA by 0.06 on average. What caused this?

BTW, I asked my math doctorate buddy to analyze all the data for lolz. I'll see what strategy he can come up with.

There were more jobs, and more firms had multiple interviewers.

[Anonymous User]

Our school does poorly because it is full of weirdos that cannot hold a decent conversation without being 5 drinks in. I've never seen such a collection of 40 year old washouts, GDI's, and HR nightmares ("I have 6 genders!")

I'd say that my inn isn't very social, but it's not worse than the average law schools right?

[Anonymous User]

I got 15/15 screeners in NY to which half were CB's and 1 fewer than the max from normal OCI to which 7 or so are CB and 4 were wack firms that I declined. Our normal OCI program is garbage because they require most firms to screen the maximum and the interviewers stop caring after a while.

I would still keep Ropes NY because it seems more likely than some of the others you had on there. A lit job is better than no job.

OP

Wow good job. Appreciate the advice. You mean Ropes DC right?
How bad is screener filling? Like interviewers won't seriously consider people below medium screener GPA?

[bananaphone]

I got 15/15 screeners in NY to which half were CB's and 1 fewer than the max from normal OCI to which 7 or so are CB and 4 were wack firms that I declined. Our normal OCI program is garbage because they require most firms to screen the maximum and the interviewers stop caring after a while.

I would still keep Ropes NY because it seems more likely than some of the others you had on there. A lit job is better than no job.

OP

Wow good job. Appreciate the advice. You mean Ropes DC right?
How bad is screener filling? Like interviewers won't seriously consider people below medium screener GPA?

Thanks. If you are above a 3.6 you should be able to fill all or most of NY and all or most of normal OCI unless you bid only on firms that take 3.8 or above students.

Our schools forces most firms to screen 20 people even if they really only want to see like 4-5 of them in the first place. That's why you should be getting screeners but you might not get very many callbacks regardless of how well you did in interviews.

And yes, both DC and NY for ropes.

[Anonymous User]

E.g., W&C, Covington, and Gibson will have a full slate of screeners. Each are only interested in the top 20 students in the class.

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone know which firms those of us with less fortunate gpas (at median or slightly below) should try for if we have a couple spots left on the list?