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Hey everyone. Just got second semester grades back and did worse than I did first semester. Blood/sweat/tears went into spring classes but to no avail.

Median @ UCLA is around 3.0 and it looks like I'll be right there. I know some options still remain, but I can't help but feel like I've already lost this law school "game" and am hopeless.

Can I please hear some feedback/advice on how I should approach the rest of law school in order to make the best out of this situation that I can? It would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Mass mail like your life depends on it.

medianed wrote:Hey everyone. Just got second semester grades back and did worse than I did first semester. Blood/sweat/tears went into spring classes but to no avail.

Median @ UCLA is around 3.0 and it looks like I'll be right there. I know some options still remain, but I can't help but feel like I've already lost this law school "game" and am hopeless.

Can I please hear some feedback/advice on how I should approach the rest of law school in order to make the best out of this situation that I can? It would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Sorry to hear about your disappointment. Hang in there.

Curious, I'm also at UCLA and I'm wondering how you know about median? I can't find info about the number anywhere.

What do you want to do post-grad? Median isn't bad depending on what career you want.

In general though, you should work on getting better grades, focus on networking and showing commitment to whatever field you want to go into, and apply like crazy for jobs.

I feel like some kids at UCLA must get biglaw from median given their employment numbers (if that's what you want), but I also fear that 3.0 is actually below median by quite a bit. Are you sure that's accurate?

fellow ucla'er here. Also rising 2L like OP

i'm fairly certain ucla's median is a 3.0. theyve disclosed a couple years ago that they strictly maintain 3.0 as the median and i'm pretty sure this hasnt changed

also UCLA forces their profs to make their individual class grade median a B. If 1/3 of your doctrinal professors is particularly generous and successfully petitioned the school for a more generous median then at least one of your other 2 professors will be a grade stingy one to make up for it. this trend is normalized between sections as well

also its not a reliable source but the wikipedia page for law school medians shows that UCLA's is a 3.0 (at least for first year)

theres no way in hell that the median is something like a 3.2 like other schools

considering that around 45% of ucla grads get either biglaw or fed clerk the general consensus from counselors, grads, and upperclassmen that already went through at least one OCI is that (connections aside) you should probably have to be above median for biglaw

unfortunately the info OCS has given out for big firms' minimum gpa is around the B+ region.

i'm in a weird spot in that i'm fairly certain i'm above median but i'm still slightly below most big firms' cutoffs. most people seem to get their jobs outside of OCI anyways and theres still a bunch of kids in an even worse spot than you so I wouldn't worry too much and just focus on perseverance, mass mailing, and poaching every application/resume opt-in book opportunity you can

finding a paying summer job was hell for me even though i'm patent bar eligible with related experience. I managed to get a biglaw / corporate job with commission bonuses but it was pretty damn late compared to my sectionmates

chin up and go bruins!

Does UCLA release comprehensive OCI data?

Three reasons I wouldn't count yourself out due to being "median" or some firms declared "grade-cutoff". First, if 45% of the class is with a judge or a large firm after graduation, that means certainly more than 50% of the students are eligible for those jobs since there's some degree of self-selection into public interest. Second, grades are not the only factor in hiring, and its flawed to consider that the 45% at large firms all hail from the above-median group; some students in the top 20% will strike out due to bad bidding/personality/other misfortune, so correspondingly, some below median students who are URM, have significant work experience, went to an elite college, have masters in EE, ect, are getting offers. And third, "median" is a pretty fluid category: by the nature of the law school bell curve, a large group of students will congregate at or around 'median' (whether its 3.0 or 3.1 or whatever), so the person at "45th percentile" and "55th percentile" are both "median".

Add these factors to the well-known fact that firm "cutoffs" are dated and bullshit.

I don't mean to be overly optimistic about chances from UCLA; obviously a vanilla k-jd median kid there most likely isn't going to work at a large firm. You need to mass mail and hustle like hell and be flexible with below-market paying firms and markets. But the above are just some basic truths about OCI and law school data.