What causes people to strike out at OCI? Forum

[withoutapaddle]

I see a lot of threads where people say they struck out at T-20 schools and were top 10-15% in their class.What factors cause people to strike out? Are the interviews that difficult?

[pattonthicke]

shit happens

[Br3v]

I see a lot of threads where people say they struck out at T-20 schools and were top 10-15% in their class.What factors cause people to strike out? Are the interviews that difficult?

A lot of stuff goes into it that you have no control over. So when you hear people strike out it is not necessarily always their "fault" they may have just had a bad draw.

Regarding the things you can control though, be good at interviewing. You are not good at interviewing. Change that. Do as many mock interviews with your career services and people who know what they are talking about as you can to prepare. You should have a quality answer that allows you to sell yourself for all the predictable questions you will get (probably 20 of them. Tell me about yourself, why law, why this firm, etc.). This will require doing substantial research on each firm.

Wear a good suit (doesn't have to necessarily be expensive) and groom yourself in a conservative fashion (no beard or nose ring, etc)

Have a strategy with where you bid.

Read TLS.

[Desert Fox]

Being fat or an ugly woman

Seeming clueless about what they want to do

Not trying to get as many interviews as possible

being a fucking weirdo or having social anxiety

[DoveBodyWash]

sometimes you'll have students who just truly suck at interviewing or just got a bad draw and happened to meet someone they weren't gonna get along with or something. But frankly it's never truly secure when you're at a T20 because the firm would likely be fine not hiring anyone from your school at all. If they get 1-2 kids from the school, great. If not, they don't really care since their core recruiting demographic are the T14's. So the whole "just be normal and you'll get an offer" script doesn't apply to T20's since they're not looking for X number of warm bodies from that school. It's just not enough to be normal or relatively sociable. U need to impress them somehow. So it's a more difficult task while you're facing worse odds.

[banjo]

After grades and personality it's probably terrible bidding. You can mitigate this by mass mailing, but plenty of T14 students fail to do even that.

[DoveBodyWash]

After grades and personality it's probably terrible bidding. You can mitigate this by mass mailing, but plenty of T14 students fail to do even that.

Are there T20's that have a lottery system for OCI? I know some have partial preselect and partial lottery, but it's like 30/70. I'm not sure that poor bidding really matters if it's mostly preselect since "bidding" is just uploading resume so they can look at it and decide if they wanna meet you

[banjo]

After grades and personality it's probably terrible bidding. You can mitigate this by mass mailing, but plenty of T14 students fail to do even that.

Are there T20's that have a lottery system for OCI? I know some have partial preselect and partial lottery, but it's like 30/70. I'm not sure that poor bidding really matters if it's mostly preselect since "bidding" is just uploading resume so they can look at it and decide if they wanna meet you

I thought several of them had a hybrid system (like 30/70) or 100% lottery, but could be wrong. I guess to the extent people have lottery picks, they should use them wisely.

[thechinaman12]

people strike out at OCI because there are more law students than there are big law jr associate positions available each year. given that, classmates exist that are better than you.

[arklaw13]

T20 2L here. Here's a few causes, in no particular order:

1) grades. A student at Harvard can be literally bottom of the class (all P's) and still get multiple NYC offers if they aren't a social retard. That is not true of my school. No one is safe at any GPA, but you're especially fucked if you're outside top third. If any people below the median at my school get biglaw offers, it's highly unusual.

2) bad OCI strategy. There are people who strike out who may have had a better shot at ending up with an offer if they focused more on NYC. If you focus on Chicago and you aren't from Chicago and you don't have top 20% grades, you're gonna have a bad time.

3) bad presentation/social skills/interviewing. If your resume screams PI, you will need to explain to firms why you want to work for a law firm. At one CB I did, a partner picked out a small line from my resume and, along with an out-of-context remark I made about being interested in white collar crime, came to believe that I am really a SJW who would have a real moral problem representing corporate defendants in the kind of cases his firm worked on. This is after I worked for a couple corporate law firms 1L summer. Didn't get an offer there after doing very well with all the other interviewers. If that can happen to me, when my resume doesn't lean towards PI at all to anyone with half a brain, imagine how fucked someone is who is a member of law students for social justice or did their 1L summer at the ACLU. Granted, this guy was kind of a dick, so this won't happen to everyone whose resumes smells of PI, but see:

4) luck. If you are at Yale, you have to be incredibly unlucky to strike out. At my school, a small amount of bad luck can fuck you over. If you want virtually guaranteed biglaw, go to HYS(C). Everywhere else, bad luck can fuck you over even when you do everything right. That's a scary fucking thing to realize: you can incur $250k of non-dischargeable debt for a law degree and graduate jobless even if you have better grades than most people in your class (maybe even better grades than people who ended up with biglaw jobs) because of something as simple as some sociopathic partner didn't think you shined your shoes enough for the interview. Or maybe he didn't have a reason for not recommending you for an offer. He just wasn't in a great mood that day.

[toothbrush]

I think this thread has answered your question well enough but I would just stress that a good interview can make up for meh grades but good grades don't necessarily make up for a meh interview. Thus, after you bid appropriately and have your grades locked in, all you can/should do is work on interviewing skills. If you are a legitimately good interviewer already, practice with as many people as you can. If you aren't a good interviewer, practice with as many people as you can.

Also, on the whole "bad luck" thing. It's possible to get a few interviews that just won't go your way before you even walk in the door. However, I think people who say they struck out because of bad luck ("every interviewer had it out for me" or "every interviewer was mean/angry/weird") is probably not being 100% honest.

[Dafaq]

Mainly grades. You run in a small pack when it comes to stellar grades. As grades go down (ala median and the like) the pack expands extensively, pushing your odds down.

[84651846190]

1) school
2) grades
3) personality
4) being an idiot when it comes to bidding strategy, failing to mass mail, etc.
5) lack of a "theme." for example, if you have relevant work experience to, say, IP or as a paralegal or something, play this up big time. going in saying you like your evidence class and, therefore, want to litigate is dumb because that does not distinguish you at all from the vast majority of applicants

[fats provolone]

5) bad luck.

[84651846190]

5) bad luck.

This is more true as the quality of your school goes down. For relatively big T14s like UVA, Michigan and Georgetown, I think firms go in thinking "we're going to make [X] amount of callbacks this year at [lower T14]." Some years, [X] might be ZERO. In that case, you're just SOL. They don't do this as much or to the same extent at HYS.

[Lovely Ludwig Van]

Mistakes that cost me at least a few CBs: (1) going into hospitality suites and not knowing the names of my interviewers, and (2) going to post-interview receptions and taking the bait when firm reps start chatting with me about other firms. Even at a T3 school, it's very much a buyer's market and even the big NYC firms will look for any excuse to weed you out from the rest of the pack.

[hoos89]

Also, on the whole "bad luck" thing. It's possible to get a few interviews that just won't go your way before you even walk in the door. However, I think people who say they struck out because of bad luck ("every interviewer had it out for me" or "every interviewer was mean/angry/weird") is probably not being 100% honest.

A lot of the people who end up in big law from a T20 only get 1 offer. It would only take a slight swing in luck (having an off day during that callback or just not hitting it off with the wrong person) to take that offer out of the picture. I don't think the difference between one offer and zero (especially for people who are grade competitive) is that big.

[15 styx]

Just for kicks I wish I knew. I interviewed over 30 times. All my interviews were virtually identical (think of the movie groundhog day). Four callbacks and two offers. What went wrong the other 26 times I interviewed and the two callbacks that did not turn into offers? Maybe they liked someone else better or didn't like me at all. Just glad someone did!

[TheNextAmendment]

Being fat or an ugly woman

Seeming clueless about what they want to do

Not trying to get as many interviews as possible

being a fucking weirdo or having social anxiety

[DiniMae]

Let's not taint a worthwhile thread with immaturity. Thanks.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I'm pretty sure DF was dead serious when he said that. There's probably a more professional way to say "fucking weirdo" but the message isn't wrong.

[First Offense]

Just for kicks I wish I knew. I interviewed over 30 times. All my interviews were virtually identical (think of the movie groundhog day). Four callbacks and two offers. What went wrong the other 26 times I interviewed and the two callbacks that did not turn into offers? Maybe they liked someone else better or didn't like me at all. Just glad someone did!

Fuck you. You got 2 offers.

[furrrman]

Wear a good suit (doesn't have to necessarily be expensive) and groom yourself in a conservative fashion (no beard or nose ring, etc)

Seriously?

[Cobretti]

Wear a good suit (doesn't have to necessarily be expensive) and groom yourself in a conservative fashion (no beard or nose ring, etc)

Seriously?

well groomed beards are perfectly acceptable. i had one and did just fine.

ETA: re: sublime's depends on market theory... i had offers in ny/chi/ca but YMMV. the only thing that matters is if you look professional, and there are a number of different looks that have that effect IMO.

[sublime]

..