<p>This really depends on the firm. I received several callback interviews from firms out of my “GPA range.” I’m pretty sure I was later dinged from some of those callbacks because of my grades. In fact, during my callback at one of them, all my interviews had a copy of my transcript, and I’m pretty sure the evaluation form had an area for my interviewer to evaluate my grades.</p>
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<p>Yep, but it really varied in this economy. Some firms were actually pretty strict on grades (and firms that typically weren’t selective at all tried to get strict too; it was funny). Other really selective firms went crazy with “fit.” </p>
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<p>In the former category, things will be tough. In the latter, it’s a cointoss.</p>
<p>This is theoretically true. In practice, however, the consensus is that the “deeper” effect is larger (and noticeably larger) than the “more capable” effect.</p>
<p>I get what you’re saying, but some firms thought they could get away with a lot in this economy. They, in fact, only called back students with grades not just above their cutoffs, but way above it. But the problem with this is that they didn’t realize that they had competition. Many firms ended up with poor yield (Skadden is one example), and ended up having to do more interviews and get “less talented” students later in the fall, students who didn’t pick up a job through the regular interviewing process.</p>
<p>So what ends up happening to those students in the bottom of the class at many of the top 14 schools (outside of YHS)? Although, i’m not actually worried about being in the bottom of any class at any school it is really an unknown on how I would do compared to peer students because everyone has done extremely well to get there. Is it worth it to attend a school like cornell and spend 60,000 a year for most students?</p>
<p>I mean that “tough” is worse than “cointoss.” From what I’ve heard from my friends at GULC and Cornell, median didn’t get anything (for the most part), and top quarter was hit or miss.</p>
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<p>Yeah, but in a way, it wasn’t their fault. Most schools have historical data on the GPAs law firms take, and it was really impossible to gauge how much worse it would be this year. On top of that, the “less selective firms” were shrinking their classes like crazy (think 5-10 SAs, down from 30-40), so they also became incredibly competitive. Moreover, because of the lottery system when bidding for interviews, and because everyone bid so conservatively (that is, they ranked “less selective firms” super high), many people ended up with screening interviews at firms they ranked really low, like the super-selective ones.</p>
<p>Believe me when I say that no one had a single clue as to how OCI would play out. It was scary. I definitely took a risk when I bid for my interviews. I won’t pretend that I was successful because I’m talented. It was pure luck.</p>
<p>BDM I meant 25th not 75th. FH when you say screwed is this in context that they won’t be getting job offers, or they will get job offers just from not very relevant firms and in contrast will be making 90k instead of 140? Because basically all the schools websites say median starting salary is 140-160k and they have 98% employment rate at graduation. Can anyone explain this to me further?</p>
<p>Oh, in that case, they’re completely boned. </p>
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<p>1) I mean they’re boned in the sense that they probably won’t get a job through early interview week. This means they’ll have to interview elsewhere. But the job market for non-biglaw private sector jobs is really bad as well, so it’s hard to do that. Plus, I’m not sure if the next step after 140-160k is 90k. It’s probably something lower.
2) When were the salary statistics reported? Also, do you know what median means? It means that half or more of the class is making 140k-160k. I don’t think this will be true when the latest statistics come out.</p>
<p>Of course I understand what median is, but if half the class is making 160k it just seems unlikely that there is a 50% drop off in salary for the next half. Now I don’t have any first hand experience but this does worry me. Now currently I have no real knowledge of where I would be going to law school because I haven’t taken my lsat. But with a gpa of 3.7 and a practice lsat at 168 I’m worried I could end up at Cornell or Georgetown, not do well, and then be large amounts of money in debt without a job that will help me substantially cut into that debt.</p>
<p>Top 5-10%: Probably fine.
Top 20%: Maybe Fine.
Top 25%: Cointoss.
Top 30%: Probably boned
Top 40%: Most probably boned
Top 50%: Boned.
Lower: Boned.</p>
<p>“Is it worth it to attend a school like cornell and spend 60,000 a year for most students?”</p>
<p>It totally depends on their finances, their goals, and how much it means to them personally to be a lawyer. Also, spending $60k is a totally different animal from borrowing $60k a year.</p>
<p>“if half the class is making 160k it just seems unlikely that there is a 50% drop off in salary for the next half.”</p>
<p>This is exactly what happens, and it happens at Harvard, Cardozo, all over the spectrum. The salary distribution is extremely bimodal. There’s a huge spike at $140/160, and another significant bump around $40-60k. In between, there isn’t much, just a few smaller firms and the top firms in small markets. Oddly enough, there are a lot more jobs paying $160k to new graduates than there are jobs paying $90k, especially in the big markets where most T14 grads go. Law schools in different tiers differ mostly in the relative size of those two spikes; salaries never fall in anything like a bell curve.</p>
<p>thanks Hanna, I think it would end up that I borrowed around half of that. Also, all this talk about go to the best school possible, doesn’t this make it seem that I would be better off going to duke and being top 5% then going to harvard and being top 50%?</p>
<p>“there’s no way to predict that you’ll be in the top 5% at Duke if you turned down Harvard.”</p>
<p>Overall, I agree. I would say that there’s one small window of exception to this rule. If Duke (or a peer school) offers you a full ride, they probably have strong reason to believe that you’ll be a star in the class. In that case, it makes sense to go to Duke, both because they have a pretty good model for predicting your performance, and because the scholarship lowers the stakes – even if you end up in the bottom half of the class at Duke, having no or minimal debt will take a lot of the job search pressure off.</p>
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