Cornell 1L taking questions Forum

[LFH_intheflesh]

I think I remember someone saying something like "I wouldn't bid if the firm's average is more than .1 higher than your GPA" or something like that. Do we have anymore advice like that?

My blindingly obvious initial plan is to bid a few firms where I'm at the top of the range, a few where I'm at the bottom, and a few where I'm at or just above average; but I was wondering if there were any things that are blindingly obvious that make a difference.

I'm sitting just a hair above 3.7 in case it's relevant for the advice given.

ETA: also whats this about journal calls being made AFTER bids are due? Isn't that kind of relevant?

[buffalobill52086]

I too am wondering just how far above the average you can go. Ex. If the average is a 3.67, is it safe to say that anyone in the 3.6 range should bid without being totally out of place?

Also, the high/lows, are from last year or cumulative over the last 3 years? With the recent grading change(and inflation), trying to figure out how best to bid and where I reasonably fall.

Final question for any poor soul who wants to answer this post, how valuable is work experience (3+ meaningful and interesting WE) in the process? Enough to make up for a .1 in the GPA if I decide to bid a little more aggressive on a firm with an average CB of .1 higher then my GPA?

Thanks

[Lincoln]

I think I remember someone saying something like "I wouldn't bid if the firm's average is more than .1 higher than your GPA" or something like that. Do we have anymore advice like that?

My blindingly obvious initial plan is to bid a few firms where I'm at the top of the range, a few where I'm at the bottom, and a few where I'm at or just above average; but I was wondering if there were any things that are blindingly obvious that make a difference.

I'm sitting just a hair above 3.7 in case it's relevant for the advice given.

Final question for any poor soul who wants to answer this post, how valuable is work experience (3+ meaningful and interesting WE) in the process? Enough to make up for a .1 in the GPA if I decide to bid a little more aggressive on a firm with an average CB of .1 higher then my GPA?

First, I'd be surprised if you were at the bottom for any firms with a 3.7, unless the grade inflation is way worse than I was indicating a few pages back.

Second, my class didn't have access to top, bottom, average GPAs for firms when we did AJF, so I can't really discuss numerical tactics or where those statistics come from. I'll leave that to Arbiter and others. I will say this, however: The bottom (and to some extent the top) of the range may be misleading. The person at the bottom may have gotten a callback through a strong recommendation or by virtue of wanting to do patent lit and having a PhD in a hard science, or whatever. There's really no way of knowing. At some of the magic circle firms, for example, language skills and international work experience tend to matter more than GPA, so those firms look on paper like they're easy to get, but in reality they extend very few offers. The top is misleading in the sense that for about 15 firms, it will be the same person, who only accepted one offer.

Third, and conversely, if you have something that makes you stand out from the crowd, you can sometimes afford to be agressive. Work experience can matter a lot, so buffalobill's 3+ years may well get him CBs that other students with similar grades won't. I have some experience with this, so feel free to PM for details.

Fourth, the journal calls and bidding timeline is idiotic, but just a result of not being under any one person's control. Career services have an interest in completing bidding early. The writing competition grading process is such that it can't realistically be completed early enough. If you surprise yourself and get LR despite mediocre grades, see if you can get a few extra screeners with selective firms you missed out on. If you have good grades but missed the LR boat, maybe try to get a few extra with non-selective firms, just in case. Either way, though, the flavor of your journal won't have too much of an impact. There are plenty of non-LR people who got V5s and V10s, and plenty of LR members who did not. The only exception to this is if you have good grades and didn't get a journal at all. But I'm not sure that ever happens.

[Lincoln]

Moreover, and this may seem obvious, the GPA statistics for firms are more informative for large firms with large summer classes. A firm with a summer class of 100 that extends 13 CBs to Cornell students provides a much better sample size than a firm with an SA class of 12 that extends 2 CBs to our little school.

[LFH_intheflesh]

First, I'd be surprised if you were at the bottom for any firms with a 3.7, unless the grade inflation is way worse than I was indicating a few pages back.

I'm only at the bottom at a few firms like SullCrom and Skadden and what have you, but it does seem as if the GPA ranges trended up.

A 3L with whom I am good friends shared her bidlist with me (which had last years GPA ranges on it) . As typical of a 1L, I knew next to nothing about the various firms and it turned out she and I had similar grades (within .05 of each other), so I spent yesterday goofing off at my summer gig, looking up the firms on her bid list instead of working.

Looked online today, as an example, Davis Polk's average was listed as 3.70 last year, and it was 3.77 this year. Obvs I dont know for sure, but my gut tells me this upward trend in some of these firms came from the word getting out about our effective median moving from 3.35 to 3.5. So yeah, grade inflation... Perhaps what temporary employment boost we got from that is over now.


In the end, I guess my question is very similar to buffalobills. You pointed out a few things that really help with interpreting the numbers (I never even thought to consider sample size), but I guess we all just feel in the dark about how to interpret these statistics.

[Lincoln]

First, I'd be surprised if you were at the bottom for any firms with a 3.7, unless the grade inflation is way worse than I was indicating a few pages back.

I'm only at the bottom at a few firms like SullCrom and Skadden and what have you, but it does seem as if the GPA ranges trended up.

A 3L with whom I am good friends shared her bidlist with me (which had last years GPA ranges on it) . As typical of a 1L, I knew next to nothing about the various firms and it turned out she and I had similar grades (within .05 of each other), so I spent yesterday goofing off at my summer gig, looking up the firms on her bid list instead of working.

Looked online today, as an example, Davis Polk's average was listed as 3.70 last year, and it was 3.77 this year. Obvs I dont know for sure, but my gut tells me this upward trend in some of these firms came from the word getting out about our effective median moving from 3.35 to 3.5. So yeah, grade inflation... Perhaps what temporary employment boost we got from that is over now.

The conventional wisdom is that the class of 2012 in general did marginally worse than the class of 2013 w/r/t the job search, so you may be right. This could just be industry/school-wide, though. Some firms reduced their SA classes.

[Arbiter213]

For the bidding counseling, do we need to be in Ithaca or can it be done remotely?

You can, of course, do it remotely via telephone.

Not that you shouldn't do this (you definitely should), but the advice I got was "looks good."

I was told that one of the firms I really liked, which I had at 2, was extremely popular and that I should put it at 1. People who had it at 2 did not all get it. I work at that firm now. So there's definitely some good advice. But that was in person.

[Arbiter213]

I bid only firms I was at or above the average for (ideally hitting those firms where I was right at the average), with a couple where I was slightly below (including where I work). I probably should have been a little more aggressive, but I didn't expect to make law review, so my results may have skewed.

[Arbiter213]

There are plenty of non-LR people who got V5s and V10s.

"Plenty" is a bit of a stretch, when you take out JD/MBAs. But certainly some.

[Lincoln]

There are plenty of non-LR people who got V5s and V10s.

"Plenty" is a bit of a stretch, when you take out JD/MBAs. But certainly some.

Perhaps there's a difference between your class and mine. Seems like top-of-the-class + LR people swept the board a bit more in your class. Most of my friends in my class were non-LR people who are at top firms.

[Arbiter213]

There are plenty of non-LR people who got V5s and V10s.

"Plenty" is a bit of a stretch, when you take out JD/MBAs. But certainly some.

Perhaps there's a difference between your class and mine. Seems like top-of-the-class + LR people swept the board a bit more in your class. Most of my friends in my class were non-LR people who are at top firms.

I do think your year did slightly better outside law review. A lot of variability in what happens though.

[spiritniffler189]

Is there any way to look at GPA info for all the firms in one document? Or do we need to click 'Review' for each firm?

[LSHopeful91]

Which information should we put more weight in while making our bid list, the hiring trend or the average?

[Lincoln]

Is there any way to look at GPA info for all the firms in one document? Or do we need to click 'Review' for each firm?

No idea, but it can't be that hard to type it into the spreadsheet that you export from Symplicity.

Which information should we put more weight in while making our bid list, the hiring trend or the average?

I have no idea what this means. You obviously get a lot more data than my class did.

[LSHopeful91]

Is there any way to look at GPA info for all the firms in one document? Or do we need to click 'Review' for each firm?

No idea, but it can't be that hard to type it into the spreadsheet that you export from Symplicity.

Which information should we put more weight in while making our bid list, the hiring trend or the average?

I have no idea what this means. You obviously get a lot more data than my class did.

Did you do AJF in 2010? On symplicity, it displays a GPA average from the past years, but it also talks about a "hiring trend," which can be flexible, moderate, or very selective with grades. The moderate means that they hire 3.35 and above, but a lot of moderate grade selective firms have 3.5-3.6 GPA averages, so I'm wondering which is more important when deciding where to bid.

[Lincoln]

Is there any way to look at GPA info for all the firms in one document? Or do we need to click 'Review' for each firm?

No idea, but it can't be that hard to type it into the spreadsheet that you export from Symplicity.

Which information should we put more weight in while making our bid list, the hiring trend or the average?

I have no idea what this means. You obviously get a lot more data than my class did.

Did you do AJF in 2010? On symplicity, it displays a GPA average from the past years, but it also talks about a "hiring trend," which can be flexible, moderate, or very selective with grades. The moderate means that they hire 3.35 and above, but a lot of moderate grade selective firms have 3.5-3.6 GPA averages, so I'm wondering which is more important when deciding where to bid.

I did AJF in 2011. We only had access to the latter data (flexible, moderate, selective). The class below us got access to grades partly as a result of our complaining about lack of data on which to base bidding. I was under the impression you got access to low and high GPAs in addition to the averages, but maybe I'm wrong. I would look more to the actual GPAs, personally. As discussed above, however, since I didn't base bidding on that, I can't really tell you any numerical strategies regarding how to bid.

[Arbiter213]

Is there any way to look at GPA info for all the firms in one document? Or do we need to click 'Review' for each firm?

No idea, but it can't be that hard to type it into the spreadsheet that you export from Symplicity.

Which information should we put more weight in while making our bid list, the hiring trend or the average?

I have no idea what this means. You obviously get a lot more data than my class did.

Did you do AJF in 2010? On symplicity, it displays a GPA average from the past years, but it also talks about a "hiring trend," which can be flexible, moderate, or very selective with grades. The moderate means that they hire 3.35 and above, but a lot of moderate grade selective firms have 3.5-3.6 GPA averages, so I'm wondering which is more important when deciding where to bid.

I did AJF in 2011. We only had access to the latter data (flexible, moderate, selective). The class below us got access to grades partly as a result of our complaining about lack of data on which to base bidding. I was under the impression you got access to low and high GPAs in addition to the averages, but maybe I'm wrong. I would look more to the actual GPAs, personally. As discussed above, however, since I didn't base bidding on that, I can't really tell you any numerical strategies regarding how to bid.

Look almost exclusively at the GPAs where available. Think about it- would you rather navigate by being told "warmer" and "colder", or with gps coordinates?

[paulshortys10]

Who do we email if we want to make an appointment with career services to talk about resume/bidding? do we just pick someone?

[Arbiter213]

Who do we email if we want to make an appointment with career services to talk about resume/bidding? do we just pick someone?

Yah I believe that's the protocol. Go with L. Bullock if you want realistic advice, go with DeRossa if you want a peptalk.

[stuckinthemiddle]

Anyone have an idea of how hard it is it get on a journal in Cornell. I mean any of the three (?).

[LFH_intheflesh]

It's pretty easy. 3 journals, small class sizes, and one of the journal's lets you "work on" meaning if you fail the writing comp/are at the bottom of the class, you can do extra assignments for I think JLPP and be on a journal anyways.

My understanding is that everyone who isn't on a journal pretty much is so by choice.

[Arbiter213]

It's pretty easy. 3 journals, small class sizes, and one of the journal's lets you "work on" meaning if you fail the writing comp/are at the bottom of the class, you can do extra assignments for I think JLPP and be on a journal anyways.

My understanding is that everyone who isn't on a journal pretty much is so by choice.

That's basically true. There are some people who do not make a journal and it's not by choice.

But yah, there are ~140 spots on journals, 196 in the class, and maybe in the ballpark of 20-30 don't finish the competition in a given year. So you do the math.

[LFH_intheflesh]

That's basically true. There are some people who do not make a journal and it's not by choice.

So out of curiousity, what keeps those people from working on to JLPP? I don't really have a clear idea of how that works.

[Lincoln]

That's basically true. There are some people who do not make a journal and it's not by choice.

So out of curiousity, what keeps those people from working on to JLPP? I don't really have a clear idea of how that works.

I'm not 100% on this, but I think JLPP only takes a limited number of work-ons.

[Arbiter213]

That's basically true. There are some people who do not make a journal and it's not by choice.

So out of curiousity, what keeps those people from working on to JLPP? I don't really have a clear idea of how that works.

I'm not 100% on this, but I think JLPP only takes a limited number of work-ons.

This is accurate.