On Bidding

Bidding for OCIP was due on Thursday at 5PM. Some schools have a complete pre-screen, where employers review resumes and select only those who they want to interview. Other schools have quasi-lottery, where employers pre-select a percentage of their interview schedule and the other part is based on a lottery where students bid on which firms they would like to interview. But here, we have a complete lottery, which means that a 2.5 GPA can get an interview with Wachtell as long as you bid high enough on it.

There's about 360 different interview schedules here, and we had to narrow those 360 down to up to 40 bids. Because I have no idea what makes cookie cutter big firm #1 different from cookie cutter big firm #2, I had a difficult time bidding.

Here's how I bid over the course of an hour Wednesday night:
1. Eliminate any firm not in California. By not in California, I mean any firm not located in either Los Angeles/Santa Monica (no, Irvine and the Valley both don't count as LA) or San Francisco. Left with about 190.
2. Eliminate any firm that does not pay market. Left with about 150.
3. Eliminate any firm whose GPA requirement I do not meet. Because I have a semi-decent GPA solely due to luck/sleeping with professors, I was only able to eliminate only 2 firms. Down to 148.
4. Eliminate any firm interviewing on Fridays. I don't have class on Fridays, and there's no way I'm coming to school solely for interviews. Down to about 120.
5. Take the Vault 100 and bid down the list, starting from #3 (Vault #1 and #2, both of which recruit here, were eliminated by Step 1).
6. Around Vault #85, my #40 bid runs out.
7. Click submit.

In about 10 days, I find out which interviews I got.

What's scary is that because firms are so alike, I was far from being the only student I know who bid the way I bid--no research, and bid based solely on name, prestige, and salary.

And on a completely unrelated note, can anyone tell me why there are so many unhappy young lawyers?