In preparing this year’s OCI survey, we decided to change the tone from surveys of the past. Rather than focusing on the firms’ blunders (interesting as they may be), we wanted to produce a more nuanced picture of the student experience side of recruitment: their motivations, their experiences, and their thoughts on how and why they arrived at their outcomes. Because of space constraints, we could not publish all of your reflections in the physical paper. We believe the comments we chose are a representative sample of the types of answers we received to each of the questions, but, in the interest of full disclosure, we are also posting a complete and unedited set of answers to all of the open-ended questions on the UV website.
Generally speaking, the information we received confirmed many of the myths that circulate around fall recruitment time. The class of 2015 seems to basically agree on a few key issues: fall recruitment is a crazy/emotional/exhausting experience, we care deeply about all of our friends and wish everyone could end up happy, and Emily Orchard is the most amazing person in the world.
There was one issue that stood out to me as being sharply- and surprisingly- divisive. “Being yourself” was hailed as some students’ saving grace, while it was derided by others as the absolute worst advice they had received in connection with the process. In my experience here, every student I’ve met has been bright and compelling in his or her own unique, but definitely tangible, way. It’s possible that some of these comments can be attributed to a feeling of disappointment at the process’ outcome, but interestingly, some people who did receive offers also commented that they did not think they could be themselves. So what else could account for why some people felt strongly that you should be yourself while others felt strongly that you shouldn’t?
One thought is that perhaps this discrepancy is a symptom of a perceived (or actual?) lack of diversity in the profession. Are some students finding that their true ”selves” are just right because they have similar socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds to the lawyers who are interviewing them? If this is the case, increasing diversity in admissions is only one step in the process of increasing meaningful diversity in the profession.
