Recruit Survey Results for the Class of 2021

Find the full Class of 2021 Demographic Survey and Statistics here.

Back by popular demand, a really long article with lots of graphs and numbers! If fear of graphs and numbers are the sort of thing that led you to law school, please don’t panic and stop reading. I’ve tried to make it as accessible as possible while leaving enough of the details in to allow the statheads to excoriate me for getting all of my analysis wrong.

From website analytics, this article got a lot of clicks last year. And let it not be said that I don’t wish to drive content. Without further ado, the Recruit survey results for the class of 2021.

Grade Distribution Class of 2021

86 students reported their 1L grades and number of applications/OCIs, in-firms, and offers. Therefore, approximately 42 percent of the 2020 class reported their grades, continuing the downward trend.  Despite eliminating the demographics survey in an attempt to boost participation, fewer and fewer students are completing the Recruit portion of the survey.

As a giant caveat, please DO NOT interpret the grade distribution below as the true grade breakdown for the class of 2021. For one, because the survey targets all 2021 graduates (i.e., those eligible for the 2020 Summer Recruit), the data include JD students who began 1L in 2018, as well as combined degree students who began 1L in 2017. Furthermore, self-selection bias in who responds to the survey further distorts the data from the true grade distribution. As such, the information presented may deviate from the actual distribution of grades for the 2018 1L class.

As in years past, all analysis considered students’ unweighted GPA. Unweighted GPA was used under the assumption that employers do not factor in credit weightings when reviewing transcripts and simply “eyeball it.” Unweighted GPA was also used for ease of comparison with reporting from previous years. Conveniently, this has the effect that every 1-point increase in GPA corresponds with an additional “H” on the transcript.

For the class of 2021, the median student has a GPA of 26, which corresponds to a transcript with 5 Hs. Due to credit weightings, it is difficult to translate the cutoff for distinction to a pure number of Hs. Some students with unweighted GPAs of 30 did not receive distinction, while others with unweighted GPAs of 29 did. Regardless, the cutoff for distinction was approximately 8–9 Hs.

Effect of Self-Selection Bias

As mentioned above, there is a significant risk that the sample of students who reported their 1L grades is not representative of the student body as a whole. To estimate the direction and magnitude of any self-selection bias, we compared the grades reported from the sample of 85 students to a hypothetical 85 person class that follows the same grading curve. 

From these assumptions, the expected number of each grade can be computed. These assumptions are somewhat tenuous as small group professors have the discretion to deviate from the strict curve owing to the small class size, and even in larger classes, professors have some discretion; however, the resulting change in the grade distribution is unknown and as such, cannot be accurately modeled. Regardless, this effect is likely to be small but would result in the true number of Hs or HHs being higher than the expected value reported below.

As with last year, there is a clear bias towards nondisclosure of lower grades. There are 92 fewer Ps than expected, and an additional 64 Hs and 24 HHs. Whether the bias comes from students with lower grades not participating in the Recruit and therefore declining to complete the survey or for any other number of reasons one would not wish to participate is unknown. However, the biased sample results in an inflated mean GPA of 26.4, while a more accurate estimate would be a GPA of 25.2, after accounting for the “missing” grades.

Grades and Recruit Success

Good grades help you in the Recruit, but by how much, and at what stage vary considerably.

I considered the three different stages of the recruit separately: submitting applications for OCIs (application conversion rate), being selected for in-firm interviews (OCI conversion rate), and receiving an offer after an in-firm (in-firm conversion rate). In addition, I also considered whether they ultimately received a job (no one turned down all their offers). The importance of GPA at each stage was assessed by means of regression analysis. Eventual employment was assessed by comparing the mean GPA of employed and unemployed students respectively.

As in previous years, grades have the strongest effect when converting applications into OCIs.. Every additional H on your transcript is worth an additional 6% chance of receiving an OCI from any given application.

Grades have no significant impact at the OCI stage, further confirming the conventional wisdom that OCIs are primarily assessing candidates based on non-academic factors. However, unlike last year, grades were significant again at the in-firm stage, although the effect was less strong than at the application stage, with each additional H leading to an average increase of only 4 percent success at receiving an offer from an in-firm. Surprisingly, the GPA of students who received at least one offer was not significantly higher than the GPA of students who did not receive any offers.

For any 1Ls anxious over their grades, relax: even in the bottom quartile 60 percent of people ended up employed (although this is likely where a large majority of the self-selection bias comes into play). 

How many applications should I write?

For 1Ls, this is probably the most important section. By multiplying together the conversion rates and inverting them, you can estimate the number of applications you should expect to write per offer. 

Hopefully, the recruit will seem a lot less daunting with this knowledge in hand (for those of you who would rather do a hundred recruits than have to read another page full of charts and numbers, thank you for making it this far). Good grades are certainly useful for letting you cut down on the number of applications you have to write, but poor ones will never sink your employment chances. Best of luck, Class of 2022!