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Employment Prospects Survey |
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If you're not at the top of the class, you will have to make serious job
sacrifices. The interview schedule here is set up so that most firms interview
roughly 15 people. The employer may preselect up to 30% of the students to
interview. The remaining spots are distributed according
to a lottery. This lottery is a huge source of irritation for many students.
Every employer preselects the same people; most of the people at the top of the
class are the archetypal paranoid self-promoters who need constant reaffirmation.
That having been said, people at the top of the class typically take every
interview they can (roughly 40 interviews). This situation seriously hurts those
students who are close and desire the job, but can't convince an employer that
they are worth it over the person with the higher GPA. In my class, DC was
virtually impossible for anyone with less than a 3.6 (top 20%); students looking
for NY fared a bit better, as did those students desiring to go to Atlanta. Many
employers are impressed with Vandy, but I think that some students have
difficulties explaining geographical connections. For example, I interviewed
with a firm from California, and I'm a Northeasterner going to law school in the
South. Some areas of the country are virtually impossible to get jobs in if you
don't have some sort of connection. NY is the only exception to this; it's
actually quite amusing to hear people with the thickest Southern accent I've
ever heard talking about going to NY-but they do, and many make it. Career
services also focuses on your physical appearance (girls are encouraged not to
wear pant suits...). Typically, most students obtain their summer (and
subsequent) employment through the on-campus interviews. Those in the bottom
percentile of the class have tough times obtaining employment. Vandebilt touts
itself as having national prestige, but I often wonder how true this is. Some
major firms won't even come to Vandy to interview. However, we do have over 400
employers come to interview, many of them in the top 100 of Vault-ranked firms.
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Vanderbilt University Law School Admission & Application Surveys
