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1. It feels like every firm wants the same 10/15 students to send their applications, and even taken at face value, it's impossible for the top rankers to apply for all of them. Because firms tend to get even more upset if someone withdraws after selection because they've got an internship elsewhere and don't offer replacement spots. So committees are forced to open internships only after
2. The focus on ranks is so unnecessarily arbitrary. It feels like all firms care about is the number next to your name, firms don't seem to care that a lower ranking candidate got a really good grade in the course of the field they want to work in / have prior work experience in the field, it's all just rank. Why does someone's corporate law grades / work experience matter less than their rank which gets affected by all sorts of irrelevant things - such as History / Sociology grades in BA LLB degrees.
3. It's frustrating to see that you generally have to be decently smart and hardworking to get into a T-1 law school as is, but even if you make it, that doesn't matter. Why is ranking let's say 50 at NLS/NALSAR/NUJS considered not good enough to be considered for an internship interview?
4. Some of these firms demanding top-20 ranks aren't even T-1 firms, which is when it gets especially ridiculous because they'll refuse to give a single spot to the people who did take the time out to apply to them on the basis that they didn't get top-ranker applications
Newsflash: they will simply never get top rankers because top rankers don't want to intern with them. And by rejecting the students that have taken the time out to apply (often times insulting them by fighting with recruitment committees on why no "good" applications have been submitted) and hope for an internship there, all they do is generate further bad-will in a potential future employees.
It genuinely just feels frustrating working hard, but being punished just because you aren't at the absolute top of your class. Someone is always going to be a lower rank - someone is always going to be outside the top-20, and firms need to start looking past this one goddamn marker because there is a talent pool that exists beyond that that's worth a shot.