@Arendt0927 I want to start by saying how sorry I am to hear that you have found yourself in this position. Think about the positives, though, which are that you have two more opportunities to shine this summer! Imagine what all those candidates are feeling who were riding all their hopes on that VS and have been rejected. You, on the other hand, are clearly an excellent enough candidate that you managed to secure THREE vacation schemes and so I am confident that you will have success. Ultimately, there is so much luck to the process that you have done yourself very well to have three opportunities to play the odds
In the meantime, make sure to get feedback and reflect on how to improve in advance of your next schemes!
The very worst thing that could happen to you is that you get rejected from all three vacation schemes, but let me tell you it's not the end of the world. Guess what...I found myself in that exact position but received two TC offers by the end of the cycle nonetheless. I was rejected from three vacation schemes in the space of three months and
every single one was brutal. Spending an entire application cycle building up to those schemes, with confidence that I would be able to convert at least one of them, meant that I just felt completely hopeless when I realised that I had failed to do so. The latter two post-vac scheme rejections came on the same day no less!! I allowed myself to be despondent for about 24 hours before I sat down and started looking at upcoming direct TC deadlines.
The day after I received both of those two rejections, I sent off an app that ended up in a TC offer less than a month later. The day after that I sent off another app that ended up in another TC offer! This was all in July right at the end of the cycle. The learning process of getting the vac schemes and subsequently being rejected from them was invaluable in ultimately getting me to a firm that I love. I also got a genuinely interesting and varied perspective of the kind of work that City lawyers do, so I have no regrets about any of these experiences.
Take time to reflect and then realise that you have two vac schemes remaining and that even if you were to somehow fail those like I did (you won't) then you will still have time left this cycle to apply to direct TCs! Of course it would be great to be all done with the process, but I sincerely think that the more work one puts into researching and applying to firms now pays dividends in the long run. You do not necessarily want to default into the first firm that offered you a vac scheme - it is great to have the opportunity to learn from that experience what areas of law you are interested in and which firms you should be looking at going forward.
It is an incredible feat that you got your vacation schemes in the first place, so congratulations!!! Firms will recognise how impressive this is. I went from getting past the application stage ~10% of the time before having a vac scheme on my CV to ~80% of the time once I did. Consequently, you would be in an enviable position when this experience enables you to receive multiple offers in the future and gives you the opportunity to make a reasoned choice abut which firm is best for you! With two upcoming vacation schemes, a lot of time left to make more applications, a vacation scheme already on your CV and confidence in your interview ability, you will find yourself in a pretty good position if you draw upon your resilience and keep moving forward
As I already mentioned, try to get feedback! I was not able to do so before each subsequent scheme after my first one; the first scheme simply refused to provide feedback and the other two schemes took place back to back. You have most of the cycle still ahead of you in which you can implement this feedback in both ACs and on your future vac schemes.
Either way, I know that you will bounce back stronger than ever