TCLA Vacation Scheme Applications Discussion Thread 2025-26

[iwatchsuits]

How much weight do firms give to the university you go to? Is it relatively small or a massive advantage/disadvantage? From my understanding, with law students it matters to a certain extent but I'm a non-law student so I'm not sure if that changes things.

I went to a top uni and many non-law students scored MC or SC vacation schemes and training contracts. To be honest, I think for many top firms, the university you go to matters whether you are law or non-law. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that many firms have a blind application process where they don’t see what uni you went to unless you tell them in your application questions or interview!

 

[M_m]

Any update on the Mischon AI assessment link? I’m yet to receive mine, and getting a bit concerned now.

 

[legal18]

Any update on the Mischon AI assessment link? I’m yet to receive mine, and getting a bit concerned now.

I emailed and this was the reply I received 3 days ago:

We are aware of an issue with the Bright Apply links indicating that the opportunity is now closed. Please be assured that we are investigating this as a matter of priority and will contact you once it has been resolved. This will not affect your application, and we will provide a new deadline for completing the assessment.

Haven't received a new link yet

 

[Abbie Whitlock]

How much weight do firms give to the university you go to? Is it relatively small or a massive advantage/disadvantage? From my understanding, with law students it matters to a certain extent but I'm a non-law student so I'm not sure if that changes things.

Hey!

I think there will be differing views on this (and it definitely differs between firms as well), but I'd say that the university you attend can have some impact on your opportunities, particularly when it comes to commercial law. I went to a non-RG university, and one of the most striking differences I noticed when speaking to RG and Oxbridge students on vacation schemes was the amount of opportunities and firm engagement they had access to. For example, at my university's law fair we never had London firms attending, only regional firms, which sometimes made it harder to gain insight into the commercial law market or speak directly to people that worked in those firms.

However, I think the significance of the university you go to has less of an impact in the application process now than it used to. Many firms now operate CV-blind or partially blind recruitment processes, meaning that written applications and SJT / interview performance tend to carry far more weight than the name of your university.

Ultimately, it is likely that there is an advantage in the process if you go to a leading university, but this doesn't mean that you are absolutely doomed if you don't come from a top RG uni! I know plenty of people who have secured TCs at top commercial firms from non-RG universities, which really shows that it isn't a barrier if you don't let it be one. What really helped me was to make the most of the opportunities that were available to non-RG students (such as BIUCAC), as this gave me unique talking points for my applications and beyond

 

[shadowboxer909]

How much weight do firms give to the university you go to? Is it relatively small or a massive advantage/disadvantage? From my understanding, with law students it matters to a certain extent but I'm a non-law student so I'm not sure if that changes things.

I went to a mid-tier university (as my parents kept reminding me) and I have an interview with a reasonably decent American law firm (Gibson Dunn) if it provides you with any consolation.

 

[Harvey Specter]

I went to a mid-tier university (as my parents kept reminding me) and I have an interview with a reasonably decent American law firm (Gibson Dunn) if it provides you with any consolation.

Gibson Dunn and ‘reasonably decent’ in the same sentence? I thought they were pretty good? This is Gibson Dunn’s reaction after seeing this comment about their status as a US firm:

 

[shadowboxer909]

Gibson Dunn and ‘reasonably decent’ in the same sentence? I thought they were pretty good? This is Gibson Dunn’s reaction after seeing this comment about their status as a US firm:

I said they were reasonably decent, didn't I... that means pretty good lol.

I'm pretty pleased, don't get me wrong. Gibson Dunn, if you're reading this, I love you really.

 

[Vakil]

How much weight do firms give to the university you go to? Is it relatively small or a massive advantage/disadvantage? From my understanding, with law students it matters to a certain extent but I'm a non-law student so I'm not sure if that changes things.

I go to a non RG university and so far this cycle I’ve got a magic circle AC coming up, a silver circle AC, and I’ve gotten through initial application stage at Skadden. I don’t actually see it as the barrier it may have been historically. I was also recently told by grad rec at Ropes & Gray that they review applications without seeing what university an applicant is from.

 

[michelle ma]

Hey, have you heard back from Simmons for the AI internship after the test?

No. I just received an automatic report.

 

[jojo23]

I said they were reasonably decent, didn't I... that means pretty good lol.

I'm pretty pleased, don't get me wrong. Gibson Dunn, if you're reading this, I love you really.

Gibson Dunn putting you on a watch list like:

 

[Afraz Akhtar]

How much weight do firms give to the university you go to? Is it relatively small or a massive advantage/disadvantage? From my understanding, with law students it matters to a certain extent but I'm a non-law student so I'm not sure if that changes things.

@angdps this is a very good question! Personally, I've played around with this topic many times over the last few years (especially when I felt like my applications were not getting anywhere) but my honest opinion is that it doesn't matter a great deal so as to affect the likelihood of your application progressing.

The reason being, it's not factored into the screening process. Traditionally ATS's such as CvMail and Vantage (which allow the primary user e.g. Grad Rec to filter out applicants based off any question in the application) were only used to filter out academic criteria and where there were EC's these were decided holistically. I'd be surprised if anyone would then filter out based off universities without disclosing this as part of their initial criteria. For example, I think Slaughter and May used to filter on universities and in line with industry-wide transparency they disclosed it. If this was actively happening, other firms would disclose it too (it's not illegal and unnecessary applications cost £1000's). The only time it could realistically affect you is through some bias of the end-reader, however unconscious bias training is now actively given to graduate recruitment/assessors on the VS/TC so as to prevent the likelihood of this happening. So, for anyone worried about whether or not their university will hold them back, please don't be.

I think the issue is more to do with the applicant pool itself, which can be attributed to recruitment strategy and applicant confidence/perceived prospects (I won't bore you with my theory but please apply).

P.S. If it helps anyone, just know I went to a clearance university that's 79 on the league tables.

 

[anonymous.15]

From CMS or w&c?

both lol

 

[lawschool123]

Hi, is it too late to apply for rolling deadlines that are due mid Jan? The White & Case VS deadline is 12th Jan, but they also have a non-rolling TC deadline that I would be eligible for. Ideally would like to apply for the VS, but if this is cutting it too close I will apply for the direct TC instead. Has anyone progressed with White & Case despite applying very close to the deadline?

 

[LawAspirer]

Mishcon High Numerical and Verbal but 18/36 on the rest. Anybody historically got simialr stuff and still went forward?

 

[Andrei Radu]

This might sound a bit silly, but how do people manage feelings of imposter syndrome during a vacation scheme? Some people are naturally very confident socially, and I sometimes feel out of place at London open days and insight events, especially with a northern accent. What are the best ways to overcome that? I think it's mostly psychological rather than actually being able to do anything about it.

Any insights? @Afraz Akhtar @Abbie Whitlock @Andrei Radu

Just to quickly come in to add to the many amazing responses from other forum members:

Firstly, on the accent bit: I completely relate to your anxiety about it, as this is something I used to worry about a lot as a non-native speak with a quite noticeable Eastern European accent. I remember thinking that I should try to sound more British, but every time I did that I would lose some valuable focus and my responses would end up looking substantially less nuanced and articulated. As such, in my ACs I decided to take a risk and assume partners will care more about the substance of my performance and my abilities rather than how much my appearance fitted what I saw as being a desirable "type" of candidate. This ended up working very well, and while this may have to do with some degree of luck in the particular firms and particular partners I interviewed with, my impression is that this is the rule rather the exception in terms of recruitment attitudes at top firms nowadays.

Secondly, on managing imposter syndrome and being confident: This is once again something I struggled with. Having being rejected in every single application I made the prior year, and also having attended many firm events where I felt somewhat out of place, I had this underlying anxiety that I was not the super-successful and naturally confident type that I thought firms were looking for. As before, I found out that in practice, firms were not really looking for this model of a candidate as much as I envisaged. Particularly in my VSs, I actually noticed that the very outspoken and self-assured candidates tended to convert less often than the quieter candidates - potentially because this attitude can come with a serious risk of being perceived as overconfident and potentially arrogant, features that firms are very weary of. Thus, the first thing I want to tell you is that apparent confidence many not be as important for success as you imagine.

Now, that being said, a healthy degree of confidence in your abilities is of course helpful to prevent anxiety from negatively impacting your performance. To do that, for me it was very helpful to remind myself of the following two things and to aim to internalise them in the days/weeks before the AC:

1. You have been selected by competent recruiters as being one of the very best candidates in a huge pool of talent. While you may not believe in your own abilities that much, the concrete proof that a reliable source of authority on the matter considered you to be a great candidate should convince you that is the case.
2. In the AC itself, you do not need to outshine others and demonstrate some exceptional brilliance or skill - all you need to do is to ensure you manage each task and question well and avoid scoring badly on any assessment criterion. In my experience, being overly concerned with impressing everyone is what leads candidates to major oversights and thus significantly decreases their success chances. As such, I would advise you to take off the pressure of being exceptional and simply focus on doing well; if you manage that, you will have high chances of succeeding.

 

[Andrei Radu]

Hello @Andrei Radu @Abbie Whitlock @Afraz Akhtar
I was wondering with regard for antitrust / competition law - what's the pure substantive things we should know about for ACs? I don't mean like connecting to broader trends, but rather like actual concepts / content?

Thank you

Hi @flower1 that's a great question. While I have not had to deal with a lot of antitrust-related tasks and questions in my ACs, I would aim to know the following:

• The main competition law infringements that companies can be fined for: abuse of a dominant position in the market, forming of cartels (such as price fixing agreements, bid-rigging, customer allocation agreements, group boycotts, sharing of confidential information etc), and anti-competitive mergers.
• The basics of the merger control regime: how to the authorities get involved, how do parties protect against risk of intervention by the antitrust authorities via contractual clauses, what remedies are available for a company to appease the authorities to let a deal go through (structural remedies such as selling a part of a target's business + behavioural remedies such as agreements not to raise prices).
• How the recently developed class-action competition law regime works in the UK;
• The main types of issues and controversies economists and lawyers face in this area - such as determining at what level of granularity/generality to define a given market, to determine what counts as a detrimental impact on competition (would a merger of the 4th and rd largest companies in a market have a negative impact, assuming this enables them to better compete with the #1 and #2 largest companies, who dominate most of the market?) and determining what kinds of arrangements and remedies would be economically justified or considered abusive.

 

[llblawstudent]

both lol

Spring for both?

 

[wqueens8]

For anyone who is living / has lived in London, can I ask generally how much money is needed to get by for a year while studying the SQE?

One of my new years resolutions is to be more financially responsible, and another is to get a TC. I'm also choosing this year to be extremely optimistic and manifest that I do get a TC, which case I will be finishing my degree this year, then GDL year then SQE year.

Where possible I will study in my uni city, or home city. But several of the firms I am in the running for require the SQE to be studied in London, offering grants of 12-18k. Hence my question here. If this is the case I would have say 15k from the firm and I could get the masters loan too if needed for another 12k, putting me at around 27k tax free. How much more would you need to live an alright life in London? I imagine I will finish out this academic year with nothing, but through the GDL I'll keep working and will (hopefully) have a grant, so would probably have a fair bit of money left over, but that gives rise to more questions of whether I can afford to stay in my uni city and rent, having maybe 5k left over, or if i need to move home and save and could potentially have 10-15k left over.

Obviously all hypothetical and getting ahead of myself, but I believe in speaking things into existence haha, and to be fair I really do need to be getting my finances in order now if i have any hope of affording the SQE year should I get a TC.

 

[Bread]

For anyone who is living / has lived in London, can I ask generally how much money is needed to get by for a year while studying the SQE?

One of my new years resolutions is to be more financially responsible, and another is to get a TC. I'm also choosing this year to be extremely optimistic and manifest that I do get a TC, which case I will be finishing my degree this year, then GDL year then SQE year.

Where possible I will study in my uni city, or home city. But several of the firms I am in the running for require the SQE to be studied in London, offering grants of 12-18k. Hence my question here. If this is the case I would have say 15k from the firm and I could get the masters loan too if needed for another 12k, putting me at around 27k tax free. How much more would you need to live an alright life in London? I imagine I will finish out this academic year with nothing, but through the GDL I'll keep working and will (hopefully) have a grant, so would probably have a fair bit of money left over, but that gives rise to more questions of whether I can afford to stay in my uni city and rent, having maybe 5k left over, or if i need to move home and save and could potentially have 10-15k left over.

Obviously all hypothetical and getting ahead of myself, but I believe in speaking things into existence haha, and to be fair I really do need to be getting my finances in order now if i have any hope of affording the SQE year should I get a TC.

Hey there, some things to consider. As a reference, the London Living Wage (voluntary minimum wage offered by companies in London) currently sits at around £29k.
Also, do bear in mind that not all GDL/SQE courses are eligible for a masters loan. If you did get a TC, i think it would be unlikely that you would also get a masters loan, bc the firm would pay for your tuition. If instead you didn't get TC sponsorship, you'd likely be able to get a loan, but you would also have to pay for the course yourself.
Imo, the most desirable outcome is obtaining firm sponsorship for the GDL, do it at home (not spending the living grant), do the SQE in London sponsored by the firm, and pool the combined living grants for your second year.

 

[Mrcerec]

Mysterious firm... Seems interesting though! Thinking of spending a couple of hours on the app just in case

Katten is certainly worth applying to. I know someone who got a TC from there - very good firm.