Hi
@FutureTrainee100 I empathise with you and I know how disappointed and disheartened you must be feeling right now, having been in a somewhat similar position. As a fellow international student, I also completely "moved life" here and made a substantial investment in education in hopes of pursuing a successful career in commercial law. At the end of my first application cycle, I ended up with no progressions past the application stage. After also getting very strong academic results, my second cycle started off quite similar to yours, and I was also increasingly feeling like I had to come to terms with the fact that I may simply not be "good enough" or the "right type" for this career. Nonetheless, I persisted and ended up finishing the cycle with 3 TC and 4 VS offers from elite US/MC firms.
My story is also not at all a unique one or full of empty words of motivation - there are many people who have experienced a similar progression. A good friend of mine who I was guiding through the process last year was feeling like he was facing a similar problem, starting their 3rd application cycle worse than the previous two ones with several straight rejections. Of his first 10-15 applications they heard back from, only 2-3 were progressions, which was significantly bellow their prior rate.
I advised them to persist, and within the space of a month or so they had several AC invites, while by the end of the cycle they received 7 VS offers.
Now, besides wanting to inspire you not to lose heart and to keep pushing forward, I mentioned these stories because
I wanted to give you two concrete pieces of advice, which I think could end up having a substantial impact on your chances of securing a TC:
- Firstly, you should submit many more high-quality applications: an AC progression rate of 3/7 is incredibly high, so the quality of your writing does not seem to be an issue. Nonetheless, in my opinion 7 applications is without any doubt too few to make given how competitive this job market is, even if you are a very qualified candidate. While it may end up working out for some, I would advise you not to go with the "quality over quantity" approach if you want to minimise the impact of luck and maximise success chances. Both me and the friend I mentioned were rejected in 15+ application during our incredibly successful cycles even though we made sure that the writing and research for every firm was high quality. Had we only applied to 7-10 firms, it could have easily been the case we would have ended the cycle with no VSs/TCs. I have written a significantly longer guide elaborating on the cost and benefits of the "numbers game" vs "quality over quantity" approaches and explained what I think is the ideal application strategy, which is to submit as many high quality (albeit perhaps somewhat imperfect) applications as possible (which should result in 15-20 on the lower end) - I would highly encourage you to take a look here.
- Secondly, you may want to refresh your approach to AC preparation: while this is not an issue that you should be very concerned about right now, and while it is possible to have just been unlucky with your 3 prior ACs, my guess is that if there is any part of the application process for which you could improve quality-wise, it is this stage. I would highly encourage you to take a look at the Complete Competency Interview Preparation Guide I wrote here, as it explains in detail the step-by-step approach I took which was successful 4/4 times I implemented it.
