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What grades do I need at Stanford to be competitive for DC Cir, EDVA, and DDC? I'm also curious about what one needs to be competitive for a generic COA. I have 9 H, 2 books (ie 2 books and 7 Hs), and am on SLR.

Old_Believer wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 23, 2026 8:15 pm

What grades do I need at Stanford to be competitive for DC Cir, EDVA, and DDC? I'm also curious about what one needs to be competitive for a generic COA. I have 9 H, 2 books (ie 2 books and 7 Hs), and am on SLR.

Congrats on a great 1L performance!

For DC Cir, the general advice you will hear is that you need more prizes than P's to be competitive. I think most people who land DC Cir. tend to be near the top of the class and probably have something like 5-8 prizes at the time they apply and very few P's, probably no more than 1-4 (depending on when they did clinic). But this can vary a lot by the individual judges. Srinivasan in particular is probably the most sensitive about grades and seems to try and hire the #1, #2, or #3 person in the class. Pillard and Garcia are similar and are probably interviewing the same candidates. Millett also cares a lot about grades but I've heard she's a little more flexible (she likes veterans in particular, and also really values strong performance in Admin Law/FedCourts and participation in SCOTUS clinic). Childs/Wilkins have pretty idiosyncratic hiring practices (I don't think Wilkins even hires on plan) and I think hire a little bit more holistically. Pan also cares a lot about grades but has a pretty meh reputation that I think she's been trying to fix, so she probably doesn't get as many applications as she otherwise might.

No real insight on DDC/EDVA. I imagine the former will on average be more competitive than the latter, but they're not really like the DC Cir. and instead are a lot more judge dependent. On DDC, Boasberg and Moss are particularly grade sensitive and generally interview top students (probably the same people who are applying to and competitive for the DC Cir.). For everyone else you're generally going to need excellent grades still (probably many more H's than P's) but you definitely don't need more prizes than P's to land a clerkship on DDC assuming you apply broadly. Keep in mind that lots of people who are competitive for and apply to the DC Cir. also tend to apply to DDC judges.

As a general rule of thumb, a lot of this can vary depending on who else applies from your year. Top students will generally target and compete for DC Cir, but sometimes you get years that are a lot more "DC-focused" than others. Or sometimes a lot of really great students don't even applying at the same time as everyone else because they're doing a PhD or something like that. So really a lot of this depends on who else from your year is applying. I'd try not to worry about any of this too much until next Winter. Focus on keeping up your great performance and you'll do great!

What percentile do these grades put you in?

Hamletgace wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 05, 2026 6:57 pm

What percentile do these grades put you in?

Assuming OP took 12 graded classes (as most 1Ls do I'm pretty sure), I think safely top 10% at the very least.