The Pupillage Interview/Acceptance/Rejection Thread 2016

Don't be disheartened. Additionally don't do the BPTC without a scholarship or Pupillage. Be a paralegal in a litigation firm. It will A) help your chances of getting Pupillage/scholarship B) give you loads of exp C) aid your knowledge of practice and increase your chances of getting better grades.

The BPTC is an absolute sham. Don't put yourself in financial difficult over. You'll probably still be in -school-uni-BPTC-barrister-QC - five easy steps mode. I was and so many of my friends were. Honestly it won't matter. Give yourself a year to recoup

Annoyingly, I'm a mature student so already have quite considerable experience, good academics (but not Oxbridge), mooting experience and several mini-pupillages. Working as a paralegal is a pretty significant step backwards for me. But yeah, I always knew it was going to be an uphill battle. I'm tempted to do the BPTC part-time if I don't get a pupillage this time round, but of course, I am concerned about committing to the course without any guarantees. Tricky situation!! Anyway, thanks for your advice, it is much appreciated and I will definitely take it into consideration.

Annoyingly, I'm a mature student so already have quite considerable experience, good academics (but not Oxbridge), mooting experience and several mini-pupillages. Working as a paralegal is a pretty significant step backwards for me. But yeah, I always knew it was going to be an uphill battle. I'm tempted to do the BPTC part-time if I don't get a pupillage this time round, but of course, I am concerned about committing to the course without any guarantees. Tricky situation!! Anyway, thanks for your advice, it is much appreciated and I will definitely take it into consideration.

Part-time is a seriously bad idea. I wish someone had of told me that when I started it.

You miss out on loads. Trying to find the time to do the work is insanely difficult if you're working at the same time. You miss out on the collegiate environment, as you're sat doing the work alone at home. The course isn't designed to be part-time, it is a full-time course that the part-timers just work around. The best example I have is the fact that there was a drafting question on last years Civil exam, but the part-timers at my provider didn't do drafting until second year. All the full timers recognised what the question was getting at and did well, the part-timers didn't have a clue!

Out of curiosity, have applicants from previous years found that applications through gateway are more successful, less successful or about equal with non-gateway applications?


Posted from TSR Mobile

I've had 14 interviews out of gateway and 3 in. So I'd say chambers out of gateway are better.

Just out of pure curiosity, how do they compare in terms of fractions? (Interviews/Number of Applications).

I would think that this isn't a simple calculation - if you look at 7BR versus 1CL, for instance, which are both non-PG, 7BR invited 50 people to first round interviews whilst 1CL invited 15 people. That's a big difference in numbers and appears to be entirely a chambers-specific choice. Just a thought!

Tiny92 posted that he had 3 gateway interviews and 14 non-gateway interviews, so that he was doing better on NG. But if he had made 12 gateway applications, and 56 non-gateway applications, then his success at converting applications to interviews would be 25% in both cases.

But if you mean that it's not a useful stat, then I suppose that is true. I just thought it might be a more interesting comparison than the raw numbers.