Clerkship application rant

So I'm finalizing my judge list for clerkship applications, and boy is this not fun. The reviews on the OCS website are almost all bland positive assessments. The one exception I found was for someone who reviewed a District Judge in Virginia who rejected him. Unfortunately, while rejected applicants are more informative about the judge's personality, they can say little about working for the judge, so it's a tough researching road. I am adding some more district judges to my list due to last semester's grading disappointments (although it appears that my Discrimination professor displeased many people, so at least I did not suffer alone). I don't see how anyone can apply to as many judges (60-80) as we are goaded to and also only apply to judges you know you'd want to work for. I don't know anyone who worked for them and the Greedy Clerks board is no help. Fortunately, my partner mentor person is going to look at my list and give me the lowdown on any of the judges on it that he knows. At least that's some first hand information.

Minor quibble: now we apply after two years' worth of grades instead of one. That's all well and good - larger sample and all that. But the law school curriculum in the first year is relatively standardized. 1L grades are roughly comparable from school to school. 2L year you can go hogwild and stuff your schedule with clinicals and fluffy seminars if you want. How can judges compare applicants in the same way with this immensely variable factor? Augh.