Originally Posted by rickair7777

Assuming you meet the published mins but are not in the competitive window yet...

Apply now to all of the upper-tier majors unless their geography would not work for you. You get extra credit at most for having had an active app for a longer period of time.

Caveat: You need to do all of those apps and then maintain them every month or two. So make sure you have time to do that, as well as attend job fairs (priority to any in-house job fairs you can get into). If you're busy with family, school, etc then only submit as many apps as you can maintain.

Get interview prep. Get LORs. Be ready. Mins are coming down, you don't know exactly when they'll reach you but might as well try to meet them in the middle, ie maximize your score.

In your shoes, assuming you're nowhere near 50, I would not necessarily apply to lower-tier majors just yet. They'll probably call you, and then you'd be stuck as an SIC for a while which would not help your progression to the bigs. But that's your call... bird in the hand vs. two in the bush.