People ask me for such advice, but I have little to say beyond the unhelpful "Have gotten good grades."

My one potentially valuable bit of advice is Apply Broadly; even if you don't want to live some place for decades, you can handle a year, and even enjoy it. Applying only in the fun places puts you in constant competition with everyone else who is applying in the fun places. Also, applying only in the Ninth Circuit, as some people here out West actually do, strikes me as quite irrational: Why would you be willing to live in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona, but not in Wyoming, Colorado, or New Mexico? If you are going to limit yourself geographically, at least limit yourself in ways that make sense.

Still, that's not a lot of help -- which is why I turn to all of you, and ask you to provide your advice in the comments. Please identify your source of knowledge (even in general terms, if you prefer to remain anonymous), though, so readers could have a sense of how generalizable the advice would be, how limited it might be to certain states or areas, and so on.