<p>Its who you know. In my circle of friends from Colgate and all over the US, many of us are going off to graduate school in the fall and no one is heading for Wall St or any consulting jobs. </p>
<p>But I am happy that NYT finally published this article. My brother seems to want to head down that track much to my own dismay... but to my parents' glee. This just gives a clear picture of why so many kids are going towards i-banking. For me, I just don't understand this- why spend these insane hours in a contract job that provides you with good money while you're "figuring out" what you really want to do. I mean, I understand security is the reason but we're in our twenties. We should be taking risks, we can afford to hit hard with debt that we will eventually pay off. When I discussed moving abroad with one of my professors who did, she told me that being in your 20s is the best time to take the biggest risks because you're not going to be settling down. Settling down (or a growing sense of security) makes things more challenging for adapting to changes, particularly if you have a S.O. to mind.</p>
<p>Once you're settled in your $80K paycheck, your own apartment, and a car, who's going to want to move or try new things off the beaten path? And we're talking that this is a good possiblity of this happening before these kids are 26. And they have their whole lives ahead of them to take personal and financial risks. It's not what I'm getting from this article. Taking risks in i-banking isn't same as trying a new kind of job/career.</p>
<p>In some ways, I agree with you. But unless your parents are able to afford the expensive education, moving around, taking risks is a bit of a luxury. that's what I did, but I had a full scholarship, so I had no debt to pay off.</p>
<p>I actually know some people who ditched high Wall Street salaries to return to grad school and the life of the starving grad student. Perhaps that life did not appeal after all, perhaps they paid off their debts...</p>
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<p>Out of seven friends of my S, rising seniors, not a single one is heading for Wall Street. <<</p>
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<p>I guess your son's friends are balanced out by my D's blocking group...out of 8 girls, 3 are headed off to NYC to become investment bankers!</p>
<p>A person shouldn't get involved with or stay at a high stress/long hour job just for the money--whether it be investment banker, top tier lawyer, or highly compensated MD. But the financial sector can provide extremely interesting jobs populated by highly educated, high energy people. If it's your cup of tea, then you shouldn't feel bad about drinking it.</p>
<p>The fact is, just like many jobs, you don't know what it is going to be like in the long run without actually having worked there for a while. I would be interested to know what percentage of yearlings for any one year make it to partner level in their IB firms...</p>
<p>Well, for those of us shelling out $200K for our kids Ivy undergrad, it is understandable that we don't gnash our teeth in agony if our kids express an interest in gainful employment following college.</p>
<p>^^So I make it 3 out of 15. Less that 20%. That seems a good enough percentage. It makes for donor continuity but does not overwhelm campus culture or shut off a source of talent for other professions.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I had this similar discussion with my dad last night. He was saying how proud he was that I graduated from Colgate and not Smith (no offense- I did defend Smith!). He felt that schools that provide excellent and focused education are more likely to have students who are motivated to be "serious" enough to be making real money on Wall St and law. I said to him, "What do you mean... Smith is very strong in the sciences so don't tell me that those students aren't serious!" He didn't seem to think I was serious about what I wanted to do with my life while I was at Smith (of course not to mention that I was only 19!) because my departments were more interested in inflating grades and other methods to entice students to major in those rather than political science, economics, and the sciences. Therefore, he didn't think that I worked hard compared to how much harder I had to work to survive Colgate.</p>
<p>Is there a strong correlation that if students attend schools that are reputated to have serious, motivated, and intelligent student body, then they are more likely to go for these for-profit jobs rather than non-profit and social organizations? Perhaps that's why state schools take 5-6 years to finish...</p>
<p>Some of those student comments read like "But I <em>had</em> to do it! Everybody else was doing it! I wouldn't have been cool otherwise!"</p>
<p>Nobody's forcing you to be an i-banker if you don't want to. I came from one of the schools that i-banking/finance focus on in their recruitment. I never had any interest in that industry. Therefore, I never attempted to get a job in that industry.</p>
<p>I do have to take issue with those who are acting like finance is the only "gainful employment" out there.</p>
<p>I have read many times on this board that if you wanted a high end job on Wall Street or certain Legal firms then you pretty much had to go to an IVY school.</p>
<p>Sure not everyone at the IVY goes this way but if Wall street and certain High end legal firms only recruit from the IVY league then I think the statement is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>"Among those who graduated around 1970, 22 percent of the men were in finance or management 15 years later. Among those who graduated around 1990, the figure was 38 percent. The proportion of male graduates working in finance alone increased from 5 percent to 15 percent during the same period. And a Harvard Crimson survey last year found that among graduating seniors heading straight to work—roughly three-quarters of the class of 2007 —58 percent of the men were headed for finance or consulting, and more than 20 percent of all men for investment banks."</p>
<p>As much as I love Harvard, I must admit that I find the high percentage of grads who go straight for the money on Wall Street to be somewhat disappointing. Not that there is anything dishonorable about I-banking or wanting to be rich. I just wish the precentage of those chasing it were smaller.</p>
<p>Last year when we attended Jr. Parents Weekend a speech by the head of the Placement Office boasted that the second most common job that Harvard grads took was signing up for Teach for America. I agreed that this was something worth bragging about. But out of the side of his mouth he also mumbled something that the most common job was I-banking. Like I said, not dishonorable but somehow disappointing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
From Teach</a> for America surges on better recruiting, worse economy - USATODAY.com More than ever, graduating college seniors are signing up to spend two years in America's poorest communities as part of Teach for America, the non-profit that recruits and trains top college students for teaching jobs.</p>
<p>The group saw applications jump by more than a third this year from about 18,000 to nearly 25,000.</p>
<p>Of those, about 3,700 are expected to step up to the blackboard as new teachers this fall. That's up more than 25% from the 2,900 who did so last year.
[/quote]
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<p>It might be good to see how the statement "that the second most common job that Harvard grads took was signing up for Teach for America" is derived.</p>
<p>Coureur:
Faust quoted 20% for 2008, a slight drop from 22% (2007) and a huge one from 38% <a href="1990">quote</a>.
In her speech, Dr. Faust highlighted the results of a spring survey by The Crimson, the student newspaper, which found that about 20 percent of this year’s graduates were heading into financial services and management consulting, down from about 22 percent last year.
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<p>I wonder how the campus felt in 1990! Personally, I don't have anything against people going into i-banking. Society also needs i-bankers, as well as doctors, plumbers, teachers. It's the lopsided atmosphere that too many students of one kind creates. Same reason why S preferred Harvard to MIT.
But this is another case of Harvard talking from both sides of its mouth. Its development office would be devastated if all its graduates went for k-12 teaching or becoming starving artists or some equally low remunerative jobs.</p>
<p>Full disclosure. My newly-graduated Harvard daughter begins her first career job this Monday. It's a scientific job related to her Physics degree. It's not in Wall Street finance, but it's not saving people in slums of New Delhi either. It's a regular job.</p>
<p>JimmyCO45 wrote:
<<... And what type of people do you think make the biggest difference in the lives of the poor and general public?
Rich people. They are the ones running businesses, providing jobs, creating new ways to improve the quality of life for everyone. And they donate. A lot. The Bill Gates Foundation has $35 billion in assets. That's 35,000,000,000!! Are you going to tell me that Bill Gates is selfish and souless for making so much money?>></p>
<p>You have a point, Jimmy, but Bill Gates actually CREATED something. He didn't just skim off some of the golden crumbs by moving play money around. (see Bonfire of the Vanities)</p>
<p>I agree with Jonri, that some students view consulting/IB as a 2-year gap from pursuing more education. After 2 internships in his major, my S wanted a change. No one was more surprised than me, as his passion since 8 y.o. was leading him to Silicon Valley. In Gail Sheehy's book, Passages, better to explore career options while young.</p>
<p>When people talk of just the Ivys being recruited by these firms, I would include some LACs, like Williams, and MIT/Caltech/Stanford into the mix.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Call it a sign of the times. An unemployed banker has taken to the streets of Manhattan — wearing a pinstriped suit and an "MIT Graduate for Hire" sign draped over his shoulders.
<p>
[quote]
Last year when we attended Jr. Parents Weekend a speech by the head of the Placement Office boasted that the second most common job that Harvard grads took was signing up for Teach for America.
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</p>
<p>One of the reasons for Teach for America's success, I think, is that they've been able to make it selective and therefore play into the same competitive spirit that is part of the lure of finance for graduates. They've been so successful at being able to take the best and the brightest, that students now see Teach for America as a resume builder for law school and for consulting jobs. </p>
<p>This idea that only the best get chosen is one of the reasons, I think, that students also get caught up in the competition for offers from banks and hedge funds. It's more than the money. It's bragging rights. It's verification of how smart they are, just like their acceptance to an elite college.</p>
<p>They come back from summer internships in big man on campus mode, with money to spend, and tales of the trading floor and the bar scene. What I object to is not that some kids are drawn to finance, but that the campus culture gets skewed. Is a student who studies physics because he or she finds it beautiful, and envisions a life in research, somehow a chump because those same skills could earn so much more on Wall St. ? The career advisors, even the academic advisors seem to assume that Wall Street is the goal of their top students.</p>
<p>A lot of what accounts for people flocking to Wall St. and to TFA at Harvard is the fact that the processes for applying to those jobs are so streamlined through the Office of Career Services. It's called e-recruiting - you search for positions through the online portal, upload your resume there, schedule interviews there, etc. There's even an on-campus location where nearly all first-round interviews take place. The process starts in the fall, when representatives from different Wall St. firms and from TFA come to campus and hold recruiting events, and after going through the e-recruiting process, many people have job offers in hand by November or December and can just relax for the rest of senior year. </p>
<p>Companies in other industries do use e-recruiting, but not nearly to the same degree as the banks do. So the presence of a simpler process and the reduction of stress definitely plays a big role in guiding people toward the jobs being discussed, including Teach for America. Going through a school-regulated, mainly online hiring system is definitely a more attractive option than going out into the world on your own, sending out resumes and maybe never hearing back, and dealing with interviews in far-flung locations. </p>
<p>A lot of people are drawn in by it, and I myself admit to being tempted despite having no interest in finance (and likely no aptitude for it either). There are people who end up doing other things though - in my blocking group of 7, two are headed to law school, 2 are working for companies that they applied to via e-recruiting (NOT Wall St. firms or in any way related to banking), 1 is working for a company she found on her own, another is working for a hedge fund, and as for little old me ... I'm going to graduate school for journalism in the fall and am currently interning at a magazine. My career will most likely be in media - neither saving the starving children of the world nor getting rich by playing with monopoly money in NY. So, plenty of us Ivy grads are heading out into the world doing something else. </p>
<p>Sorry, I know that was long, just wanted to share my perspective as someone who heard this conversation a lot on campus and saw what motivated people to choose banking, or not banking. :)</p>
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<p>...a student who studies physics because he or she finds it beautiful, and envisions a life in research....<<</p>
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<p>Wow, I wish my daughter had chosen her major for reasons as lofty as that. As far as I can tell, she chose to be a Physics major because her favorite teacher in high school taught physics.</p>