For those lamenting the added stress on students, it is really more a matter of the timing of that stress. Sophomore year is rougher, but students starting junior year with full time job offers in hand have a very nice last 2 college years.
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Only mbb (and quant in the few cases they take sophomores) are offering full time offers at the end of sophomore year. Bizarrely mbb are making both summer and full time offers simultaneously without looking at the kid in the summer they made the offer for.
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Wow, how incredibly toxic. I do not think that I will recommend Harvard to any student from now on.
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It is not about Harvard. It is about how competitive things have become in general. It was equally competitive getting into Harvard – it’s just that that was out of sight. The world is less of a genteel place than it was 20 years ago. The barbarians are at the gate :-). The place has become more democratized.
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Not according to that young woman. The social scene seems to be run by gatekeepers, who seem intent on making sure that all the plebs and riffraff who somehow managed to get into Harvard are still denied entry to the “important” clubs and social organizations. That’s not really democratization.
I do not actually think that it was any better before Harvard were forced to start accepting non-“patricians” and PoC. There were simply fewer people that needed to be excluded.
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I suspect the exclusions into the club are on the basis of ability and not patriciousness, and because of lack of bandwidth. Because the reputation of a club depends heavily on how many people they are able to place into the industry, which is directly related to observed ability.
Now the purely social clubs, like the finals clubs, can be easily exclusionary. I don’t disagree.
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I think that young woman has some issues, not all of which are related to Harvard. Her experience doesn’t fit with anyone my son knows.
My son has joined a few clubs there, and only one of them had competitive entry. In other words, it is completely possible to have a chill college experience if that’s what you want. Likewise, it’s possible to have an intense experience in classes and clubs if that’s what you want.
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Are there really MBB offers at the end of sophomore year?
I am splitting hairs, but my daughter’s process with MBB started in July after sophomore year. She got close with two, so she knows that they extended offers in late August.
The same was true for my friend’s daughter the previous summer with IBs. She got an offer from JP Morgan in July, before junior year.
My daughter has mentioned friends in business who had early offers, so those likely happened at the end of sophomore year. Some of them with later birthdays had, with high probability, secured their high paying post-grad job while still teenagers.
Now I am curious, though, as to why her timeline for MBB was different than what you are describing.
I only meant to say that when you are interviewing for the junior summer, which happens in early Junior fall (or even the summer before), they gave a junior summer offer, and a full time return for the end of senior year to the same person. I’ve seen this a few times.
I don’t know the nitty gritty of whether it was May or June or July or even (likely not) September.
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That’s for sure. Barbarians fully in charge!
Surprisingly (to me), Oxford careers service has already put D22 on their distribution list. Last Friday (10 days before starting there), she received an email with recruiting events and last night she got a weekly bulletin with application deadlines for different positions. She felt a little stressed (another thing to think/worry about!) and I told her to ignore them at this time and focus on getting a good start settling into her college and in her classes.
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I agree with @MWolf. My friend’s daughter is a sophomore at Harvard and it’s a constant cycle of disappointment for her so far as she tries to break into some of the clubs as an unconnected, working class kid.
The pre-professional clubs were tough, but the social clubs are far worse. There is an entire language for the process that is totally unknown to me. The way cuts happen sounds cruel and it all reeks of elitism and gatekeeping.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse than before, or even better or worse than some southern sororities/fraternities, but it isn’t egalitarianism.
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You don’t want to be in the Harvard social scene anyway. The parties really suck :-). I heard the best parties are at MIT. And that everyone at Harvard knows this. You should really try to get into the MIT social clubs even if you are at Harvard :-).
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I think there should be a big difference between private (off campus?) clubs students fees do not support like Greeks.
The clubs who have try outs should have a fair competitive process. Sports teams? Well, most kids have been through those try outs (many times?) and really, who wants a soccer team with 100 members if only 15 will ever get into the game. At my daughter’s school men’s hockey is a try out process because they don’t have the capacity for 100 players on the team, while the women’s team take all who try out - and would like MORE. The ‘clubs’ like student government that have elections? That’s how it usually is in high school too. Everyone has the same chance, but you have to work to get the position. Orchestra? Same.
But I do have a problem with the current members of a club that is supported by student fees to get to pick the next set of members. Maybe they should have a system where there is a qualification check list and if you meet the qualifications, your name is in the ‘good to go’ pile. If there is not enough room in the group everyone, have a lottery.
My daughter went to a school of engineers. they didn’t limit who could be in the Society of women engineers (I don’t even know if they limited it to Women only!), or who could get in to the Mechanical Engineering society, as long as you met the requirements like gpa or taking certain courses. Team sports? Yes, up to the coaches. Greeks? Yes, private organizations. Everything else was, I believe, open to everyone.
I love that SOOO many tour guides stressed that if you couldn’t find a club to join you could just start one and now it seems like many schools not only won’t fund a new club, they restrict who can join the clubs they do have.
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Personally, I dislike the idea of students deciding who to include and who to exclude. It may make sense if you are selecting for an acapella group, but it is more troubling when it is gate-keeping for jobs. The employers are exclusive enough.
Then again, this is what I dislike about Greek life too. If Mary likes Sue, but Chris and Ann do not, Mary doesn’t get a bid. Both Mary and Sue miss a potential friendship because of group think. Translate that into a professional club…
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Much worse there.
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A friends son dislikes the social scene at MIT that he is looking to transfer.
I dislike that these employers are essentially letting students prescreen their applicants and there is a lot of room for bias there. They probably do not see anything wrong because the people working there came from these clubs.
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True, but for most of the IB summer offers given, there is a very high likelihood of converting to full time. And yes, my kid received her MBB offer June 1, at the end of her sophomore year. Plenty of her friends had offers in hand by July.
The good news is that these clubs ( again, my kid wasnt in one) do seem to select based upon overall interest in and talent for the subject, just like the a capella groups do. There are also other avenues to the employers, so they really aren’t gate-keeping. But they are a valuable resource.
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That was one of the big turn offs for my D. Schools like Purdue and Michigan talked about day 1 freshmen being able to join the engineering car teams and learn the ropes. Schools like Cornell had a very competitive process after sophomore year.
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While it’s great that engineering clubs are open at Michigan, such is not the case for the business clubs there.
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I hate the idea of competitive clubs.
Data point of one: my son did not attend a T50 school. He did not join any preprofessional club. He did not have a summer job at an investment bank. He ended up working at Goldman Sachs immediatelyafter graduating.
I fully realize not everyone can follow his path, but just to say there are many routes.
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