<p>How</a> Elite Colleges Still Feed Wall St.'s Recruiting Machine - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>Laura</a> Newland</p>
<p>and this is news?</p>
<p>This just in:</p>
<p>Bizarre new ten-year study suggests most people actually choose more pay versus less.</p>
<p>Well, as long as unsophisticated people mistakenly think that the only good money to be had is on Wall Street … Yawn.</p>
<p>And what job did you land right out of college that paid as well, Pizzagirl? Not one single mention of Wall Street or i-banking escapes this insulting commentary from you. Please do share the secret so very many smart Ivy Leaguers keep missing year after year! Isn’t it common for kids to start on Wall Street, pay off their loans and build up some cash reserves, and then leave the rat race for a less demanding and possibly more fulfilling job? I see nothing “unsophisticated” about that plan.</p>
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<p>dog bites man; neighbors react with horror.</p>
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It is what I am doing now, except it is 30 years later - I have my kids’ tuition paid for, I am leaving the rat race, and going back to what I loved to do many years ago.</p>
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<p>And why exactly it is bad? I think it actually shows that the person is a grown up and responsible.</p>
<p>blossom, Pizzagirl:
These riveting and disturbing first-hand accounts just came across my Editor’s desk:</p>
<p>“Man lying asleep in road hit by car”</p>
<p>“Mom angered by son leaving dirty socks on dining room table”</p>
<p>“College freshman did not show for exams, fails course”</p>
<p>and </p>
<p>“Touchy-feely Ivy League graduate working altruistic $7/hr job bankrupted by massive college loan debt.”</p>
<p>SHOCKING! UNBELIEVABLE! NON-COPACETIC! SOMEWHAT PROBLEMATIC!</p>
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<p>I spoke to a co-worker yesterday - his son is graduating from an Ivy shortly and he will be working on Wall St and they’re looking to help him find housing. “Congrats”</p>
<p>Isn’t this should be a rule: Fist pay your debt, then follow your passion (read, low paying occupation), whatever it might be?</p>
<p>The author of the article would have us accept that working in finance is not beneficial to society. These articles always presuppose that providing businesses advisory services and capital so they can modernize, expand and generally keep people employed is a glaring evil. Her more noble path of becoming a “business consultant” and writing articles and a book criticizing her Ivy peers for selling out to the banking industry, is contributing to society so much more?</p>
<p>There are plenty of kids who pay off their debts with lower paid occupations- I know at least a dozen young nurses, teachers, social workers; plus a kid working as a night aide at a residential school for troubled teenagers to supplement a minimum wage day job. They are all living modestly, paying off their loans, paying their taxes. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>But to be critical of kids who choose a more lucrative path?</p>
<p>And Pizza, really, so unkind of you. Yes, there are millions of people who own McDonald’s franchises and car washes or are middle management in small corporations who out-earn investment bankers. But that doesn’t make a college kid a dope for trying her hand at M&A for a few years before exploring other options.</p>
<p>And what exactly do you tell your own kids- to avoid Career Services like the plague for their 4 years at college?</p>
<p>I’m a capitalist at heart. Nothing wrong with a smart kid trying to make money! Nothing wrong with going into i-banking! What I don’t get is the misperception that i-banks are the only ways to MAKE that money I think it bespeaks a certain wide-eyed naivete about the world.</p>
<p>BTW, theGFG, since you asked - I landed a job out of undergrad which paid a full 25% more than the consulting offers that I turned down for it (including BCG and what-is-now-Accenture), and the year that I graduated, I had the highest starting salary for a non-engineer out of my college. Publicly held companies that actually make / sell stuff can pay quite well too. I don’t know why the bloom is off the rose for those companies and why the adoration and sometimes-drool over the i-banks. But I’m not dissing i-banking at all. I’m dissing the belief that that’s the only way to make money.</p>
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<p>Stone me to death but I think this is partially true. Over the years financial industry has gotten bloated. Instead of helping to organize other industries to run efficient, it is draining draining brain from other industries. What we need more of now is more producing industries not just shuffling around. I think they ran out industries to shuffle. I’d say they are on to shuffling the shuffling itself.</p>
<p>see, people confuse more pay with actually making more…$100,000 on wall street where an apartment is going to cost you $5000/month really isn’t making more money than the guy in middle America making $50,000 any paying $550/,month for an apartment–or heck a HOUSE payment…</p>
<p>Perhaps, igloo, but no young job hunters can single-handedly change their country’s and the world’s economic system. They shouldn’t be maligned for that. As I’ve said before, my kids would gladly take a job from any company who wanted to hire them. First with my son, and now with my daughter, banks are the businesses who show up on their campus looking to hire undergrads and new grads with non-STEM degrees, and so far the only ones to offer them interviews. We should tell kids with an Ivy League education to turn down finance jobs to work for minimum wage as a residential supervisor in a group home–a job one can be hired to do without a college degree–because that helps people more? How is that a good use of brain power and resources?</p>
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<p>I think that my coworker understands that - it will be interesting to see the circumstances of their son’s work in NYC - they’re quite concerned about the housing issue. Still, a young graduate can have a very nice time in the big city.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know about your co-worker’s son, but the young analysts are well paid because they work crazy hours and pretty much have to live in the city since they’re going to be working 100±-hour weeks, and past midnight on many occasions. The fun aspect of city life is negligible for this group.</p>
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<p>I’ll have to ask for more details on his son’s job - I don’t see this guy very often but he’s pretty well off. 100+ hours/week - how do you get your dry-cleaning done? When do you get to run 20 miles a week and hit the gym?</p>