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This is a straw man. Only the insane would see it as an either or proposition.</p>
<p>On another note, do you know of any other line of work out there that pays this well right out of undergrad? </p>
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Nope. I am looking at the forest while you are looking at a tree. No more than that. </p>
<p>I don’t know of jobs that pay as much, but just because a job doesn’t have an I-banker salary doesn’t make it not a good job. “Good job” encompasses a lot of territory, of which salary is only one. </p>
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<p>I don’t know what IB make right out of school, but some of my friends who went into commercial real estate made 400K or more within 2 years of being in the business. Of course, that business goes through ups and downs, but the really good ones can rake it in.</p>
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Extrapolation of a test with 500 to anything more does not make it forest, just another illusion. People have no clue about mental health when they think a computer can treat them but I will leave them upto their own illusions. I have enough of mine to worry about.</p>
<p>McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are used as a stepping stone to upper-level management jobs in all sorts of industries. I’ve heard from BCG people that a sizable chunk of the people who work there are there because they want to become a CEO in the future.</p>
<p>As such, it is disingenuous to characterize the advantage of top schools as being limited to i-banking and consulting, since consulting firms like McKinsey and BCG are used as an inside track to a much wider swath of jobs.</p>
<p>This is 25 years ago, for what it’s worth, but my job offer from a company that actually makes stuff people buy frequently was higher than my offers at BCG, Accenture and similar mgt consulting firms. </p>
<p>And these days, I have a lot of peers (career-wise – similar background and experience) at McKinsey - I don’t know exact salaries, but we are all in the same ballpark in terms of what we make. </p>
<p>Commercial real estate, media, music, fashion … Other industries where you can make a lot of money. People who get starry eyed over IB and MC are just naive, that’s all. </p>
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<p>To be fair, Pizzagirl, you ought to acknowledge that most of the kids who obsess about “IB and MC” on CC don’t have a prayer of getting career traction in commercial real estate, media, music, or fashion. For better or worse, you can get a good career start in consulting or banking just by being smart and a decent communicator. Those other fields require some or all of: capital, connections, talent, social skills, </p>
<p>JHS, since you have posted recently, I wanted to go back to the Tavi Gevinson blog. On the one hand, having looked at several of her posts from 2008, I agree that she displayed an unusual sophistication at a young age in her blog, and the part I read was interesting (although I did not think that the mice were actually “heinous,” and that left me uncertain whether she had some other word in mind). A major element that I noticed, however, was the extraordinarily large number of pictures of herself.</p>
<p>So add to the set of requirements for someone to do anything close to that: Parents with high risk tolerance. I would have been really uncomfortable allowing a 13-or-so-year-old to post that many pictures of herself on the internet. I am an old fogey, maybe, but I would have been super, super uncomfortable. QMP had a Facebook account for only a short period, and only as an adult (and no longer). </p>
<p>"To be fair, Pizzagirl, you ought to acknowledge that most of the kids who obsess about “IB and MC” on CC don’t have a prayer of getting career traction in commercial real estate, media, music, or fashion. For better or worse, you can get a good career start in consulting or banking just by being smart and a decent communicator. Those other fields require some or all of: capital, connections, talent, social skills,
"</p>
<p>I wasn’t thinking about the actual recording star or fashion designer (which of course requires talent) - I was just thinking about the industry. </p>
<p>JHS #606 and PG #608 reminded me of the Charlie Brown episode in which Lucy van Pelt sighed that no one gave her what she really wanted for Christmas: “Real estate.”</p>
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<p>This is reminding me of a long ago thread started by a poster who felt he’ll have it made on easy street by going into real estate despite displaying apparent ignorance of the fact it’s overwhelmingly a sales oriented job which requires folks with good social skills and superior salesmanship skills. Especially in highly competitive real estate markets. </p>
<p>Skills which have much more to do with one’s personality, demeanor, and business “street smarts” and less to do with one’s academic bona-fides.* </p>
<p>As for fashion, media, and music…while one needs some level of talent, whether one makes it or not is highly dependent on who you know and whether you tickle the fancy of the fashion/media/music marketing executives and the fickle attention of their respective mass markets. Also, any relation to academic bona-fides is tenuous at best. </p>
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<li>Not to say it’s not learnable, but those skills are from what I’ve seen from successful folks…mainly picked up from working experience, not from classrooms.<br></li>
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<p>“As for fashion, media, and music…while one needs some level of talent, whether one makes it or not is highly dependent on who you know and whether you tickle the fancy of the fashion/media/music marketing executives and the fickle attention of their respective mass markets. Also, any relation to academic bona-fides is tenuous at best.”</p>
<p>Again, I’m talking about the INDUSTRY, not the creative talent. As an example, there are people in those industries who are doing the same kind of analytics on how Clear Channel can best optimize the revenue they get from billboards or which piece of copy raises sales more or what pieces of apparel Ralph Lauren should be shipping to Macy’s vs Nordstrom, requiring pretty much the same talents and skills as the analyst at Goldman Sachs analyzing the utilities industry. And they get paid, too, imagine that. But for some reason, CC thinks that the only people who do that kind of work are at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. No clue whatsoever. </p>
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<p>People who put together complicated commercial deals need to have some degree of academic “bona-fides.” Most successful commercial real estate players have either business degrees or have even gone on to law school or MBA. At least in my area that is how they have been educated. Those other qualities you mention are also in abundance as well.</p>
<p>“Business.” I think that’s the more encompassing word. Kids look at IB or other glossy jobs same as they look at HYPS- they only know what they know and not much about that. There are many avenues.
But what’s behind many of these thread battles is, as with some hs kids, a willingness to assume or to fall short in thinking. “I think what I think.” Maybe we should take Pinker’s words about a little more academic stretch, for the heck of it, and apply it to real life, climb out of our own heads/egos once in a while. Not so easy, eh?</p>
<p>“People who put together complicated commercial deals need to have some degree of academic “bona-fides.” Most successful commercial real estate players have either business degrees or have even gone on to law school or MBA. At least in my area that is how they have been educated. Those other qualities you mention are also in abundance as well.”</p>
<p>My area too. They’re plenty well educated, typically at top schools. Perhaps that’s being mixed up with residential real estate sales, in which educational bonafides aren’t as important as local connections. </p>
<p>“think that’s the more encompassing word. Kids look at IB or other glossy jobs same as they look at HYPS- they only know what they know and not much about that. There are many avenues.”</p>
<p>But this is precisely the stupidity - “business” consists of financing or advising other businesses, but being oblivious to, well, the actual business goods and services themselves. There’s no business to finance if there are no goods and services. </p>
<p>It all works, when the players are good. They need vision, energy and a willingness to commit, long term. You can break business apart into the business itself versus the business of doing business, then the business of growing the business, and more- but the point is there are many roles, many avenues. Business may include the financiers, but it also includes the product people. By whatever name. </p>
<p>For the record, my young friend (H '13) began in her IB/consulting role at 130k. She was a bright, determined hs kid, a H legacy (the parent very visible in alum affairs) who didn’t get into her top choice LAC. She had a dual major (incl one more purely academic,) but used school time and every summer as wisely as possible, working her way up from a small but valuable first internship to a few noteworthy. When she was hired, let’s face it: 4000 kids started in the pool, 25 got the opportunity. Worse numbers than getting the admit. No MBA, no law degree. But plenty of table smarts.</p>
<p>Pinker has a column in the WSJ today about how difficult it is for smart people to understand or recognize how not smart most others are. I liked that one. </p>
<p>Guide to how to gain admission to Oxbridge. Enough to make an Ivy League admissions officer ill.</p>
<p><a href=“What do I need to get into Oxford or Cambridge? - The Uni Guide”>http://university.which.co.uk/advice/what-do-i-need-to-get-into-oxford-or-cambridge-straight-a-s</a></p>
<p>For Americans need to have atleast 5 5"s on Ap tests. Always loved to hear the parent ask the dreaded what kid of ap scores the school was looking for. Always the same answer–we don’t care and we don’t look at them. </p>
<p>Interesting though brief comments on actual interviews
<a href=“http://university.which.co.uk/advice/university-interviews-as-told-by-students”>http://university.which.co.uk/advice/university-interviews-as-told-by-students</a>
not limited to Oxford and Cambridge.</p>
<p>Some advice (rather than examples) on Oxford and Cambridge interviews:
<a href=“http://university.which.co.uk/advice/oxbridge-interviews”>http://university.which.co.uk/advice/oxbridge-interviews</a></p>
<p>There are some interesting links on the pages, as well.</p>