<p>Terps, one of my nephews in IB went to Brandeis; the other nephew in IB went to University of Illinois. They both managed to get excellent internships during undergrad, and both are now working for IB firms for which they interned. I think that your problem is that you are coming to late to the party, not the school from which you are coming.</p>
<p>You would be surprised how much money is thrown at defense contractors. And I agree completely with boysx3, lack of proactively will kill you whether you’re at Podunk U or Harvard</p>
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<p>I knew defense contractors made a lot, my surprise was how he got the job. I just feel like with entry-level being “offered $75,000/year, over 6 weeks of vacation per year, work less than 35 hours per week, health benefits that even God can’t buy,” would attract better applicants. Which could just indicate he had an amazing interview or the company put a value on his military background which for a defense contractor, would make sense…</p>
<p>Defense jobs are equivalent of stimulus money. Nothing is expected to get done, a lot of wasteful spending.</p>
<p>I got my BA in Journalism from UW-Madison – a very strong school academically but not exactly with an undergrad student profile to match an Ivy…</p>
<p>And I got an MBA from Belmont University (“Where?” Exactly.). Sure, I got mine with a specialty in Music Business, and Belmont is one of the very best places to study it… but nobody would mistake my MBA for one from Harvard or Stanford in terms of prestige.</p>
<p>(I worked on probably fifty HBS case studies in that program, but again… I wasn’t <em>at</em> Harvard)</p>
<p>I’ve spent the past ten(ish) years working in operational analysis. I have my fingers in a lot of important projects and the job pays well. I’m important to my firm, but the culture is such that I can leave the stress of the job at the office. So basically, while I don’t play golf with the mayor, own seven homes or drive a Ferrari… my belly is full at the appointed times, I pay all my bills on time, and I can put some away and have some fun.</p>
<p>So yes – you can do just fine without an Ivy League/Stanford/Chicago/MIT (etc.) education.</p>
<p>I think the OP does have a point though, although parts are misguided. If you are rich enough, or your family is rich enough you will end up going to the top school, and getting hired right off the bat. Companies do not want to pay alot outright, because its too costly to them, they will just hire you, without or little benefits and worst comes to worse they will fire you or “let you go” . Of course there are places where you need to start from the ground up. Thier main purpose is to make the maximum of profit, from the production of the employees as possible, thus paying them very little.</p>
<p>Although his views of earning a degree, and must be immediately hired into a high paying job, is very flawed. It seems that you believe that your perception about your future is predetermined byour “job”. If your goal was to make alot of money why did you get an engineering degree, science degrees are notoriously known for low-paying jobs, if you dont have a graduate degree. its a mere fanatasy if you believe your degree and experience will have a good paying job. if you start believing that your degree will earn you a low paying job, it will become a self fullfilling prophecy. because you already have set limits an expectations for yourself that you will never surpass.</p>
<p>I went to one of the top 10 engineering schools in the country (maybe even top 5 for my program), one of the top 20 overall schools in the country, or even top 30 in the world (According to Shanghai reviews) and the only reason I got a job is because of a personal reference. My school had no career placement and the internships posted were very difficult to get accepted into. Out of 25 applications, I only got 3 interviews. Right now I make 60k’ish with a bonus and both of my senior engineers went to a local state school that you’d have to look up on Google to find because it won’t show up in any engineering rankings you can find. </p>
<p>Come on, you can’t just pop in and dump that on us. What school? What major? GPA? Other qualifications?</p>
<p>What are Shanghai reviews?</p>
<p>OP was mentioning the salary of someone in IB was something like 500K after 15 years. By that time you would be a VP or something close to that, but reaching that level is extremely difficult. Only about 1 in 10 Analyst become Associates and about the same ratio from Associate to VP. Working 100 weeks gets old fast and your health takes a serious hit. The odds are you will burn out and get a F500 job which does not pay anywhere near the levels of IB.</p>
<p>It’s mostly up to the individual: if you are willing to put in the work, the work will find you.</p>
<p>I goofed off while at UW, graduating with about a 3.0 and not trying any internships. I was busy in my fraternity roles, but that’s not something any employer has ever seen as important (that I am aware of…).</p>
<p>So – work hard, get a good internship with a solid company, and you should be OK.</p>
<p>Because I sloughed off during my undergrad, I needed an MBA to see some decent coin.</p>