Is it embarrassing to tell people your child is considering finance/banking?

Parents Forum
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<p>nm</p>

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When DS moved into his dorm at the beginning of his freshman year, the parent of a suitemate asked him what field he would be interested in. He told him “premed” but it is likely he did not know it is cliche at that time.</p>

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<p>I’d imagine it’s more socially risky to tell a prospective date that you are a struggling poet living in your parents’ basement than it is to say you are working on Wall Street.</p>

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<p>I supposed the kid could take a different track to banking. John Reed (former chairman of Citicorp) had a degree in Metallurgy from MIT. He later got an MBA from Wharton or Mellon, IIRC. I believe he was also dyslexic.</p>

<p>I suppose you be proud of him or despise him based upon your own biases.</p>

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<p>The advantage of having a goal such as investment banking or medical school from the get-go is that a student can plan accordingly and not take risks.</p>

<p>My new grad went for course rigor rather and academic adventure and risk rather than a carefully managed GPA. (Her target was a 3.0 or better rather than a 3.5 or higher.) Because of the types of classes she took, she worked much harder than many classmates with much higher GPA’s. </p>

<p>It is embarrassing to her (and us) when people ask if she would consider investment banking or post-bac pre-med, or law school, or employment with a number of large companies or non-profits that ask for GPA as well as test scores, when she does not have the GPA to get through initial screening.</p>

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<p>“Despise” is a really harsh, silly word. I have been up front about thinking less of kids who merely want to join the super-rich, but to say I “despise” them would be a complete mischaracterization. In the case of the ones I know, I tend to like them and feel as warmly about them as I did when they were babies. I just think that they are looking for themselves in perhaps the wrong places – which is not so different from how I view the dancers, artists, and rock musicians.</p>

<p>And I certainly don’t despise their parents. A lot of the time, the kids who want to be investment bankers are reacting against parental values, much like the Michael J. Fox character on Family Ties. I see that all the time – kids of left-wing academics and do-gooders who want to get rich in part to show their parents what the kids think of the parents’ values. The parents tend to be bemused and a little sheepish at their kids’ rebellion, but supportive nonetheless.</p>

<p>I had a couple of long talks last year with a kid whose parents are an academic and a shrink, and whose sister is a PhD candidate in a humanities field. He was studying finance, and got an internship with a relatively small, high-prestige boutique investment bank I had worked with several times over the years. He was very excited about it (as he should have been). But the actual experience of working there was really a mixed bag. To some extent way more challenging and intellectually exciting than he had expected, but he also saw lots of the downsides of the profession. He wound up taking a long time to decide whether to accept their offer of permanent employment at graduation. It was sweet, actually – it brought him back together with his parents for long talks about what he wanted from life, and how to approach making a big decision like that. He took the job, but simultaneously made a commitment to do substantial volunteer work with a well-known, sometimes controversial nonprofit. And he basically dropped out of his fraternity. When push came to shove, he didn’t really want to live in a world that was devoid of his parents’ values; he wanted some of both.</p>

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<p>There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. The more you make the more you pay in taxes and the more you spend on goods and services, and because of that, the more “good” you’re doing for society. This is capitalism 101, it’s a shame that some people can’t see or understand that. </p>

<p>The money you make is also about the good you do for society. There aren’t non-self interested people out there. People who act altruistic just have different values than those who don’t. They value seeming altruistic over the money they could have instead. It’s just a different kind of “greed.” Everyone wants to be rich in some form, they just don’t all want that wealth to be in money, some want it to be in power or respect from others. </p>

<p>What might be embarrassing is that if someone says they want to go into banking and clearly isn’t capable of it, that is a bit embarrassing because it show they don’t understand what they can do. When I’ve met “pre-meds” who clearly aren’t qualified to go to Med school and become doctors, I’m do think less of them. </p>

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<p>@Vladenschlutte‌ How do you characterize someone as fit or unfit for banking and medicine?</p>

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<p>For unfit, one thing would be someone who is clearly not smart enough. </p>

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<p>Some kids today go to med school with altruistic intentions to heal the world. Then they are forced to chase dollars to pay for the staggering cost of their education. They go into high priced specialties, or work for hospitals or money factory practices that cover their insane malpractice premiums. They learn how to work the system to maximize revenue from insurers and pharma companies. They are still helping people (if you don’t consider the exorbitant cost those people are paying for the help), but they need to rake in the bucks to pay those humongous student loans financed, ironically, by those allegedly-greedy bankers.</p>

<p>BTW, it’s the finance people that make all of the good deeds happen. There are no doctors without student loans, made possible by bankers. Hospitals are huge businesses run by finance people. Charitable foundations are managed by investment professionals. The do-gooders in the world need to realize that nothing happens without money. Simple fact of life. It’s the finance people that make everything else possible.</p>

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<p>" banker and “pre-med” to be just about the two biggest cliches there are for 17-20 y.o., in that both are extremely narrow and competitive fields. More often than not both sets of kids are more than likely consultants after finishing up at a competitive undergrad.
-I do not know much about banker, but D. is in Medical School. None of what you said is applicable to a pre-med. She was in fact on a full tuition Merit award in UG. Pre-meds could be of ANY MAJOR (no restriction, whatsoever, you could be in Conservatory of Music, Medical Schools do not care, including the very top ones), you also could have any combo of major(s)/minor(s). D. had Zoology major / Music Composition Minor / Neuroscience Minor. Is it narrow? Maybe, but she pursued whatever she wished. Most of her pre-med friends graduated with some combo of major(s)/minor(s) and currently are in Medical schools. Another point that is incorrect is that pre-meds DO NOT have to graduate from the competitive undergrad at all, again, Medical Schools do not care, including the very top Med. Schools. D. graduated from public in-state, apllied to very few Med. Schools and got accepted to 4 including couple top 20s.
Again, it maybe all different for a banker, but I was always very proud to announce to anybody who asked that D. is a pre-med. I do not ever hear anything other than that. To be a pre-med is a personal achievement.<br>
On the ohter note, I do not have much respect for non-profits either. Non-profit is an organization that figured out how to conduct the business without paying taxes. Imagine if every single business stopped paying taxes
following their footsteps
very sleakl idea, isn’t?</p>

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<p>Um, Miami 
 you do realize that there is an application procedure that non-profits must go through to be recognized as tax-exempt? The non-profit organizations don’t “figure out how to conduct the business without paying taxes” and then merrily go on their non-tax-paying way.

<a href=“Nonprofit organization - Wikipedia”>Nonprofit organization - Wikipedia;

<p>As a physician, perhaps your daughter might even one day work for one of those (gasp) non-profits. I wouldn’t expect you to recognize the value of what non-profits do, but it is there. </p>

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<p>@MiamiDAP‌ The odds of any pre-med student making it to medical school are very slim, especially so when the student is a 17-19 y.o. “pre-med” student who is years away from being a serious applicant. The odds are even slimmer for students at non peer schools. The majority of med students come from rigorous undergrad institutions. And there’s a correlation between peer undergrad and MCAT performance. So it’s tough to take a “pre-med” student seriously until they’re at the very least college upper class man at a strong college. And even then, many dreams are shattered with a poor MCAT showing. Similarly, many students want to be Wall Street bankers, but it’s one of the most narrow fields of entry. The majority of those wanna-be hot shot bankers will end up working in back office finance or some sort of consulting.</p>

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<p>@ellen3, are you seriously saying that you would be <em>embarrassed</em> to tell people your kid was studying art history? Really??</p>

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<p>I think of pre-med and pre-law a lot like wait-staff in Hollywood. They MIGHT make it big and be a big thing one day, but they are also a dime-a-dozen. Once you have completed law school or med school, (or made your first big movie/TV role) then you can start bragging. </p>

<p>As for the non-profit thing. Now you are assuming that the IRS is an organization that is full of ethical individuals who do not use their power to influence others. Oh, wait. I guess they have done that too. Very naive to think there are not many non-profits out there with various goals that are not really in keeping with the spirit of a non-profit as most Americans would define it. (I apologize for the run-on)</p>

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<p>@ellen3: I think you’re over-generalizing somewhat. I fully understand that the proportion of wannabe docs is high relative to those who will eventually push on fwd, get the GPAs, and good enough MCATs and go thru the med school app process.</p>

<p>You said "The majority of med students come from rigorous undergrad institutions. " I would posit that the majority of med students performed rigorously at undergrad institutions. And that rigorous performers tend to concentrate among a certain band of schools. But many of these performers (and eventual successful med school applicants) attend a wide swath of colleges.</p>

<p>There are 87,400 students enrolled in US med schools <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321526/data/2013factstable26-2.pdf”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321526/data/2013factstable26-2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. In 2011-2012, 19,230 students were admitted out of 43,919 applicants. <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/153708/data/charts1982to2012.pdf”>https://www.aamc.org/download/153708/data/charts1982to2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For your statement to be true, more than half of the approx 19K students each application season, year after year, would have had to graduate from “peer” undergrad schools. I find that to be an untenable number to meet solely from graduates of your “peer” list of schools. An earlier study said approx 45% of students are from the home states of the med school in question. <a href=“Total US medical student numbers constant over decade”>http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/30270.php&lt;/a&gt;. </p>

<p>I would say that the over-representation of successful med school applicants draws from better ranked schools due to their attractiveness to those kids when they were considering which college to enroll at 17 or 18. </p>

<p>Certainly I imagine the avg MCAT score of Princeton students might be higher than the UCSD students who take the same test and Tigers will be accepted at a higher rate. But is it because PTon already pre-sorted the type of student in undergrad admissions before they would take the MCAT 3 or 4 years later? </p>

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<p>Finance is actually pretty broad field, as is medicine.
You could sell stocks or be a tax advisor, raise money for organizations like Kiva or help a drug lord launder theirs.
X_X</p>

<p>I wouldnt ever be embarrassed by my child’s strengths or interests, although I admit if my child was unduly mercenary, that * would* be embarrassing, because I feel that is a reflection of the values with which they were raised, Alex Keaton not withstanding.</p>

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<p>Sources, please. You are coming up with a lot of specious arguments on this thread. </p>

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<p>It seems to me that the standard advice for premeds here is to go to the cheapest respectable undergraduate school where it will be easier to rack up a top GPA.</p>

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<p>My H is an investment banker and I also worked as an attorney for an investment bank for many years. I have never felt embarrassed by our career choices, even in recent years when the banks were under fire. Both careers have served us well in that they provided financial security and the opportunity to live abroad. Although I think the business degree is worth more in the market place than the law degree. The in-house lawyers worked just as hard as the bankers but our total comp didn’t compare.</p>

<p>I agree with Vladenschlutte when he says:"
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. The more you make the more you pay in taxes and the more you spend on goods and services
"</p>