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<p>Yes. It was difficult.</p>
<p>Really all that much different than those of us who worked in corporate America and lived through acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs, etc? It would never occur to me that it was something that others should feel sympathy for – just kind of life in the big city.</p>
<p>One of my very good/old friends was very involved with the Lehman indices. She personally felt it was priceless, something couldn’t just be bought. She loved her work there.</p>
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<p>Pretty sure you could trace a lot of big Wall Street failures back to HBS and Wharton…and a number of these schools’ esteemed graduates are also responsible for the financial mess we still face today.</p>
<p>don’t forget about their friends in the white house.</p>
<p>Wow, if you don’t want to go into finance or consulting, it’s actually no big deal. And there’s plenty of viable careers other than that.</p>
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<p>As popular as Ivy-bashing (which has shifted from “they’re not soo much better” to “they’re good, but their graduates lack morals!”) is in some parts of CC, this is a gross misrepresentation. Madoff? Hofstra. Allen Stanford (another major fraud)? Baylor. Dick Fuld (CEO of Lehman)? U of Colorado, then NYU (not so good back then). Jimmy Cayne (CEO of Bear)? Purdue. Heck, if we go back to Enron and Worldcom, Ken Lay was from U of Missouri and Bernard Ebbers (who for whatever reason has much less name recognition) hailed from Mississippi College. Kerviel, the Socgen rogue trader who nearly singlehandedly blew up faith in the robustness of the French banking system, went to Lumiere University Lyon 2 - I don’t know French institutions, but that doesn’t sound particularly prestigious. We can go all day. Don’t reserve crookedness for HBS/Wharton alums.</p>
<p>And for the record, I’m not even an Ivy alum.</p>
<p>It’s not about Ivy bashing. Everyone acknowledges that there is a high concentration of Ivy grads at “top” Wall street firms. At the very top there is a small but globally influential group (many affiliated with GS) that is connected to the Greek banking crisis, among other worldwide financial problems.</p>
<p>People can’t have it both ways–putting HBS/Wharton on a pedestal but not looking at the accomplishments of their grads in the real world. It’s not JUST about making money.</p>
<p>As I said in another thread: “So what?” Who wants a job being an economic parasite?</p>
<p>Thanks, collectivesynergy. That post deserved a rep point!</p>
<p>To answer Proudpatriot’s question: “Well those of you that have kids at “lower” tier school what has your child’s experience been?”</p>
<p>My kid could walk out of her college right now and earn a decent living. She is a Theater Tech major and has been turning down stagehand work that doesn’t fit her schedule since enrolling in college two years ago.</p>
<p>If it is imperative that you work in the narrow list of career fields described in that article, then perhaps a particular academic pedigree matters. For anything else the rules are different.</p>
<p>As an economic parasite, D1 is helping many consumer companies raise money so they could create more jobs for people in this country. As an economic parasite, I have made housing a lot more available for average Joes. It is unfortunate people’s greed and sense of entitlement got better of them.</p>
<p>Wait, dont all the IB guys on CC say that Darthmouth and UMI are big IB getters? Doesnt BYU and Notre Dame get a great deal of consulting jobs? This article seems to have just taken the Harvard Yale and then the rest approach. It just seems to perpetuate the myths that only Harvard and Yale matter.</p>
<p>@TheGFG - Thanks :P</p>
<p>@sally305 - But that’s not really being fair, is it? That’s like saying MIT engineers are responsible for more forced redesigns and cost overruns on the F-35 than any other, or Stanford/UCB grads are responsible for more startup failures than any other. When you make up a high percentage in any field, you simply will yield more mistakes. It’s just that mistakes at the managing level of a financial firm are far more visible than the engineering team forgetting to test the tail hook on the Navy version of the F-35, for example.</p>
<p>^I don’t think it’s the same thing at all. Presumably MIT engineers set out to build the fastest, safest aircraft they can, to maximize the government’s investment, keep pilots safe, and contribute to our national defense. There is no advantage to them in behaving selfishly or without regard for the collective good.</p>
<p>Today’s financial industry is different. The “greed and entitlement” oldfort mentions–as well as the callous disregard for people who have been hurt by flawed financial instruments, risky lending strategies, and so on–have led directly to a world of hurt for a lot of people. It has been “I’ll get mine…screw the rest of you” since the very beginning. And it’s the same thing with the corporate CEOs who raid pension funds, pass costs onto workers, and outsource jobs to further their own greed.</p>
<p>Sally–Like</p>
<p>World of hurt, hmmm. I make a middle class salary, but I really want a mcmasion. I know with my middle school math I could figure out that I couldn’t afford it, and with my high school reading comprehension I could understand that the loan agreement says it is a teaser rate and the rate could really double in few years. Oh, but wait, my banker tells me that I could afford it because as long as my salary continues to go up then I’ll be able to make my mortgage payment. Guess what I do? I buy that mcmasion. </p>
<p>I am a small time asset manager for a company. I really want to make those extra spreads so I could get a decent bonus at year end, but I really don’t want to do any hard work to analyze those derivatives, so I am going to trust those bankers to do the analysis for me. I know I really have no business in buying those derivatives, I know I should stick with more of those plain vanilla securities, but I look really cool and smart playing with some of those big boys, plus it is really not my money, and everyone is doing it.</p>
<p>Wall Street - if there is a buyer then I can be a seller.</p>
<p>It is not my fault.</p>
<p>Oldfort, you can’t win this argument, right now. ;)</p>
<p>Congratulations to your daughter on her success, btw. That’s fantastic. I hope she is finding a little bit more time to herself this year.</p>
<p>I think on both sides there’s a misunderstanding of what finance does. </p>
<p>Look I value what an awful lot of finance does. IB helps companies find the money to do useful projects. The traders make markets to greatly enhance liquidity in the markets so that if you need to sell you have the ability to, a great benefit. I think PE helps to put pressure on companies to make them run more efficiently, creative destruction, it creates value. What I think the average person in the public thinks finance involves, and what I do actually have a bit of a problem with is prop trading. Now they don’t know it as prop trading they know it as “privatize profits and make public the losses” but there is more than a grain of truth in the idea that there is something wrong with it. If there’s a potential for you to be bailed out you should not be doing prop trading, period. The attempts to water-down the Volcker rule, and the potential for hedge funds (LTCM comes to mind) to be bailed out are things that should be addressed. It’s unfortunate that the debate all too often comes down to calling people in an entire field parasites.</p>
<p>Jono, though i hesitate to wander into this debate, let me just say the problem is not “prop” trading, the problem is bailing out large institutions when they lose money. The US government cannot backstop financial losses for the big guys and leave everyone else on their own.</p>
<p>Take a look at how Iceland handled the financial meltdown and the fact that they are up and running economically in a way few western countries are, and you will see that the problem comes about from oligarchic practices, not from trading itself.</p>
<p>End rant/</p>