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Zero percent of people show up at the Ivy League saying they want to be an I-banker, but 25 and 30 percent leave thinking that its their calling, he said. The banks have really perfected, over the last three decades, these large recruitment machines.
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<p>At</a> Top Colleges, Anti-Wall St. Fervor Complicates Recruiting - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>The 99% includes a lot of twenty-somethings who would like to step into the 1%.</p>
<p>If more people knew what jobs in investment banking are really like, I think the attitudes would be different.</p>
<p>Yes, you earn a salary that is unusually high for a new graduate. But what isn’t widely publicized is the extraordinarily long hours that these young people work – so long that it is not only impossible to have any kind of a life outside of work, it is impossible to get enough sleep to function properly. </p>
<p>I can see why a young person with great physical energy and large student loans to pay back might do this for a few years. But I can’t see why anyone else would.</p>
<p>Students who are protesting never could/would get a job in an IB. I don’t believe the sentiment will turn IBanker wanna-bes away. Truth of the matter is that there just won’t be as many jobs for them.</p>
<p>Many IBs are cutting back on recruiting due to budget cut, they are also letting many senior managers to save money. In a few years there will be a void, it is a good opportunity for kids who are entering now. There will be more opportunities when they are ready to move up.</p>
<p>I love how members of the 1%, whose parents and grandparents have earned the large sums of money on Wall Street with which to pay their tuition at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford, are the ones protesting. My middle class children are not among them, since they truly appreciate the generous financial aid they’ve received–money no doubt supplied in part from donations from investment bankers. In addition, they actually need a job after graduation, since they will have educational loans to pay off and no trust fund to fall back on. Further, if non-profit companies or thinktanks ever came to recruit, my kids would have gladly interviewed with them too. But do the activists realize that the alternative career options for Ivy Leaguers they love to tout–like Teach for America–are sponsored by corporate donations? </p>
<p>I read some OWS-supporting comments by college presidents and think they had better shut their hypocritical mouths. They are stupidly biting the hand that feeds them.</p>
<p>Could not agree more.</p>
<p>Yale’s endowment probably puts it in the top 1/2 of 1%. I’m sure they’ll announce their endowment sharing plan shortly.</p>
<p>TheGFG - well said. We are in the same situation and feel the same as you.</p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine how those Yale students could have made it to Yale without benefitting from the fruits of Wall Street, and how they can justify consuming Yale’s vast and bountiful resources without being hypocrites.</p>
<p>It is a free country. Everyone is free to say or do whatever they please, within the confines of the law. Usually, folks vote with the feet on career selections. Nobody can change that. The only way, however, is to make the Wall Street job pays $7.50 an hour. The scenario I am not holding my breath waiting for.</p>
<p>It ain’t 0%, at least not at Harvard, and certainly not at Wharton. I knew freshmen who hoped to go into banking from the word go. Yes, the ease of the recruiting system attracts more students than just that group, but this guy is way overstating the case.</p>
<p>Where did they get that statistic? Certainly they’ve never been on CC. Exhibit A:
[Investment</a> Banking - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/investment-banking/]Investment”>Investment Banking - College Confidential Forums)
Many students posting on that board are in high school.</p>
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<p>While a few members of the 1% may exist, they do not make up the vast majority of protesters. For starters, it would be mathematically impossible if you think about it. </p>
<p>Secondly, since when does accepting financial aid that is provided through a mix of alumni donations and other forms of institutionally derived income makes one beholden to show servile forms of respect to powerful wealthy individuals/corporate institutions reminiscent of feudal relationships or worse…expected to worship them as if they ruled by divine right…no dissent/criticisms allowed? </p>
<p>More importantly, does donation by the powerful wealthy individuals/corporate institutions automatically earn them the right to be exempt from all dissent/criticism from those who benefit directly/indirectly from them? Sorry, but I don’t think that mentality passes the critical thinking nor the mark of a true-blue American smell test IMHO. </p>
<p>In fact, that’s the very mentality that Americans starting 200+ years ago were trying to escape in Europe and other foreign countries dominated by monarchs, aristocrats, and other tyrants. Thought we lived in a free country where we have not only the right…but a duty to criticize our government and powerful elite in both the public and private sectors if and when they have wrongs or outright harmed the interests of some/all citizens. </p>
<p>As an older former supervisor once lamented…Americans holding this mentality are proof that the US K-12 shouldn’t have abolished the teaching of civics that he had in the 1960’s-70’s</p>
<ul>
<li>King/higher lord - vassal, Aristocracy - commoners/serfs, etc</li>
</ul>
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<p>Seconded with the possible modification of the last to “of just reasonable laws”. After all, we’ve had morally/ethically unjust/unconscionable laws on our books historically*</p>
<ul>
<li>I.e. Slavery, Jim Crow, Sundown towns, school segregation, sedition laws derived from XYZ affair, etc…and some of these unethical/morally unconscionable laws were not restricted to the South as popularly believed.</li>
</ul>
<p>There are statistically far more of the 1% at the elite schools mentioned in the article than at the local state school, that’s for certain. And since my D experienced several protests at campus recruiting events recently, she happens to personally know some of the students-- you know, the ones with the vacation homes in Lake Tahoe who spent their summers hanging out there and not working.</p>
<p>Secondly, none of what I said implied mindless servility or the rest of the feudal nonsense you spouted. I simply appreciate capitalism as an imperfect system, but better than any other on earth. The nature of these protests reminds me of scenes in Atlas Shrugged.</p>
<p>There is plenty of hypocrasy to go around on all sides of this kind of question. At least on college campuses, the “Occupy” movement is (in my opinion) just the latest manifestation of a phase of youth anti-establishment rebellion, and is basically (again in my opinion) healthy. It will soon recede (also, in my opinion) with modest overall impact.</p>
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<p>Interesting how you cited a book by Ayn Rand…an author well-known for upholding absolute selfishness as a virtue and against any form of social welfare…including social security as contrary to her ideals of a perfect society. </p>
<p>It’s doubly ironic considering you point out OWS protestors’ supposed hypocrisy. In her last days, she ended up relying on the very public welfare programs she so vociferously denounced in her writings…</p>
<p>[Michael</a> Ford: Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers | HuffPost Latest News)</p>
<p>Totally agree with Hanna and Chedva…there is a large number of students who know even from h.s. that they want to be investment bankers (in all reality without really knowing much about it other than the fact that it is very lucrative) and therefore try to go to “target” recruitment schools. Obviously Wharton is an outlier, I remember freshman year that a good 20%+ of my class knew coming in that they wanted to be bankers (by senior year 50%+ of the class goes to wall street) and then go into private equity…but from my h.s. class most of the people that went to Ivies + Stanford / MIT, etc. went because they knew this was the “easiest” route to get recruited to go into banking where they would make good money - where else can you make up to $150K your first year out of college and setting you up to go to a hedge fund or private equity shop after 2 years and make close to $300K (and yes this is pretty standard for 1st year associates, 2 years out of school, at top tier PE shops)?</p>
<p>There is some irony in Yale students protesting against their colleagues going to work for an industry that could really use some fresh brilliant minds to turn things around.</p>
<p>While there may be typical generational rebellion involved, I would like to point out that these students are often protesting against their own recently-employed peers. At one event D attended, the assistant recruiter for the bank was a 2010 grad. At yesterday’s event, the gentleman was a bit older but still 20-something. Excuse me, but aren’t successful alumni networks one of the big advantages of attending HYPS? Why create a hostile environment for alumni who want to hire current students, no matter what the industry. Is the economy so wonderful we can afford this? These companies are already paring down their campus visits, according to the article. S attended Dartmouth and heard that last year’s on-campus recruiting was much less abundant than his graduation year, which was less than the year before.</p>
<p>Come now, cobrat, there’s nary a writer or philospher whose private life is exemplary and void of all hypocrisy. They’re a sorry bunch as far as personal lives are concerned.</p>
<p>Cobrat…thanks for the link.</p>
<p>Just to add insult to injury . . . we got a chuckle out of this:</p>
<p>[This</a> Game Can’t Be Rigged. Supposedly. - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>