<p>Alexandre -- I think you missed UCLA... my answer to the question would have been much like yours -- in general, any of the Top 30 national unis, and any of the top 15 LACs.</p>
<p>Don't forget UNC-CH, it has a top 5 undergraduate business school.</p>
<p>The totally unacceptable, unethical, greedy, contemptable behavior of IBankers and Financial institutions in the recent months (lavish parties, huge bonuses), after they were so generously bailed out by the already-struggling taxpayer, makes me sick. I am disgusted beyond words= Alexandre</p>
<p>Well, I have news for you. The unacceptable, unethical, greedy and contemptable behavior was not just Ibankers and Financial institutions, it was thousands of lawyers and law firms that provided them the legal framework to conduct themselves in such manner, it was a completely contemptable Congress who deregulated WallStreet over a 20 year timeframe-often for filthy lobbyist money and other "perks", and it was done for decades, not just the last few months.</p>
<p>While I am a strong supporter of a free market and capitalist economy, we lost our souls somewhere along the way to untold riches and ultimately that is the giant bubble that just blew up. Where we go from here is anybody's guess. We just don't know. IBanking firms with a heritage of over 100 years are gone. Destroyed. Mergers that swallowed up trillions of toxic assets. How did this happen? Because we left the fundamentals. Years ago you had to prove your income to a banker, pledge your assets as collateral and the banker kept the loan inhouse and depended on your monthly payments for them to get paid and make money. Once they created "derivatives" and "options" and "swaps" and "hedges" we lost our souls. The Devil doesnt come in the door wearing a Red Suit and carrying a Fiery Pitch Fork. He comes dressed in an Armani suit, driving an Maserati and bilking retirees and widows, not to mention millions of hard working Americans of their hard earned money in fraudulent investment schemes, rating subprime mortgages as AAA debt. </p>
<p>We lost our souls when lawyers stopped representing indigent people (except in a nefarious and narcissistic effort to book "probono hours and look pretty in the community") and instead defined success by how many IPO's they worked on or M & A deals or other SEC related mumbo jumbo. All schemes to take easy money from unsuspecting investors and give it to the uber rich.</p>
<p>When lawyers drafted insidious Executive Compensation Contracts which were approved by Boards of Directors. All of which was yet another scheme to take money from the shareholders and give it to the privileged few so they could buy yet another vacation home in South Beach, the Hamptons, Orange County....or Antigua.</p>
<p>Is that what "college is all about?" How much money you can make at the expense of others? Apparently so.</p>
<p>People poo-poo someone who says, "I want to study Medieval History and go to graduate school." But praise someone who says, "I want to work on WallStreet and make 10 million dollars.....a YEAR!"</p>
<p>See the pattern here?</p>
<p>But the new world order will re-regulate our society for us, since we have done a miserable job of self regulating. And part of that was because we became all too wrapped up in prestige and what college we went to and how much money the average student makes upon graduation.</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I don't agree with the approach, but Wall Street is not about to change hiring practices. People seem to think the firms have disappeared and all of the employees are gone. As you pointed out in an earlier thread, this is not true.</p>
<p>Sure, there will be more regulation, and frankly, the folks in M & A mostly welcome putting the breaks on the out of control areas of banks.</p>
<p>But even this year, the resumes continue to flow from HYPSMDD and company.</p>
<p>And in all fairness, the profile of the student body at top colleges has changed dramatically over the years. They now have kids who would have been at other schools in past generations, so the pool is pretty diverse.</p>
<p>If you look at areas of the bank where things truly went wrong, you'll see a lot of employees from tech backgrounds that were not the typical, historical nepotism hire from HYP.</p>
<p>And the greed? That was going on in companies of all sizes and flavors. It was boom time from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to board rooms in the MW.</p>
<p>Someone who had worked on Wall Street for four years told me that McGill is one of the universities which Wall Street thinks highly of.</p>
<p>However, I cannot confirm this firsthand. I was at McGill to study a field which I had hoped would lead to Wall Street. But after learning more about Wall Street, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it. Partly as a result, I left McGill and went back to my previous field. (This happened a couple years before the financial crisis started.)</p>
<p>Hmom,
I’m not surprised at all that HYPSMDD continue to flood the Street with resumes. College seniors and juniors have spent the past few years building resumes demonstrating that they have the right stuff to be hired by ABC Elite I-bank. This is all that they have known in their college years and many probably haven’t got a Plan B. </p>
<p>Hiring patterns may not change from the Wall Street side and the firms will likely return to the same predictable places that they always have gone to, but I wonder at the reception that they will get there. Wall Street’s self-inflicted wounds have cost it plenty of prestige at large, but the interesting pattern for me will be whether the elite college freshman/sophomore will dedicate himself/herself to the pursuit of Wall Street at anywhere near the same rate as the upperclassmen. My hunch is, barring a quick recovery in the financial markets, they won’t.</p>
<p>It will be interesting Hawkette, all of us on WS saw how quickly we could be abandoned during the dot com boom. But now where will they go? Based on the friend's of my freshmen DS at a target school, it will take longer than the current crop of students to really see the impact.</p>
<p>HYPSMDD, what's the DD??</p>
<p>^ I would guess those were Duke and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Strange that hmom5 (a Penn/Wharton alum) would leave out her own epic alma mater...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I’m not surprised at all that HYPSMDD continue to flood the Street with resumes. College seniors and juniors have spent the past few years building resumes demonstrating that they have the right stuff to be hired by ABC Elite I-bank. This is all that they have known in their college years and many probably haven’t got a Plan B.
[/quote]
Too true, hawkette. Too true. This is one of those rare times in which I am in agreement with you ;)</p>
<p>Though I would wager that the consensus Plan B emerging is applying into consulting, as that is the next best existing framework of status, hierarchy, and prestige that we Ivy types are programmed to seek out!</p>
<p>Wharton goes without saying:) </p>
<p>Consulting has always been there as a rival. Those firms are hurting as much as ibanks and are hiring far fewer too.</p>
<p>The best and brightest await the next big thing as always!</p>
<p>Hmom5, if you don't mind me asking what bank do you work for? With my limited knowledge of wall street isn't the crisis disproportionally affecting certain banks over others?</p>
<p>And why do people go into business? Is it all about money or for some love of business?</p>
<p>Dbate, I prefer not to disclose my employer. Yes, some banks are no longer with us and some have been hit harder than others. The majority of bankers are still employed.</p>
<p>Think about the variety of jobs that exist under the umbrella of business. Would all of those folks do these jobs just for the money? </p>
<p>As for me, I've loved almost every day of my many year in banking. In a nutshell, I've worked all over the world with fascinating people to create or contribute to some incredible companies. What's not to love?</p>
<p>I don't know, for a really long time I considered going into business but my love for science inclined me to follow engineering or a natural science to leave my options open for a PhD or management. To it just seemed that business was more for the monetary benefit as opposed to love for the field, but i guess to each his own. I had the option of being auto admitted to a top business school (McCombs) but decided against it for the above. My future goals are not set in stone so business could still be in my future, but it seems so much like a professional job that i didn't want to go straight to business as an undergrad. </p>
<p>Wouldn't all that travel begin to be really stressful? My friend's mom is an executive for Shell and she has to travel to the Netherlands for about half the month each year. It seemed to me that while young travel like this would be great but for a family it would be harsh.</p>
<p>Everyone has their calling. One of my son's is in a PhD program at MIT. He studied both engineering and business as an undergrad and still isn't sure what he want to do. He has crazy parents who keep paying for his education, so he now wants and MBA too!</p>
<p>"This is all that they have known in their college years and many probably haven’t got a Plan B."</p>
<p>It could be much worse. Their preferred career choice, namely I-Banking, may be unavailable. But at least they obtained a well-rounded education at some of the most rigorous universities in the country. They also had positive experiences which resulted in personal growth. Thus, people who attended top schools in the hope of becoming I-Bankers still have many excellent, satisfying career options.</p>
<p>The dot.com collapse was somewhat like the current crisis in the financial industry. The dot.com industry collapsed within the space of a couple months at most, ultimately bringing down the IT industry as a whole. People who took Computer Science courses to prepare for IT careers were in far worse shape than people who hoped to be I-Bankers. Computer Science education is highly focused and, as a result, doesn't translate well to other fields. Some of us had nowhere to go.</p>
<p>Take3,
I think you are right that students coming from the top schools will have many options post-graduation, but this is true for far more than just the historically-favored colleges of the I-banking industry. There are great colleges and great students to be found all over the USA and most employers don't have the same preoccupation with prestige that the I-banking industry had fallen into. In fact, I would contend that the vast majority of employers see much narrower differences among the colleges than is usually propagandized here on CC.</p>
<p>It's an interesting question to consider how employers view schools. Again, the dot com boom gave us some insight. When the jobs are high paying and cutting edge, employers seem to head for the same few targets. They literally snatched the usual suspects from ibanking and consulting overnight.</p>
<p>hawkette-- I think that in some ways, the differences are narrower, and in other ways, they're wider.</p>
<p>In some of these "elite" areas top students are dime-a-dozen, but in many other walks of life to have someone who was not educated at the closest couple of universities is a rarity, forget about an elite institution. It has a lot of pull in some of these less commonly occupied niches in my experience.</p>
<p>hmom,
I would agree with you about the very top tier of America's colleges as a few have enormous appeal for their name alone, ie, HYPSM and I'd add DD and Wharton. But who started the ball rolling for these top students going to the "hot" areas? Did the employers decide to start going to HYPSM or did some of the smart cookies at these places figure out that there was great oppportunity in the field and they reached out and got involved? I think it might be more of the latter. </p>
<p>Translated to today's world, many elite-college students will deduce that I-banking is not the gravy train it once was and will seek greener pastures. The I-bank response will be interesting. Given that some of their onetime top candidates are now possibly heading in other directions, I'm not sure how (if at all) the I-banks will adjust their recruiting. IMO, a wise I-bank would extend their reach to a broader universe of colleges, including many publics and top privates far from the NE. I think that the blind spot of Wall Street would be reduced and that Wall Street firms might be pleasantly surprised at how many intelligent, effective students there are at less renown colleges all across the USA. </p>
<p>melody,
Not sure I understand what you are saying, but I think you're implying that elite college brands have premium value in areas with low concentrations of elite grads. Right? Maybe, but I suspect that these areas don't attach a lot of prestige to these (or other) brands in the first place. More importantly, I know that no one will give a hoot after a few weeks on the job. Either the person can perform or they can't, elite degree or not.</p>