Wow. Thank you so much for this post. Have a rising senior as well (and a rising junior)…trying to get some perspective here…and I like your “comment filtering” thoughts…I am going to utilize as well! Best wishes for as low stress a year as possible.
1 Like
That small a difference does seem a little odd, if the family qualifies for Pell grants, that would help in possibly saving some money after college. Maybe there are some other sources of grants as well from the community or 4-year college for lower-SES students.
There are support programs for low-income and first-gen at community colleges and CSUs/UCs, but there may not be specific pathways based on income, it could be open to all. @Gumbymom @ucbalumnus would probably know more.
One year tuition at our local community college costs 3,986.10. One year tuition at the state flagship costs 10,954. There is a program in Maryland that will pay for community college tuition.
This has been an interesting topic and I agree with a lot of the OP’s points. I think the college admissions process can be easy and straightforward for many families, but I agree that it can be incredibly time consuming and stressful for a lot of kids and parents, especially when financial constraints are involved.
I do feel very fortunate to live in a state where my kids were able to have excellent state flagship options and would have received full tuition at these schools due to the HOPE scholarship. I wish more students had that opportunity (although room and board can still be out of reach for some). When both my kids decided to try for some meets need schools and other big scholarships I knew to warn them that it would be a ton of extra work and that the money might not work out in the end (other parent was not going to be contributing to college costs), but they wanted to try. As unhooked students from a suburban Title 1 school they had a number of things going for them as applicants and happened to be good test takers without much prep, but they also had a very involved parent who was willing to take on a part time job in the evenings researching all aspects of college admissions and guiding the process. I know most kids don’t have this advantage and most of the parents I know have no interest in taking on that challenge even when they have the time. Things worked out very well for both my kids and I’m incredibly thankful, but I definitely felt emotionally exhausted by the end. I now see the ridiculous hoop jumping continuing for my S19, who really only learned about the management consulting internship hunt from his college peers and now feels he has to play the game.
What has happened with college admissions reminds me of changes in so many other aspects of society. You can’t just ask someone to prom anymore, as if that isn’t stressful enough. Promposals, gender reveal parties, insane travel sports schedules, bachelorette weekends, and on and on. Of course all of this, including the college decision, must be creatively documented for social media. So, yes it’s nuts.
16 Likes
Great post. Having several safety safety schools on your list that you would love to attend is one way to reduce the pressure. If you list only includes reaches and matches, the stress level goes way up.
2 Likes
I am a recruiter at KPMG at the Partner level and do not think going to a top school makes a big difference at all. Most of our top candidates and Partners went to state schools and less well known school. A few years ago, Goldman Sachs decided to stop recruiting from top “ivy” schools finding that those from state schools performed better and were harder workers. It’s important that you do well where you go to school but much less important what school you attend. Sincerely.
8 Likes
I have a child working at one of the major investment banks and this didn’t ring true based upon what she has told me about her co-workers. So just for fun, I did a search on LinkedIn for Goldman Sachs analysts working in NYC. Here are where the first ten went to college:
- Columbia (x3)
- MIT (x2)
- Harvard
- Northwestern
- UC-Berkeley
- Dartmouth
- Cornell
The chance of this happening at random are tiny.
It is a true statement that GS does not only hire from the Ivy League. After all, MIT, Northwestern and Berkeley are not part of the Ivy League.
2 Likes
I was curious so I did the same thing and the list of analysts in NYC that came up on my search went to the following schools: UCSD (2), Cornell, Penn State, Drexel, Conn College, Mount Holyoke, NYU. I don’t think you can extrapolate anything from our two searches other than the fact that Goldman hires from a variety of good schools.
That isn’t to say that I don’t think the majority come from Ivy+ - just that it seems like a more varied pool than before.
5 Likes
That’s a surprising list if it’s for investment banking at Goldman. Where my daughter works, the list of colleges looks much more like my list than yours.
To be clear, I think there’s great talent at many places. But one of the reasons that hiring was so concentrated was that Goldman might hire only 100 people each year into investment banking. They didn’t need to go a large number of schools to fill their incoming class. This is vastly different from say Google which may need 5000 graduating students each year, and therefore they need to go to many colleges just to fill their spots.
The days of on campus recruiting (the networking events are still happening) for IB are over, however. Everyone goes through the same HireVue - Superday process now. This has allowed the banks to reach talent at schools where they didn’t traditionally recruit.
3 Likes
Unfortunately the internship hiring timelines aren’t the same across different banks, so that could use some standardization!
I agree that on campus recruiting has decreased dramatically, and already was decreasing pre-pandemic…and not just in banking.
1 Like
My daughter is an analyst at a 2nd tier bank and prefers not to get interns from certain elite colleges as those that she’s had have acted very put out that they had to “settle” for the internship (through no fault of their own, of course), and are very vocal about it being a necessary annoyance on their way up to E&Y, KPMG, GS, etc. She’s always happy when they leave.
I have talked with a number of people over the years whose experience is people from certain schools spend a lot of time talking about how they will do great things and people from other schools just come in and do great things.
10 Likes
I am pretty sure that Goldman has a lot more than 10 analysts in their investment banking division so I am not sure how scientific your study is.
Separately, it is important to remember that few analysts make it to Associate or VP without going to business school. Getting that first job in banking does not mean that a grad is on their way to negotiating multi-billion dollar deals. VP and MD are client facing jobs and it helps IBanks to have people in those positions that have actually worked in the industry of the client.
Finally, I would strongly recommend to anyone that wants a career in investment banking to carefully consider whether they want to spend their early and mid 20’s working 100 hour weeks. There are a lot of ways to make decent money and still enjoy your 20’s. One of the reasons that so many non-analysts end up as VP’s and MD’s at I-Banks is because so many analysts get burned out.
3 Likes
It’s not, mainly because LinkedIn limits how many profile views I can view to find out where the investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs went to college. If I had the ability to view more, I would have. However, the profile I presented is similar to the profile at my daughter’s investment bank.
What you said certainly was true, but it’s changing. At two top investment banks, after two to three years as Analyst, strong performers are offered the position of Associate without having to go to business school. No idea if getting to VP requires business school, but Associate does not.
This I mostly agree with. But note that Analyst is only a two year stint. What’s after that depends largely upon his or her goals. If the goal is megafund PE, then yes the analyst goes from one 80+hour job to another. But there are lots of career paths that are 60 hours a week or less.
Disagree. The primary reason is because most analysts have zero interest in making a career at an investment bank, and they know that going in. It’s a very useful stepping stone, in the same way that consulting for a few years at MBB is a very useful stepping stone. The fact that they know it will be over is what allows them to put up with 80+ hour weeks.
But last year was different, in that covid eliminated the separation between work and home. Pre-covid, an analyst could end up going home at 1AM, but they knew that they free until they got back to work the next morning. With covid, analysts were expected to be available continuously.
While this was a problem industry-wide, Goldman was the worst offender, with 100+ hour work weeks being routine, which led to analyst burnout making the news. You have to realize that prior to last year, Goldman paid the least and worked analysts the hardest. But most people who got a Goldman offer took it because of the great exit paths. After the burnout scenario Goldman changed its compensation so that it actually paid the most (although some others have since matched). Base salary went up by about 35% in one year. No info yet on what the workload looks like, but it’s only been about a month.
2 Likes