<p>I what sense are Bain and BCG going “down the ‘list’ quite a bit”? I looked at their recruiting list and it was mainly a bunch of colleges whose student profiles have a huge overlap with those of HYPS (including a few tippy-top public universities with world-class academics and significant blocs of HYP-able students), and maybe a handful of outliers (e.g., BYU, NYU, SMU) whose targeted appeal draws significant numbers of the type of student the companies want. Remember, they don’t have to be hiring 100, or even a dozen graduates at each of those colleges to make the trip worthwhile, and they are not hiring a representative sample of the student body at any of them. The article doesn’t tell you how many kids get hired where.</p>
<p>In other words – and speaking as a convicted elitist – that list is a list of elite colleges, and no one should pretend otherwise. Only the utterly naive could believe that four or five colleges essentially constitute an oligopoly of the Establishment. The Establishment exists, sort of; it’s just a little broader and more porous than that.</p>
<p>My kid took it, too. I know what they teach in that calculus. Compared to what kids in other countries are exposed in their calculus, our calculus is more like a warm-up, not a course. We may produce 100-200% more STEM majors than we need but they are not competitive. 100 half ripe apples don’t translate to 50 fully ripe edible apples. You still don’t have a single edible apple.</p>
<p>You mean the typical calculus AB or non-AP calculus courses offered at many US high schools?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“STEM” is not monolithic in terms of supply and demand. Currently, biology and computer science graduates have widely different job prospects at graduation.</p>
<p>Hey Canuckguy I don’t know what BCG and Bain does mate. I am sorry. But in my decade long experience at McK it was always the elites for BAs and the top MBA, med school, law school, PhD programs for associates. </p>
<p>The lack of Calc knowledge on part of my fellow students during MBA really bugged me. It held back the whole class especially in Micro and Option Theory. And this was in the best freaking finance program in the USA! For shame, man, those students should have gone to HBS and done case studies all day long.</p>
<p>More like calc AB. My kid took calc BC at a rigorous prep school. Even then, I remember thinking when are they going to teach real stuff. </p>
<p>Are most 100-200% more STEM majors than needed referring to biology? I had hard science in mind, the kind competing jobs with overseas scientists.</p>
<p>BTW, on the undergrad level, one of Bain/BCG (I forget which) tends to recruit more locally (for example, UIUC, IU, and UW-Madison for the Chicago office as well as Northwestern, UChicago, WashU and UMich), but for associates, McKinsey vists even more campuses than Bain or BCG (which makes sense since McK is much bigger).</p>
<p>Hey PurpleTitan, associate recruiting is a whole another ball game as only half the starting McK class are MBAs, the rest have advanced degrees like PhDs etc. Many schools have stronger grad programs than undergrads. McK just wants the smartest of the smartest, and doesn’t care for race or gender or whatever. It’s an amazing place for the super smart and a miserable place for anyone else. </p>
<p>Biology is the largest of the STEM majors, producing far more graduates than who will find good biology jobs (many end up in low paid lab technician jobs). The chemistry job market is not that great either. Physics graduates often do not end up in physics jobs (even after the usually-needed PhD), but they are sometimes valued in other jobs as “smart people who can handle math/CS” (I know far more physics graduates writing software than biology graduates, even though physics is a much smaller major than biology). However, demand for engineering and CS graduates is generally better, although subject to economic and industry cycles.</p>
<p>^ Something is not clear there. It’s not quite clear that MNG/MNLG means Master of Engineering, a terminal degree at MIT. The abbreviation “MEng” was clearly used in the rest of the document. Secondly, does it make sense that the master degree holders (63) in categories Computer Hardware and Computer Software make more than EECS MEng if they did not major in EECS? </p>
<p>Regardless, page 7 of the same document shows that Google is one of the top employers of 21 MIT grads (10 Bachelors, 6 Masters, 5 MBAs - PhDs are not included). On the other hand, a large group of MIT grads are more interested to work for McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sacs, Morgan Stanley, Boston Consulting than to work for Google, Apple, Oracle,… in the Bay area - 78 or more (19 Bachelors, 14 Masters, 45 MBAs).</p>
<p>Corollary: [bold]Top school graduates don’t care about working for Google.[/bold]</p>
<p>In other words there are shortages in some field which are filled with H1B hires? There goes the claim foreign scientists are hired because they are cheap. Why do people bring that claim up again and again?</p>
<p>Rather simplistic conclusion, I may say. 45 that goes to finance are MBAs. More appropriate conclusion would be MBAs rather work for finance/consulting firms. No surprise there.</p>
<p>^ 17% of Bachelors and 28% of Masters work for finance and consulting firms. And 43% of Masters working for finance/consulting firms are not MBAs.</p>
<p>Finance and consulting are completely different animals even though the statistics lump them together. The hiring criteria for a job with a regional bank as a middle market lending officer (or a trainee in any of their commercial or retail banking divisions) are so different from what it takes to even get an initial interview at Credit Suisse or DE Shaw or Bridgewater. Lumping together makes for nice newspaper headlines since it makes as seem as though every kid in America is pricing derivatives or developing currency hedging strategies instead of doing “real work”. </p>
<p>@igloo. The reason people continue to discuss the abuses of the H1B is because there are abuses of the H1B. It’s not a simple issue, and those who are using the H1Bs are not necessarily using them in the way they were intended. If you think they are not being used to drive down wages, you are wrong. Yes there are places where they are necessary, but not in the way that they are used.</p>
<p>Stand around long enough and wring your hands over the state of our tech grads and you will create your own reality. America is not a country full of idiots or uneducated dolts, no matter what dire news the media likes to bring you in order to get you to 'tune in."</p>
<p>H1Bs can be useful, for sure, and necessary in some cases, but that is NOT the only way they are being used. It’s not black and white. Nothing is.</p>