<p>"Hence, I certainly understand why companies tend to prefer to hire people who will not demand what they probably deserve, but are content with a mediocre work conditions and mediocre pay. The real problem is that those people are not only willing to submit to those conditions, but even deride as undeserving cultural misfits those who aren’t willing to submit. "</p>
<p>Sakky, for someone arguing against assumptions on this thread, you sure ended with a whopper of one. </p>
<p>FWIW, I meant no disrespect to Ivy kids by saying they expect higher salaries than my company offers to recent grads. I’m simply repeating what an HR vice president told me when I questioned him about where they recruit. He said they had way too many Ivy grads turning down the job offers at our company – and citing more competitive offers from other firms as the primary reason – to justify the expense of flying recruiters back east. Maybe in the recession, our recruiters’ experience would be different. But that was very much the case when the company recruiting process was established several years ago.</p>
<p>Well, it looks from stats at Harvard that virtually all Harvard grads who try for a job have a job upon graduation, fwiw. I think many – like mine – are headed on to additional postgrad education.</p>
<p>Those leaping onto this “analysis” with glee might want to review their stats backgrounds a bit. The sheer numbers of public grads dwarfs Ivys . . . might that have a little something to do with the presumed finding. Also, there is the question of yield. Many Fortune 100s don’t recruit Ivys because they tend not to get Ivy grads.</p>
<p>Bright, accomplished people are going to want careers which offer them autonomy, intellectual challenge, and for lack of a better word-space. That is why the majority of an elite college class are going to be medical specialists, lawyers, tenure track academnicians, diplomats, and Wall Street traders, analysts and bankers. A highly strucutured corporate environment would be anathema to most of the class. Corporations know this and know that they will not find students in the numbers they want to recruit with the right attitude at the best schools. So it is not surprising at all that a top 25 list would have only one Ivy in it. </p>
<p>Sure, and money has everything to do with it. All the occupations listed above have comp that blows away the structure for the vast majority of employees at large corporations. Especially when the tax favored retirement plans they offer are considered.</p>
<p>People working for large corporations generally don’t get paid very well and live in fear that on any given day they open the Wall treet Journal and find that their firm is the next target of the leveraged buyout kings at Blackstone or Carlyle and that a ten year record of perfomance reviews only sets the person up to be one of the first out the door.</p>
<p>A large corporation to maximize profits pays a small set of executives an extraordinary amount of money and publicizes the comp to rope in tens of thousands of suckers who give blood to ultimately, for most part in 21st century America, get screwed as they follow their dreams into the abyss of the “pay for performance” structure and the team building sessions. Licensed profesionals go through life with stability.</p>
<p>how about the Stanford sophomore who was just offered a lucrative position at youtube, it was front page news yesterday on cnn. The guy who developed the iphone was hired by Steve Jobs while he was still a student at stanford.</p>
<p>the point is at elites there are more than a few very bright kids who are very industrious, and find excellent employment while they are still students. and a whole bunch that find excellent appointment right after graduation. </p>
<p>I think people are missing the point of the WSJ article. It is not to say that students at Ivy League schools do not have plenty of professional options, but rather, that a lot of organized corporate recruitment activity takes place on the campuses of major public universities, such as Penn State and UIUC. I don’t think that’s too much of a stretch, although such a concept would be practically sacrilegious to many on these boards.</p>
<p>The significance of this WSJ list has been blown up WAY out of proportion. It has spawned about five separate threads on CC. Somehow the fact that recruiters like to set up shop on campuses with several thousand graduates to talk to has become a commentary on public schools versus Ivy League schools. This is asinine. I think Alexandre captured the gist of this appropriately.</p>
<p>Really – like being a newbie at a bank is appreciably any different from being a newbie in a corporate job. Either way you’ll be doing grunt work and working your tail off. LOL that it’s somehow “less structured.”</p>
<p>Besides, how dreary that some of these students apparently attend elite schools where “everyone” wants the same 5 jobs. What, no musicians? Artists? actors? Future clergy members? psychologists? Educators? Art historians? What boring places these must be.</p>
<p>I think the article also points to whether the career svcs dept is strong - PSU made a big point to talk about the huge career fairs they have and also the strength of their alumni network. My (ok, long time ago) LAC didn’t do much to prepare grads for getting jobs and had very little on campus recruiting of any sort.</p>
<p>33 - "no musicians? Artists? actors? Future clergy members? psychologists? Educators? Art historians? "</p>
<p>There are of course (sorry if take your post unsarcastically, but I have a point) folks with such aspirations at Ivies, at state schools, and at non-ivy privates. </p>
<p>however most of those folks arent interested in an entry level corp job, whether they come from a state school or an Ivy, so arent really relevant to the WSJ survey. Among the folks who MIGHT be interested in an entry level corp job, a larger number from Ivies than from State Us probably DO end up at Consulting firms, I banks, etc, which may well impact recruiting success by large corps.</p>
<p>BTW I have worked in a large corp environment, and at a big name consulting firm (though I came in as an associate, not the research asst level most BA grads would come in at, but I got to see what they did) and I think its true that there is a considerable difference in atmosphere, and at least some difference in the work involved, between them. I have never worked at an I bank, so cant speak to that. I would suggest that there are probably considerable differences between different I bank jobs (M&A vs trading, for example) and big differences between culture at an I bank and in a commercial bank.</p>
<p>My niece just graduated from Penn State and felt the career services dept was sadly lacking for her (engineering). She got her job (phew) with no help from Penn State.</p>
<p>The career services at many big publics are sadly lacking, meantime I hear very impressive things about the support offered at the Ivies and other elite schools. </p>
<p>MomofWildChild, congratulations to your English-major son on getting his first job. As a former English major myself, I love to hear success stories of fellow humanities grads. Fact is, even though they’re harder to find, there ARE jobs out there for grads who can think analytically, critically and who can write.</p>
<p>Of course. I was reacting more to this statement upthread: Bright, accomplished people are going to want careers which offer them autonomy, intellectual challenge, and for lack of a better word-space. That is why the majority of an elite college class are going to be medical specialists, lawyers, tenure track academnicians, diplomats, and Wall Street traders, analysts and bankers.</p>
<p>There are intellectual challenges in plenty of jobs beyond doctor/lawyer/academic/analyst (how arrogant and silly to think otherwise!), and none of these jobs are truly “autonomous” from the perspective of a young grad. Everyone’s beholden to someone else in this world. The doctors are beholden to their patients and the ins cos, the lawyers are beholden to their clients and their desires and timetables, the young bankers are beholden to their bosses and their clients’ demands, and so forth. It’s just sort of laughable to think that these handful of professions (as lucrative as they may be) really “give more space.” You want space? Go become an entrepreneur. Even then, you’re beholden to the people who finance you.</p>
<p>And anyway, who really wants to hang out JUST with people who only want to become doctors/lawyers/bankers/academics? Doesn’t that make for an awfully boring group of alumni? I love seeing what some of my friends and fellow alumni have accomplished – both stuff that falls neatly into those buckets, and stuff that falls way, way outside.</p>
<p>Yes Wall Street is so stable. Funniest thing yet in this thread. Without the bailout Wall Street would be CLOSED. One firm taking down the next like dominoes. Spare us the glorification of Wall Street. It has gone far beyond its original usefulness to real business and become a parasite on the economy creating the current rapid boom and bust cycles.</p>