I don’t know about finance but that’s not true for big law. My spouse and I are both very very middle class kids who went to Ivy or similar colleges by working our butte off in HS and nailing the SAT (thank you Waldenbooks for that prep book!), getting great grades there and great lsat score to jump into the best law schools in the country then federal appellate clerkships. Biglaw is filled with people like that. The rich kids that aren’t working and just parlaying connections are not ending up at the top firms at least in DC. They may do better in regional markets like Richmond if their families are regional power brokers. I don’t work in finance but at least some of the very well off finance folks I know are children of immigrants who I don’t think come from elite backgrounds…just super smart who work their butts off. The ricch family people I know are in commercial real estate or individual asset management. |
Are t you usually interviewing for an entry level job bc of where it leads? Not the job as the end all be all? |
Any classic pre-med major (bio, chem, biochem …) I work with ~75 young surgeons at a premier teaching hospital that you all know. Undergrad institutions matter only very marginally, judging from the bios on the wall here. For timeline reference, these surgeons are residents and fellows. (I have no clue where the middle aged attendings went to undergrad) |
There is always this argument: the smart hungry kid can make it from anywhere and the other you have to go to an elite school. Both are true. Meaning you can make it from anywhere but the path is hard. An elite school offers you pathways that other schools just do not have. You will never see them at state schools. More pathways. You do not need to take them but they are there. Both sides of the coin are true. Yes you can make it from anywhere and there more pathways to make it at elite schools. |
LOL no, for quant jobs hedge funds are hiring math/CS/econ students from HYP over any English major from Princeton. |
You might be surprised. I have a 18 year old male relative from a small city in the middle of the country—definitely not rich, more like “no, we can’t go to chipotle until after oayday”—and all he wants to do is investment banking in NY. He’s never even been to the east coast. I don’t know where kids are getting these ideas but I think with the internet, these things are no longer a secret shared by the UES jet set. |
This is what’s scary to me. When we are telling kids with basically perfect GPAs who took all the hardest classes at their school “you might not get into Maryland” there is something wrong with the system. The top state college should be able to accept and educate our state’s top students. |
Very very true. I see this too. |
Demand has dramatically increased, supply has not. It's really that simple. |
Neither is getting the job. They are recruiting business majors/MBAs from NYU, Harvard, and UPenn. Of course, there are exceptions. Everyone knows that rich kids with connections get into all sorts of places they don’t deserve to be, like Princeton and Wall Street. But no, Wall Street likes people with business degrees and MBAs. At the analyst level, accounting, business, and finance are by far the most popular majors for Wall Streeters (46%). Economics follows in second place (26%) Guess how many humanities majors? 5% The same majors are even more common among associates on Wall Street. accounting, business, and finance (55%). Economics (19%). Humanities falls to 4%. Accounting, business, and finance majors are the clear majority at the vice president level, too. 54% and 19% for economics The trend holds all the way to the director level, where accounting, business, and finance majors make up 60% of jobs held. In second place, economics comes in at 21%. Humanities falls to 1% at the Director level. I guess PP’s English PhD husband and the large number of English majors working with him (at the most prestigious investment banking firm, natch) make up a large portion of that number. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-common-college-major-on-wall-street-2015-11 |
I love how they dispose of the BS that goes by the so-called "holistic" admissions idea - something that unfortunately some DCUM posters seem to believe in: Admissions as currently practiced is designed to let schools whose budgets run on billions of taxpayers dollars do whatever they want. Consider Stanford’s guidance to applicants: “In a holistic review, we seek to understand how you, as a whole person, would grow, contribute and thrive at Stanford, and how Stanford would, in turn, be changed by you.” This perfectly encapsulates the current system, because it is meaningless. Well said. |
That is what it’s doing. It’s just that the state has more top students than seats available. |
It’s also insane because parents make it so |
Probably 50% of the kids in my analyst class quit within a year. Lots of abisive personalities driving people to literally hospitalization from exhaustion (and then firing the person when the returnee to work). Telling you Friday at 6pm you need to assemble a merger pitch deck and model for a Monday 9am meeting only to come in on Monday and decide they don’t want to pitch it after all. Maybe it’s better now…but I doubt it. |
I agree with Princeton Review - there are 300 to 400 good colleges and universities in the U.S. |