<p><a href=“College Students Recruited by Goldman Sachs, Wall Street”>College Students Recruited by Goldman Sachs, Wall Street;
<p>This is an excerpt from a new book that’s out and I found it to be a very interesting read, and a unique look at today’s college culture</p>
<p>I read the book and found it to be more of a personal story about a female student at Duke pursuing an investment banking career. I didn’t find the book to be a general statement on college culture other than that of Duke’s. I highly recommend it for any student planning to attend Duke or pursue an investment banking career. But beyond that, the book might have diminishing value.</p>
<p>I do think there is some truth to the claim that elite schools funnel kids into investment banking and consulting. Partly because it becomes a clear and easily defined path. I had to laugh because my older son went into investment banking (although that totally fit his goals and interests) and my younger son just took a consulting job for when he graduates this spring. My younger son had no intention of going into consulting, but he decided to take some time off before grad school and I told him he needed to get a job in the interim. So, who comes recruiting at Ivies? Consulting firms. His friends had done summer internships with investment banks and consulting firms so he got some first-hand accounts of firm cultures. So, even though prepping for those interviews is extremely difficult (read about case interviews, I would never survive), it is easy in the sense that you just go through the career center and if the firm likes your resume you interview on campus and then if they like you, they fly you back to their offices for round two. </p>
<p>I did read this book and found it rang somewhat true and somewhat false from what I knew from my kids. Certainly the competitiveness among the students was neither of my sons’ experiences at their schools. </p>
<p>I don’t know much about the consulting industry, but I find it curious that consulting firms seem to be aggressively recruiting from top colleges. If I were in business and wanted to call in some expertise, I’d want an evaluation by someone with long experience in my area of difficulty–not the opinion of a 21-year-old fresh out of school.</p>
<p>Interesting perspectives. I haven’t read the book yet but think I will buy it (and then have my high-schooler read it as well)</p>
<p>If you $3.99, a Kindle, and some time to kill, I suppose you could use it for this book. When I was done with it, I still didn’t care about this girl’s “journey”. </p>
<p>The reason IB and consulting firms flock to Ivies or top tier schools is because they know they would be able to throw a lot of work at those students and they would get those tasks done. Not saying students at other schools wouldn’t be able to do it, it just would take a bit longer to filter out the good ones. </p>
<p>First year consultant/analyst would give any advice, but they are very useful at putting very nice presentation books together. D1 is into her third year at an IB (just got promoted to associate) and is just beginning to meet with clients and give presentations. The first 2 years she was very good at running books when they had new deals. She also didn’t complain a lot when she was working from 7am-midnight and going in at 2am sometimes to do Euro deals because she was used to working under that kind of pressure since she was in high school. I run a technology semi consulting arm of my firm. I also look for people who can work under pressure and are self starters needing very little supervision. Students at top tier schools tend to be more like that or they wouldn’t have made it there. I guess we use those schools to do the first filter for us.</p>
<p>Oldfort, with you as a role model, your daughters will succeed at anything. Only the young can work as your daughter does. I’ve been reading the Law Forum, about Big Law firms, who offer showers and free food at nights, with expectations of the young being there all night. When they pay big bucks, expect long hours. </p>
<p>@bookworm—that was the way the Bank Analyst training programs ran in NYC in the late 80s. 1st & 2nd year analysts staying up all night, waiting for the documents. I remember stories of girls sending an empty car service uptown to apartment to have roommate run down with a clean suit for the car service driver to bring back to office. </p>
<p>We had paralegals in our beach house who never made it out after Memorial Day weekend. I could never have worked that hard or that many hours, but it seemed the norm for banks and consulting firms.</p>
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<p>Yikes. For those with zero knowledge exposure to IB, can you explain that paragraph above. What is it exactly that your daughter does? What is “running books?”</p>
<p>IBanks put together elaborate documents to sell investment deals–lots of colorful charts, industry data, investment projections and such. These are usually done very quickly under tremendous time pressure. The low level workers do the drafting of much of that info to be blessed by the MD and many others. So you can spend endless hours using Excel to do charts and projections or researching the market for $500 jeans. </p>
<p>It was a typo. I meant to say they WOULD NOT give advice. </p>
<p>D1 has an interesting job of being in Sales as well as Ibanking. They pitch to customers to do new bond issuance as well as placing them. As an analyst, D1 was responsible for getting pitch books ready for client meetings as posted by barron and often she wouldn’t know until the day before there is a client meeting. After a while, she did come up with ways to streamline the process - she wrote a program to automatic update spreads for her sector and get weekly market commentary so she could use the same slides for most of her books. Her desk is also responsible for new bond issuance. When her desk is the lead underwriter, they are the book runner for the syndicate. D1 would take orders from other firms and make sure the orders were properly recorded. It may sound easy, but it is a lot of pressure when the phone panel is all lit up for orders and levels, and slightest mistake could mean a loss to the firm. </p>
<p>It doesn’t sound easy to me. </p>