If by “flavor of the month” you are suggesting that last month he wanted to become an epidemiologist and track infectious disease outbreaks, and the month before he wanted to work in sustainability helping big companies reduce their carbon footprint, and most of last year he was interested in architecture- then I’d really let the entire conversation drop until all the admissions are in.
There is really no need for a 17 year old to pick their “grownup career track” right now, even though I get that from your perspective, there’s the “struggling artist” college decision vs. the “solid upper middle class” college decision vs. the “top 1% earner” college decision.
But in the real world… kids who think they’re going to become investment bankers when they’re in HS fall off that track long before interviewing starts. In the real world, kids get exposed to 100 careers they’d never even heard of once they get to college. And in the real world- kids get launched into a career that didn’t even exist when they were in HS.
If any of us could predict what the labor markets would look like five years from now, we wouldn’t bother with CC. We’d be on a yacht in Sardinia pricing Picasso lithographs and having our personal chefs flying off to Alaska for the daily salmon catch. Nobody can predict what the hot careers will be in 5 years, and nobody can predict what disruptive technology will destroy one legacy industry and create and entirely new one.
So I’d let this one sit for a bit. There are way too many variables right now.
On that Peak Frameworks page, the charts are ordered by total hires.
I’m looking chiefly at the fifth column (percentage of students at that school who end up in banking/rank) and the 7th – percentage of those who end up at major firms.
OP, I would obviously defer to those with direct experience in the industry, but broadly speaking, you should be able to secure appropriate/desired jobs from either Mendoza or Kelley – provided that you put in the work, shake the hands, and interview well. There is no Easy button in life, not even at HYP.
Personally, I would think it’s not worth the extra cost when you can pay for an already prestigious school in-state. Investment Banking is one occupation out of literally thousands of things he can do with a business degree. If you put all your eggs in that basket, chances are, he’s going to hate it anyway.
Love this. I hear from young people all the time “I wanted to be an investment banker but then I learned it’s really just a desk job” (did you think you’d be on top of an oil rig when working on an energy acquisition?). Or “I thought marketing sounded really cool but then I learned that my college required statistics for a marketing major and I hate math”. (did you really think that companies spend millions of dollars on a marketing campaign without doing a test market, user research, etc.?) And my favorite, “Forensic accounting seemed really cool until I learned you need to be really good at Excel”. Did you think the forensics here referred to plucking DNA samples out of a company’s corpse?
I worked on Wall Street IB and Kelley had some strong graduates. Many are now in senior corporate finance positions and proud IU alums and hoops fans. It’s a large business school and very competitive to get into the IB workshops to set yourself apart. Lots of great companies from the Northeast and Midwest recruit at Kelley.
ND is full of incredibly talented and loyal students.
