JoanneB,
I like your posts.
NRD- I am talking “everyone” and “nobody” based on a survey which is repeated every year with a statistically valid number of respondents at a wide range of universities and college. It likely doesn’t do a good job capturing tiny sectors (i.e. how desirable were jobs in alternative energy/green in 1999 when that field was nascent) but it does a very good job year to year of showing how kids attitudes change (the cohort changes, obviously, once you are no longer in college your attitudes aren’t getting tracked as part of this company’s service).
So my point was that in 2006 and 2007 (pretty much the high water mark for financial hiring and recruiting in the US AND in parts of Europe) the number of college kids who rated companies in that sector as most desirable to work for was very, very high. And that after the financial meltdown, the number of college kids (different college kids but at the same colleges) that rated companies in that sector as most desirable was very, very low.
I don’t believe that a kid who entered Wharton or Fordham intending to major in finance in 2006 decided as a result of Bear Stearns blowing up that he or she was no longer interested in finance. I do believe (having interviewed hundreds of new grads since then) that since those jobs became incredibly difficult to get (2006/2007 was the high water mark; 2009 was a very tough hiring year on most college campuses) lots and lots (i.e. most) of kids decided that they didn’t actually want to work at a bank. Why? because they couldn’t get the kind of job they saw kids just like them getting only a few years earlier. chicken/egg… banking less desirable- that showed up in every major survey done by every reputable company. Some of it- for sure, mortgage backed securities- poor regulatory oversight, terrible PR, banks foreclosing on Jane and Joe Q. Public. But a lot of it? Just market reality. Kids don’t want to hanker after jobs they just can’t land. So all of a sudden, college kids rediscover Peace Corps and KIPP and Habitat and becoming an analyst at the Ford Foundation in the non-profit sector, and rediscover sales management programs in consumer products companies and supply chain management programs at pharmaceutical companies, etc. (although their hiring targets went down significantly as well due to the recession which followed the banking debacle.)
I will be very curious to see this year’s numbers in the energy sector. A downturn in the price of oil might be a good thing for the pocketbooks of everyone you know, but usually is the canary in the coal mine for very large employers of new grad talent. And the hiring targets in the green/sustainability industry are not likely to compensate for a drop in the numbers at Exxon/Mobile, Chevron, etc.
My overall point even if you dislike or disagree with me on the details, is that at the end of the day, you are talking about 22 or 23 year olds who are graduating from college and making a decision about an inflection point. Grad school? That’s a decision. Work a survival job and try to land an agent by working for free at stand-up comedy clubs every night? That’s a decision. Get a job teaching history and coaching basketball at a private school which doesn’t require a Master’s degree while you figure out your life? That’s a decision. Do a post-grad year to fulfill your med school requirements at study for the MCAT’s? That’s a decision.
but MAKING those decisions implies that the choice is there to be made. If you didn’t get into any of the grad schools you applied to, then NOT going to grad school is not a choice. You didn’t have that option. NOT going to work at Bank of America in their credit training program is not a decision if in fact, you didn’t get an offer from BOA. Choosing between an entry level media buying job at an ad agency vs. working for a social media start up is only a choice if in fact those companies will hire you.
So looking at what young kids do and teasing out from it that they were too noble to work for this or that company, or had too much self-respect to work a 90 hour week… this logic leaves me cold. I started my career, not in banking, at a corporate job which paid at the very bottom of the ladder for management. 80-90 hour weeks were not uncommon. I found the work mind-numbing. Believe me- if you’re going to work that hard and be bored that much, being paid 2.5X times as much (which is what entry level bankers from my college were earning) would not have sounded like a bad deal.
Why was I not in banking? Couldn’t get one of those jobs. I majored in Classics, I did not have a strong quantitative grounding, I was a terrible interview (looking back), and my ambitions were to move to a nice city (didn’t need to be a huge city) and have a good social life. So since I was graduating into a recession, I took the only job offer I got for a boring and poorly paid job in an industry which I knew nothing about.
I believe my story is not atypical. There are millions of Blossoms out there who take jobs because they got an offer. And all the backtracking in the world (my snowflake is too special to work in I-banking or too discriminating to work in consulting) won’t change that.
But how grateful I am for that first lousy job!
@joanne, there are plenty of IT companies that fall into “not adding value to society”. ALOT of IT, MC and IB is a giant con, but not all.
It looks like more recent grads are increasingly agreeing:
But my guess is those same “elite” school grads are disproportionally matching up with “elite” jobs within those other industries.
Blossom, so what did you see last year or the year before? Where did students want to work?
You are flipping the argument. I thought the argument was, “We are working in i-banking and consulting because we are special.” 
Are you seeing students flocking to areas of the west coast from the east coast to join or create start ups?
@dstark - thanks! I like your posts too.
@kollegeguy - "there are plenty of IT companies that fall into “not adding value to society”
yes, totally agree. In fact most IT “innovations” today provide little to no value, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Minecraft, AngryBird…I have no use for social media or video games, things that actually make you less productive not more. Also how many apps do you really need on your iPhone? There’s a million and one apps out there, most are a waste of time.
And which industry does Balmer and Larry Ellison work in? IT!!
You get the good and the bad in each and every industry. Even non-profits.
And yes, we are seeing thousands of students flocking into Silicon Valley so they can be the next billionaire !! Same as IB 2 decades ago.
Do you really need another app or a new game?
Cross-posted with JoanneB
Oh my my, I’ve been reading and enjoying. I’m just getting into ‘Liar’s Poker’ by Michael Lewis. Good grief, really…who wants to live that way. The nice thing about the whole Ivy mania is that while the herd stampedes toward the illustrious golden gates which guarantee passage to eternal bliss and entry to universes most mortals can only imagine (and envy with teeth grinding, head banging frustration), it leaves a more room on the side roads for those who have ferreted out the hidden gems and value in other places.
Please please please…keep charging away…and bring all your friends…please just stay off the side roads.
People would be surprised how wealthy some car wash owners are. 
Dstark- if I had the capital (and the brains, and the guts) to look at the numbers from a couple of years ago and realize that Seattle was going to take off (went from “where is Seattle” to “most desirable city to work in”) I would have bought a few small apartment buildings and would have been able to retire.
Tracking where the 21 and 22 year old kids want to live ought to be mandatory for anyone with a few extra bucks in their pockets and the stomach for residential real estate!
I was told by my father (who received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the same Ivy league school) that it is never a bad decision to attend an elite school. If you are lucky/talented to be accepted to such an institution of higher education and afford to attend then there is no problem. If you fall in the majority of aspiring college students who will not be attending an elite school then you have more questions to ponder.
In these discussions I have struggled with the term elite. In the list of 51 schools in Wai’s article there were only three public institutions included (UVA law, U of M law and U of M b-school). There were no public schools on the undergraduate list (U of M, UVA, UNC-CH, Berkley could easily be considered elite). That begs the question if private schools are creating an elite job market for their own graduates.
The question of elite (especially if 94% of them are private) and the relative benefits of that education (and connections) become more important as applicants look at value. Is it worth an added $40,000 a year to go to Duke rather than UNC-CH? Student loan debt can be debilitating. I work with medical students and residents who easily have $150,000 of debt to repay.
Definitions of elite and post-graduate success make the science of studying outcomes difficult. The decisions that students and parents will eventually make will be based on anecdotes rather than data.
Blossom, I like that. My nephew just bought a condo in Seattle.
So if we are to believe Joanne’s post, there are scores of industry CEO’s and techies who are ignorant, incompetent, and stupidly willing to pay millions to elite school grads working in finance and consulting that are know-nothing bull-shitters who provide nothing of value. So are these industry leaders the non-elite school grads who were too smart to want careers in finance or banking?
"In fact most IT “innovations” today provide little to no value, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Minecraft, AngryBird…I have no use for social media or video games, things that actually make you less productive not more. "
Sure you do. What do you think this forum is? It’s not curing cancer - it’s a form of social media.
Anyway, I think that’s unfair. It’s ALL necessary. It’s all fine. It’s all good. And I want to clarify, my “diatribe” on finance wasn’t that finance isn’t important - it’s the self-proclaimed “It’s the only thing that’s important” attitude that is annoying.
Well, in fairness, some IT “innovations” have value. The push of technology into healthcare is big business
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153686422663776&fref=nf
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28310697
And the start-ups, design and/or sale of this makes $$$$. Just like big banking does.
TheGFG - you’d be amazed how little most managers and CEOs know about IT or even finance, especially valuation. How do you think most CEOs got their job? By sucking up to the right people in the company - schmoozing, golfing, vacationing with the right people. That’s why they like MCs and IBs, they speak the same language. People with real talent start their own businesses rather than working for someone else for decades waiting to become CEOs, and you can be sure these business owners do not hire consultants from McKinsey or BCG, they can spot a con artist from a mile away.
That’s unfair, Joanne. But more to the point, managers and CEOs need to know something about everything - there is nothing magical about either IT or finance.
The GFG said earlier:
“Suppose HR receives 30 resumes for a position and has to pass on 10 of those to be considered by the relevant corporate department head for possible interviewing. So s/he picks what s/he thinks are the 10 best candidates. She knows CMU, MIT, and Stanford are good for CS, but never heard of Waterloo, so she leaves the excellent Waterloo candidate out of the group of 10 just because she had to narrow down the field and that’s a way to eliminate one more. Does this happen?”
Let’s say that this company is based out of the east coast, for the sake of discussion.
It’s the same concept if that college decides to do on-campus recruiting at CMU and MIT because it’s easy for them to get to those campuses, but they decide to skip Stanford because they consider it too inefficient to schlep someone out there. Yes, there will ALWAYS be someone who is “overlooked”. HR’s job isn’t to screen everybody in the world; it’s to get good people for their company in the most efficient way.
I’m sure there are CEOs who really know their stuff, but valuation is a very special field that even many CFOs don’t get, let alone techies. And very very few CEOs, unless they are from tech firms, actually have any background in CS. Didn’t you hear about the famous michael Moore documentary where he asked the IBM CEO to format a floppy disk (back when they were still in use and IBM still made PCs) and they guy couldn’t do it? Most CEOs are incredibly tech illiterate, as are most of our politicians.
Also, most people do not consider online public forums, which have been in existence long before MySpace, “social media”. It’s mostly referring to MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and the likes.
@blossom, I wanted to buy a condo in Seattle back at the depths of the Great Recession (2009) but, alas, did not have ready cash (or dependable cash flow) back then.
Students (especially b-school kids) are lemmings and great contra indicators. They’ve signalled bubbles and tops for decades now. (Speaking as a b-school grad, BTW)