From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-streets-endangered-species-the-ivy-league-jock-1495721462
The days of the lax bro bond salesman are fading fast…
Someone has to direct the quants. 
There are lots of spots on Wall Street and elsewhere for athletes, actors, poets, and all sorts of different people. Always have been, and likely always will.
But undoubtly Wall Street has become more quantitative and computer driven. Bad news for jocks.
Why is it assumed that the jock and the qualitative and computer savvy student are two different people?
Ha!
Most of the HS/college athletes I knew in my extended family or among colleagues couldn’t lead a small team out of a wet paper bag even if their lives depended on it.
And yet the one kid I know who recently went to Wall Street was exactly that, a lax bro. He was definitely an athletic admit at a top lax school, majored in something like history or business, and does just fine. No legacy (parents are average working class from the west).
Don’t bury the lax bro’s just yet.
Wall Street is used in the popular press as though it is one type of job, typically some variation of trader.
In reality, the financial industry behind Wall Street is as complex and as varied as medicine. You have your old style traders, the new quant traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers, private equity people, risk experts, compliance people, IT people, administrators, etc.
Saying that someone works on Wall Street is almost meaningless by itself.
@Cheeringsection wrote: “Why is it assumed that the jock and the qualitative and computer savvy student are two different people?”
http://news.mit.edu/2017/marshall-scholar-zachary-hulcher-0227
Stereotypes can be deceiving.
I was curious as to what the lax bros at my alma mater (a small LAC) were studying so I looked up the majors of the class of 2017. I was surprised to find they majored in:
-Economics
-Econ and math
-Econ
-Econ and history
-Econ
-? {No listing, but last summer’s internship was “Processed trades and investments of various firms and brokers through the completion of daily trade maintenance reports.”)
-Econ
-Econ
-Econ
-?
-Econ
-Math and Econ
-Psychology
This is at a school with a rigorous Econ department but no CS major, meaning the quant types are most likely to major in math or Econ… Most of these kids do seem to be headed for Wall Street. This year’s lax team was quite successful, with 6 players named All Americans and one who has been drafted to play professional lacrosse.
I’VE witnessed the same as Sue22, lots of econ majors amongst college athletes at my kids’ school, former high school classmates. Any econ department worth its salt these days is very quantitative. The dumb jock stereotype is a myth at selective schools that are the type that graduate students who appeal to investment/financial firms.
Truly, this is Revenge of the Nerds.
Friends, CC’ers, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Lax Bro, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their Lacrosse Sticks.
So let it be with Lax Bro. The noble Wall Street Journal
Hath told you Lax Bro was lacking in Quant skills.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Lax Bro answered it.
Here, under leave of WSJ and the rest—
For WSJ is an honorable News source;
So are they all, all honorable and not Fake News—
Doschicos observations are on point.
Although it doesn’t qualify as recent history, the team I knew best had members (most were starters, but some were reserves) who became: top 10 law school grads, trauma surgeon, neurologist, pulmonary specialist, top 10 MBA grads, Stanford professor, ambassador, venture capitalist, accountant, and civil engineers. Plus various other careers, including architect, personal trainer, jet engine mechanic, and two alternative healing far eastern religion guys.
There’s no doubt that various careers are changing. But that affects everyone, not just athletes (even though many journalists wish that were the the case. )
oops wrong thread