Elite Firms Fishing in a Very Small Hiring Pool 
re: Elite Firms Fishing in a Very Small Hiring Pool by Megan McArdle (Atlantic) on the hiring practices at elite firms and how "super-elite credentials matter much more than your academic record"
Just makes me wish I worked harder in HS and got into a elite college and then wouldn't have to worry about much after that.
But the interesting thing is, even within the Ivy League some are considered "prestigious" while others are not. For example, the EconLib article How Elite Firms Hire: The Inside Story notes that if you attended non-Wharton Penn, you're a dud.
What do you think fellow monkeys?
"3. Super-elite credentials matter much more than your academic record:
[E]valuators drew strong distinctions between top four universities, schools that I term the super-elite, and other types of selective colleges and universities. So-called "public Ivies" such as University of Michigan and Berkeley were not considered elite or even prestigious..."
Hmm are you sure the author
Hmm are you sure the author didn't just use this website as a reference XD
True to a large extent but
True to a large extent but not the rule and more applicable to college/mba hires and not to experienced hires. This is why networking when you have an existing job is so important.
It's kind of funny. At the institution where I work, we've got a ton of Wharton hires, but then also people that studied at podunk university working shoulder to shoulder.
lol, I go to Columbia, and
lol, I go to Columbia, and we're constantly beaten by Georgetown and Duke when it comes to PE placement. This idiot probably barely knows anyone outside his own firm. Lol, even Yale has fewer guys at BX than either of those two 'less prestigious' schools. Princeton has the same amount.
Also, the distinction between non-Wharton and Wharton Penn is simple. At Wharton, you learn business skills that allow you to hit the ground running from day one.
In sum: If you want insane prestige, the sort that can make all the difference in the job search process, get into Harvard and go there; if you want competitive job skills with high prestige, apply to the business program at Penn; if you just want prestige that may occasionally help in finding a job, just go to an Ivy or a decent top-15 school
^^^ Exactly The article is
^^^ Exactly
The article is somewhat true. Elite credentials make it A WHOLE LOT EASIER to get access, and I've been passed over plenty of times for some lesser person who just so happened to have the sense at the age of 17 to go to an ivy. But if you've got balls, brains, and a good work ethic, you can overcome anything:
Example:
I know a guy who had lousy grade in a liberal arts degree from a state school, no experience prior to graduating, no family in industry, dropped out of college for five years, DIDN'T EVEN OWN A SUIT, and didn't know the difference between the back and the front offcice...who found an opening and now works next to and has seniority over a guy who went to a target school.
That guy is me. Suck it, prestige whore bitches. Ok, I'm just kidding, calm down.
I'm trying to figure out how to go to an ivy for grad school: it just makes it so much easier to get an interview, and the alumni are more useful.
COME TO THE WSO CONFERENCE!!!!!
In terms of general prestige,
In terms of general prestige, there is a difference between HYP and the other ivies. With regards to finance recruiting though, it's basically harvard and wharton at the top and then the others. Non-wharton penn kids with good grades did just fine with banking and consulting recruiting; the type of jobs where they were virtually excluded from were the PE firms and hedge funds (Blackstone, Silver Lake, Bain Capital, Citadel, AQR, apollo, Fortress, etc.). Those jobs almost exclusively went to wharton students.
UFOinsider wrote: Example: I
Example:
I know a guy who had lousy grade in a liberal arts degree from a state school, no experience prior to graduating, no family in industry, dropped out of college for five years, DIDN'T EVEN OWN A SUIT, and didn't know the difference between the back and the front offcice...who found an opening and now works next to and has seniority over a guy who went to a target school.
I was about to say I know such a guy as well, but oh well, you said it.
This article may be true in
This article may be true in that people overrate HYS, but I think it is stupid for people to make the assumption that the quality of education at HYS is somehow better than well-recognized universities. Obviously HYS kids are extremely bright (minus the random Senator's kid) but academia has become so competitive nowadays that it is very likely students at University of Maryland are receiving instruction from professors that have attended top graduate programs or been exposed to top-level research. Think of schools like Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, etc. EXCELLENT INSTRUCTION AT THESE SCHOOLS. It doesn't make much sense to arbitrarily count these schools out just based on name. I go to a non-target and I will be the first to admit students at my school are often mediocre at best, but many other students are on full-scholarship and so chose to enroll over Stanford or the like.
gcjohns wrote: but many other
but many other students are on full-scholarship and so chose to enroll over Stanford or the like.
I wanna work with those types of people. The ones smart enough to get in, but not that obsessed with prestige. Anyways... we're talking about decisions that kids have made when they were 17 and younger.
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
JamesHetfield wrote: Just
Just makes me wish I worked harder in HS and got into a elite college and then wouldn't have to worry about much after that.
oh yeah, if you go to Harvard your life automatically rules afterwards
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
I don't think not classifying
I don't think not classifying U of M or Berkeley not prestigious isn't necessarily pejorative, as ton's of kids from those schools work for well-known houses.
The study also goes to show the importance of networking and marketing yourself appropriately to the FO guy's handling recruiting and being proactive instead of being a passive applicant. If you can do little things to help them (i.e. ask to connect via a cold email post resume drop) it: a) shows enthusiasm for the position / an indication that your serious about pursuing to job with the shop; b) if your qualified, helps them out in setting up phone screen. Worst can happen is they're not interested.
It's true. The best is when
It's true.
The best is when you turned down the Ivy as a teenager and wind up with the same job (and excelling more in it) the Ivy kids got.
A lot of people do certain things to add days to their life. I do things to add life to my days.
Brady4MVP wrote: In terms of
In terms of general prestige, there is a difference between HYP and the other ivies. With regards to finance recruiting though, it's basically harvard and wharton at the top and then the others. Non-wharton penn kids with good grades did just fine with banking and consulting recruiting; the type of jobs where they were virtually excluded from were the PE firms and hedge funds (Blackstone, Silver Lake, Bain Capital, Citadel, AQR, apollo, Fortress, etc.). Those jobs almost exclusively went to wharton students.
Not true. Some places are looking for insane quant skills and end up drawing from H applied math and wharton (Citadel would be a prime example). Many other places that are just trying to get some decent fundamental analysis out of their analysts are looking for the most interested and broadly intelligent guys they can find (BX, baincap) and really could care less. Once you get into more specific stuff (some tech, distressed debt) subject matter exposure and interest/expertise becomes important.
Also, smaller places who can't afford 2-4 weeks of MD/VP time to train up analysts every year but want undergrad analysts for whatever reason like penn a lot. But are also fine with UC Berk and UMich kids, even if they aren't actively recruiting there, or any liberal arts kid with a few directly relevant internships or other experience (sat in on topical b school classes, whatever).
Realistically, they realize much of their long-term talent is coming out of the banking pool anyway at the associate (pre or post MBA) level. The value of having analysts for those sorts of places tends to be they don't need to be untaught before they can be taught and their relative low-costs.
scottj19x89
Just makes me wish I worked harder in HS and got into a elite college and then wouldn't have to worry about much after that.
oh yeah, if you go to Harvard your life automatically rules afterwards
i agree scott. a harvard degree lets you /godmode life. true story.
- Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.
- The harder you work, the luckier you become.
- I believe in the "Golden Rule": the man with the gold rules.
Ske7ch wrote: scottj19x89
Just makes me wish I worked harder in HS and got into a elite college and then wouldn't have to worry about much after that.
oh yeah, if you go to Harvard your life automatically rules afterwards
i agree scott. a harvard degree lets you /godmode life. true story.
Depends. If you do well in harvard econ or some other quant subject, then yes, you have a lot of job options. I know plenty of harvard undergrads who did not do well in school and/or majored in a useless subject, and now they are struggling.
HBS, on the other hand, is a different beast. An MBA from there will totally transform your life.
^^^I've been a casual
^^^I've been a casual observer of your posts Brady. I hope that you get into HBS someday. I know you want it bad.
My dream school is INSEAD. Maybe it is because I am not American, or that I am doing my UG in the US and I want to go for my MBA in Asia/Europe, but INSEAD is the B-School for me.
JamesHetfield wrote: ^^^I've
^^^I've been a casual observer of your posts Brady. I hope that you get into HBS someday. I know you want it bad.
My dream school is INSEAD. Maybe it is because I am not American, or that I am doing my UG in the US and I want to go for my MBA in Asia/Europe, but INSEAD is the B-School for me.
Signed.
scottj1 wrote: we're talking
we're talking about decisions that kids have made when they were 17 and younger.
16 in my case: being in the right environment at that age is a HUGE factor. If I knew then what I know now, VERY different decisions would have been made. WSO is probably the single best resource for this industry short of going to a target school armed with a thorough understanding of what the best options are.
But whatever, hindsight is 20/20. The good part about America is that being born into less than ideal circumstances or making mistakes can be overcome with some effort. Plenty of hyper-successful people came from nothing, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to say that missing out on Harvard will end anyone's dreams.
In my mind, there's something very un-American (yeah, I really did just go there) about being too hung up on pedigree, and people came here largely to escape that way of thinking. In most places on earth, a person has little chance of escaping the situation they were born into, but that is not the case here. If a moron like Glenn Beck can make it, I'm convinced that ¡ANYONE¡ can XD
COME TO THE WSO CONFERENCE!!!!!
Check out this article on how
Check out this article on how the admissions process at top schools developed over the years. Some of you might have read it as it was published a while back:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentPa...
In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for admission, which meant that virtually any academically gifted high-school senior who could afford a private college had a straightforward shot at attending. By 1908, the freshman class was seven per cent Jewish, nine per cent Catholic, and forty-five per cent from public schools, an astonishing transformation for a school that historically had been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.
As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in “The Chosen” (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically.By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.”
The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell’s first idea—a quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student body—was roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.
The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicant’s personal life. Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the “character” of candidates from “persons who know the applicants well,” and so the letter of reference became mandatory. Harvard started asking applicants to provide a photograph. Candidates had to write personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities. “Starting in the fall of 1922,” Karabel writes, “applicants were required to answer questions on ‘Race and Color,’ ‘Religious Preference,’ ‘Maiden Name of Mother,’ ‘Birthplace of Father,’ and ‘What change, if any, has been made since birth in your own name or that of your father? (Explain fully).’ ”
When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.” One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears.”
You nailed it here, buddy. As
You nailed it here, buddy.
As for finance's obsession with brands, I liken it somewhat to the launches of massive, record-setting skyscrapers as signals that we're in a bubble. Essentially this is maximum laziness ("oh, I'm just going to look at brands as a proxy for... everything") and self-indulgence in a field that, while not wholly devoid of added value, has to develop some moderately esoteric and prolix arguments to explain how it does indeed add value, and which doesn't really need the brightest minds in the world to accomplish its purpose. You could knock off 20 points off the entire finance industry's average IQ and we would be no worse off, maybe even better; the marginal increases in talent would be better served in medical research, energy research, policy, education, etc. An excess of human capital has been channeled into this field, and its participants have begun to believe it to the point that their delusions of grandeur are further and further removed from reality, much like the masterminds behind the tallest towers in the world... Big buildings mark a bubble and an imminent crash, and I think that finance, if not about to shrink, is certainly going to be de-rigged. We're in for around three years of musical chairs.
we're talking about decisions that kids have made when they were 17 and younger.
16 in my case: being in the right environment at that age is a HUGE factor. If I knew then what I know now, VERY different decisions would have been made. WSO is probably the single best resource for this industry short of going to a target school armed with a thorough understanding of what the best options are.
But whatever, hindsight is 20/20. The good part about America is that being born into less than ideal circumstances or making mistakes can be overcome with some effort. Plenty of hyper-successful people came from nothing, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to say that missing out on Harvard will end anyone's dreams.
In my mind, there's something very un-American (yeah, I really did just go there) about being too hung up on pedigree, and people came here largely to escape that way of thinking. In most places on earth, a person has little chance of escaping the situation they were born into, but that is not the case here. If a moron like Glenn Beck can make it, I'm convinced that ¡ANYONE¡ can XD
I agree with being too hung
I agree with being too hung up on pedigree being unamerican...
or at least I think of it as ignorant and would hope that that's not what being American is about
If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough.
"There are two types of people in this world: People who say they pee in the shower, and dirty fucking liars."-Louis C.K.
I disagree, with the
I disagree, with the picture.
Bait caster or bust, no one NO ONE uses spin caster.
I seen one person in my whole life use spin caster and it was a zebco, but he had it customized to all hell.
Sorry, but using a 90 dollar at MAX rod is not expensive enough nor high quality to catch those monsterous blue gill obvisously in that lake.
blastoise wrote: I disagree,
I disagree, with the picture.
Bait caster or bust, no one NO ONE uses spin caster.
I seen one person in my whole life use spin caster and it was a zebco, but he had it customized to all hell.
Sorry, but using a 90 dollar at MAX rod is not expensive enough nor high quality to catch those monsterous blue gill obvisously in that lake.
? and using Mepps aglia or a some sad imitation ?
Dude, you must revisit the bet this spring.
COME TO THE WSO CONFERENCE!!!!!
jtbbdxbnycmad
...finance, if not about to shrink, is certainly going to be de-rigged. We're in for around three years of musical chairs...
Care to explain this the reasoning behind this estimate? I'm having trouble getting a handle on the next 1-5 year trajectory. If you can throw in your $0.02 and expand on it, I'd be much obliged.
COME TO THE WSO CONFERENCE!!!!!
I agree with this. If you
I agree with this.
If you think about it, what about IB *really* even requires a college degree? A smart, hungry high school grad is certainly capable of learning Excel, but hiring managers don't want to sift through resumes from everyone from "Joe the Plumber" to "Joe with HYP acceptance letters".
Same reason why they take students from elite universities: it narrows the pool. But, this only occurs when you don't have a track record. A great performance record can counter almost any other deficiency...highly capable candidates are a rarer commodity than Harvard grads.
But, I have to wonder how many state school grads never even get a chance to prove themselves. Without getting into one of these elite firms, learning the skills or even getting the opportunity to succeed can be tough.
I want to say the cream always rises to the top, but I am almost sure some people never even get a chance. Same could be said of classes graduating into a bad economy. Hiring based on the decisions people made between age 16 and 18 is moronic, but I don't have a better idea.
UFOinsider wrote: blastoise
I disagree, with the picture.
Bait caster or bust, no one NO ONE uses spin caster.
I seen one person in my whole life use spin caster and it was a zebco, but he had it customized to all hell.
Sorry, but using a 90 dollar at MAX rod is not expensive enough nor high quality to catch those monsterous blue gill obvisously in that lake.
? and using Mepps aglia or a some sad imitation ?
Dude, you must revisit the bet this spring.
Mepps is the best lure brand WW.