Credentialism is dying

Credentialism is dying, with kids favoring the influencer life or trying to become athletes. I think that we are seeing the consequences of an educational system that charges exorbitant prices for average services.

What do you all think about the future of credentialism and academic prestige?

 
Most Helpful

I'm all for it being challenged. We do need some kind of way to ascertain if someone actually knows what they're doing, but the current system is broken. This was blatantly exposed last few years with COVID. "Trust the experts, and if you disagree you are a conspiracy theorist and spreading misinformation and LITERALLY WANT TO KILL GRANDMA." Of course there was some truly nonsense takes about COVID like microchips in the vaccine or other silly takes - and those were used as a strawman by said "experts" to derail discussion away from legitimate criticism.

I'm all for the current credentialism system being challenged. It's broken. Our experts seem to be chosen more for their ability to make politically correct statements then actually be accurate. Someone is more likely to be cancelled for saying a naughty word 20 years ago then poor performance. We got it all backwards.

 
Controversial

I'm all for it being challenged. We do need some kind of way to ascertain if someone actually knows what they're doing, but the current system is broken. This was blatantly exposed last few years with COVID. "Trust the experts, and if you disagree you are a conspiracy theorist and spreading misinformation and LITERALLY WANT TO KILL GRANDMA." Of course there was some truly nonsense takes about COVID like microchips in the vaccine or other silly takes - and those were used as a strawman by said "experts" to derail discussion away from legitimate criticism.

I'm all for the current credentialism system being challenged. It's broken. Our experts seem to be chosen more for their ability to make politically correct statements then actually be accurate. Someone is more likely to be cancelled for saying a naughty word 20 years ago then poor performance. We got it all backwards.

Oh my god, I’m all for competition and scrutiny of the academic system but i am so tired of you people whining about the same conspiracy theory talking points and cancel culture in every single corner of the internet. You’re like parrots who just keep repeating each other idgaf bro

 

What conspiracy theory is mentioned here? Are you saying that any legitimate criticism of the COVID response is a conspiracy theory? That is how your comment is worded.

 

I'm all for it being challenged. We do need some kind of way to ascertain if someone actually knows what they're doing, but the current system is broken. This was blatantly exposed last few years with COVID. "Trust the experts, and if you disagree you are a conspiracy theorist and spreading misinformation and LITERALLY WANT TO KILL GRANDMA." Of course there was some truly nonsense takes about COVID like microchips in the vaccine or other silly takes - and those were used as a strawman by said "experts" to derail discussion away from legitimate criticism.

OK, so you have a whole rant about how the "experts" don't know anything, but you haven't actually done any work to prove that!

You are not a doctor.  Spending 45 minutes on Google or listening to Joe Rogan does not put you on par with a virologist or pathologist or any other doctor with years if not decades of experience and learning.

Doctors can be wrong.  Science gets things wrong.  This is the problem with the conservative mindset when it comes to COVID - just because people aren't correct in their immediate response, does not mean that they aren't worth listening to you.  Science in general is iterative!  I know that simple people like simple solutions, and thus don't like people who say "we don't know for sure, but this is our best guess" but you do the world a disservice by pretending you have an opinion worth hearing.

So first off, your stupid rant is a shit take on it's face, because it's heavy on "experts are stupid!" without the slightest backup for that.  And second - the fucking President of the United States suggested people should inject bleach in order to fight COVID: this is not a "straw man" argument, it's an argument being disseminated by a person with real power, a real pulpit, and real ability to do harm.  Not some random asshole on Twitter, someone whom millions of people listen to (for some reason)

I'm all for the current credentialism system being challenged. It's broken. Our experts seem to be chosen more for their ability to make politically correct statements then actually be accurate. Someone is more likely to be cancelled for saying a naughty word 20 years ago then poor performance. We got it all backwards.

And you are the perfect example of someone who has done no work and performed nothing.  You're full of hot air, making empty points that sound intelligent, but which fall apart the moment you examine them.  You are an indictment of our educational system, not Dr Fauci or whatever "expert" you're railing against.  The fact that you think you're qualified to comment on the educational attainments of experts you deride, while simultaneously demonstrating that you are completely incapable of making a valid, supported argument, is what makes me think it's about time we stopped handing out middle school degrees to every idiot who can memorize their multiplication tables, let alone college diplomas

 

IMO, people are pissed about COVID mostly because the science was not presented as iterative. Certain scientific statements were presented as fact that were later proven incorrect (and in certain cases it was proven that the individual that made the supposedly factual statement knew that it was not factual). Secondly, most of the opposing research on COVID has been buried so it is difficult to be truly informed. That leaves people with just their observations and intuition. When they try to discuss inconsistencies that they observe they are called idiots.

And no, I'm not going to provide detailed support and citations. This is wall street oasis, not pubmed lol.

 

I must say I'm not exactly losing sleep over the future sentiment of "academic prestige", nevermind that I don't really agree with your premise.  If anything, finance is an industry that had become an example of credentialism run wild.  A timely example is the current PE on-cycle, which is defined entirely by credentials and academic prestige.  Try to go 5 topics on this website without someone bringing up "target" profile.  Btw, I'm not losing sleep over that either.

Also, as a former athlete that is still involved in the development of "elite" youth athletes, I see nothing that suggests kids are pursuing athletic careers in place of a professional "traditional" career.  If anything it is the opposite, whereby kids are looking to athletics to get into good colleges for the sole purpose of getting good job opportunities outside the world of sports.  The popularity, visibility, and level of competition of sport at the professional level has brought in a new level of perspective about the realistic opportunity for most people to ever be a part of that.  It was always a long shot, now it's a moon shot.

I don't see this as a real issue, certainly not in any of our fields.  I'm all for more opportunity for late bloomers, that don't have academic prestige, that have proven themselves through experience in their fields.  I also don't think that will ever come at the cost of target profiles and, on the off chance it did, it would not be because of kids wanting to be influencers or athletes.

 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

Society is finished. Watched a Jidion video recently where he went into a school and asked kids what they wanted to be in the future and literally every single one said be a youtuber

 

Honestly, I don't see a problem with this. Walk into the same class room in the 80's - you will hear a lot of kids want to be rockstars, in the 90's its rappers, in the early 2000's its popstars. Youtube has just been a huge platform and created spotlight, and I think if you ask any group of young minds a certain percentage is focused on getting into the lime light. There is a certain amount of growing up that comes with life and as people grow up their aspirations change.  

 

Agreed. 

Even if you ask kids what they want to do the kids don't have any ideas or know what anything takes. Kids say they want to be cops they think of cops from movies they don't know what a cop actually does. Or if a kid says he/she wants to be an astronaut, they just want to go to space because they saw it in a movie, doesn't mean they want to study astro physics. Same with athletes, it takes a lot of work now (even being youtube famous, a lot of planning.). What kids actually mean is they want a job that is fun or pays a lot and isn't that hard of a job, they just don't see the actual work that goes into it. 

 

On the athlete argument:

On3 tracks NIL partnership/sponsorship income, you will quickly realize that only the absolute best make actual money. For every Livvy there are thousands of girls who don't get paid or so little that they need to get another job.

We had really good athletes in high school and also at the colleges I attended. The vast majority of them were not drafted to any league and ended up unemployed with no good grades (because they were training/partying/wasting their potential). Our former high school QB ended up working at a Sprint store for years after a minor injury which wasn't career ending or anything. They just needed an excuse to cut him off.

If there is someone who is truly gifted in a sport and can make it to the top, I would be the biggest supporter. But the number of high achieving athletes isn't that high? (compared to grads/young professionals who go down the academic route)

Actual elite athletes start early, maybe as young as three years:
https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a44578096/olivia-dunne-intervi…

I don't believe that most people have such potential.

 

Yeah - I was going to post something similar.  Anyone can put on a persona to become an influence - there's a replicable pattern that many people can follow.  I don't know what it is or I'd be doing it, but there's a formula there.  A winning genetic lottery ticket is basically the price of entry for being an elite athlete.  You can outwork everyone and be an exceptionally good athlete, but there's zero money in it if you aren't a transcendently gifted natural athlete.  There are some sports where you don't need to be, like golf, but making it big in any of those requires some natural skill and such an ungodly amount of practice that it's not a path to quick/easy riches. 

That said, it doesn't particularly matter when you start training or playing sports if you are a genetic lottery winner.  Bo Jackson, maybe the greatest pure athlete ever, is famous for stating that he never worked out.  Christian Okoye didn't play football until he was 20 something years old and was an NFL rushing champion a few years later.  It's just luck of the draw.  Which isn't to say that there aren't ppl who win the genetic and fuck it all up, because that happens all of the time.    

I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done
 

I completely agree for the athletic route.

RE: social media/content creator
If someone would want to be a "social media" influencer, I would also say that the vast majority of them are physically/objectively attractive. Looks sell, or at least they will force people to subscribe and stick with them. Maybe they are also entertaining, or creative, or funny, or a good singer/songwriter.. but looks do work almost all the time.
But there are also advantages in being a digital creator - you don't need to possess all of the physical criteria together to get somewhere. Like (as an example), if a guy is abnormally short; I don't think it matters too much if he vlogs/sits down/gaming-streaming/does referral marketing and can entertain a crowd.
Lots of car reviewers online aren't traditionally attractive, yet they have multi million audiences.

 

Totally agree with you and this needs to be emphasized more in culture. I was a semi-pro alpine skier at a relatively young age at the top of the sport in my part of the USA.

The sponsorships that I received weren’t even close to being able to cover costs, and even the older pro folks (that were/are olympians now) work second jobs to feed themselves.

We need to tell our kids the reality of this, it’s amazing to dream and shoot really high but also be realistic about the pathway of getting there!

 

Strongly agree. I have strong feelings on this topic so pardon the wall of text. Academic prestige used to be relevant when nobody had access to information, but today it is a joke. Show me what you've actually achieved and learned on your own before you tell me about how the name on your degree differentiates you.

Sure, a degree from a top university opens up doors and significantly expands your network. The exposure to other smart students, notable alumni, and sharp academics is undeniably valuable. Top schools may also provide you with the soft skills to operate in certain pockets of society. None of this needs to be re-litigated. But on the subject of academic credentials, people are finally waking up to the fact that, for your typical student, the difference in course content offered at a top school and a moderately selective school is narrowing each year. This is only going to accelerate with the democratization of information (I hate that term, but I think it works in this context). There are countless examples of Ivy professors teaching the exact curriculum as state schools, and vice versa. Hell, most of the top schools in the world make their curriculum freely available to anyone! You can learn the fundamentals of programming from Harvard professors while living in small town West Virginia. This wasn't possible 10 years ago.

There are of course outlier students, most often in STEM, who will truly benefit from attending a top-tier institution. The lab facilities at MIT are objectively better than those at your average college. This might matter for those who need intensive lab experience, but these students often self select into academic careers instead of entering the traditional workforce anyway. For the vast majority of students, the groundbreaking research conducted on-campus and the cutting-edge papers published by top professors doesn't materially impact coursework or learning (what underlies your academic credentials). I'd argue that most actually shy away from the truly challenging courses and opportunities that differentiate top schools, as our culture is more focused on getting a coveted 4.0 (i.e. take the easiest possible courses at the best possible school) than actually challenging yourself to learn anything of value. The incentives are all messed up.

In today's world, a determined 12 year old can learn to code better than a fresh compsci grad. A history junkie can learn as much, if not more, about US history from online sources as they can from a textbook. Anyone can learn the key concepts of accounting and finance. Said another way. Math is math. Science is science. History is history. GAAP is GAAP. Facts are facts, and they're public. Gone are the days when information was kept behind the closed doors of highly credentialed institutions - everyone has access to this information.

In my opinion, credentials aren't going anywhere but they're going to look much different in the future as we realize that most universities are just asset management firms operating glorified social clubs with coursework serving as a convenient means to keep their customers busy. Kind of like a country club, but more intellectual. Hopefully nobody takes this the wrong way, as the social and network element is honestly the most valuable thing offered by top schools in today's world (again, not focusing on that right now).

The faster we start focusing on skill-based credentialing over brand and prestige-based credentialing the better. One of the biggest tragedies of modern academia (and recruiting) is the number of incredibly bright students who go unnoticed due to the name on their degree, but have a skillset far better than the legacy admit at Brown.

 

"Academic prestige used to be relevant when nobody had access to information"

That's true, and I'd say it's even deeper than that. Academic prestige has been used as a proxy for intelligence, since in the US, it is literally illegal to do an IQ test on an employment application, from a lawsuit called Griggs vs. Duke Power.

I find that to be a very silly decision, since we kept the IQ test and just called it a bachelor degree. There are plenty of entry level jobs including white collar jobs that don't really need a bachelor degree. I'd argue the majority of HR jobs don't need one, and even the majority of IT help support jobs would probably be fine with an associates degree or even an online certification. Instead the HR jobs hire people with a bachelor degree in a liberal arts subject, which OK I can see the value to a liberal arts education (as long as it truly is an education and not an indoctrination), but it is entirely irrelevant for their professional job. It shouldn't be a job qualification.

We could fix a lot of this by overturning Griggs vs. Duke Power and letting the market sort it out. The basis for Griggs vs. Duke Power was that it was discriminatory and not relevant to the job. I fail to see how requiring a bachelor degree for many jobs is relevant (esp if the requirement is literally just a bachelor degree, in any topic...we're not better off with a ton of humanities majors), and you end up making discrimination worse by the byzantine and nepotistic college application process for prestige universities.

 
JulianRobertson

I find that to be a very silly decision, since we kept the IQ test and just called it a bachelor degree.

That isn't what an IQ test is, though.

An IQ test is not some infallible proxy for intelligence, nor is a bachelor's degree meant to represent the same.  There are many types of intelligence, and the point of a university degree is to give people broad exposure to many different fields so they're a well-rounded person with many different capabilities, not to develop the same skills that get tested on an IQ test.

 

Agree 1,000% and the day couldn’t come soon enough.

Credentialism IMHO was a symptom of a dying empire. When a society gets fat & lazy, one thing that happens is they start thinking they can buy a silver bullet that will automatically address life’s challenges. How long is a baby even out of the womb before a relative comments about saving for college?

And not just any college . . we were actually buying into the idea that getting the right brand name would determine a person’s future. Celebs were going to to jail . . fucking jail! . . just to get the right name brand on a piece of paper for their kids who were already well educated and wealthy.

And that mentality bred other ridiculous behaviors like getting a CFA primarily for the letters, and similar stuff. 

All due to the myth that credentials could be a substitute for education. 

And now it’s crumbling because 1) as OP said, the trade become so crowded that costs are now too high 2) brand quality got lost because these credentials no longer signal hard work 3) credentials migrated from pieces of paper to experiences . . now being an “alum” of a respected company is as much or more of a thing.  Among other reasons.

Big winners are the kids & parents who haven’t yet over-invested in the fantasy of a being handed a magical key to happiness the day an ivy league admit letter arrives at age 17.

 

Is credentialism dying?

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense of what everyone said above. No in the sense, we still use people with credentials. Would you rather have a lawyer, someone who went to law school but didn't take the bar, or someone who just read a bunch of law books? A doctor, someone who went to medical school but didn't take the boards, or someone who read a lot of wikipedia about medicine? A CPA your taxes, someone who took some accounting courses, or someone who watch youtube videos about accounting?

Problem with our education system is that it is extremely broken. We kept piling on school because we kept diluting the prior school. You use to be able to get a job after high school, now high school is just looked at as daycare. If you had to built a high school curriculum from scratch today, it would vastly different from what it is now; you can't because you would have to retrain/fire or hire new teachers and that would be a mess. We need to teach more financial knowledge, coding, technology, some trades. 

At the college level, we just need to get away from having majors that don't mean anything, or put another, just have the hard degrees as majors. Also, we need to stop making people go to college if its not right for them or they don't know what they want to do. 

 

What do you all think about the future of credentialism and academic prestige?

I always found people who care about these to be smug af so happy it's going the other way. Not all influencers are bad (most are though). 

 

We say that credentialism is dying, as we debate on this thread which firms constitute "UMM" PE, which banks are "elite" as boutiques rather than merely "almost elite" boutiques, why it is so important to have a "top group" badge on your BB résumé, and why only those at maybe ten brand-name banks can compete for PE on-cycle. I've seen many people rank banks here as if they're frats or Pokémon cards or something.Do you really think that this was the case in 1970? With all those high-life financiers in those old movies having the BB or EB -> MF PE -> HBS/GSB -> Tiger Cub PM pedigree?Absolutely not. It seems like some of those guys couldn't even understand what they were selling lol, but they were making millions and having a good time.Prestige is not only alive and well, the obsession with credential climbing in our cute little industry is so pervasive that one of the most upvoted pieces of advice on a recent thread was "go touch grass and talk to people who don't know what Evercore is."Maybe you can go to Scarsdale High School and Michigan Ross now to get good Goldman looks, when it made a bigger difference 5 years ago if you went to Exeter and then Harvard…but at this point, we're just splitting hairs.Many of us demanded that we get the best credentials in hs so that we could go to the best college so that we could break into the best bank so we could earn a seat at the best PE firm so that we could outcompete the best other associates so that we could land at a top HF so that we could….so that we could what? Live a happy life that Chad who for Bs in hs found years ago? At some point, we need to step off this train before we go grey at 25 from a diet of sleeping pills and Celsius.

 
Stockerball

We say that credentialism is dying, as we debate on this thread which firms constitute "UMM" PE, which banks are "elite" as boutiques rather than merely "almost elite" boutiques, why it is so important to have a "top group" badge on your BB résumé, and why only those at maybe ten brand-name banks can compete for PE on-cycle. I've seen many people rank banks here as if they're frats or Pokémon cards or something.Do you really think that this was the case in 1970? With all those high-life financiers in those old movies having the BB or EB -> MF PE -> HBS/GSB -> Tiger Cub PM pedigree?Absolutely not. It seems like some of those guys couldn't even understand what they were selling lol, but they were making millions and having a good time.Prestige is not only alive and well, the obsession with credential climbing in our cute little industry is so pervasive that one of the most upvoted pieces of advice on a recent thread was "go touch grass and talk to people who don't know what Evercore is."Maybe you can go to Scarsdale High School and Michigan Ross now to get good Goldman looks, when it made a bigger difference 5 years ago if you went to Exeter and then Harvard…but at this point, we're just splitting hairs.Many of us demanded that we get the best credentials in hs so that we could go to the best college so that we could break into the best bank so we could earn a seat at the best PE firm so that we could outcompete the best other associates so that we could land at a top HF so that we could….so that we could what? Live a happy life that Chad who for Bs in hs found years ago? At some point, we need to step off this train before we go grey at 25 from a diet of sleeping pills and Celsius.

Yeah, people are smoking some nice kush if they think that credentialism is dying. 50% of people who work in VC come from 2 schools: Harvard and Stanford. Now, even people from there are struggling to break in. What chance does a kid from a slightly lower tier university have? Slim to none. Now you can argue that credentials don't really matter once you break in, but most people know that already. It's breaking in that's the tough part 

 

I get what you're saying. On one hand, we talk about which bank is better because it means something to people on this forum, but stepping away, we all work in good jobs to people not involved. Its like debating who has the best house in the Hamptons, just having a house there is good enough. 

Second, credential wise, it only matters because it "makes sense". Its like movie producers, people get fired for taking a chance on a movie or new idea, but no one gets fired for putting out a reboot or a 10 fast and furious movie. Same with recruiting, a recruiter can take a chance on someone from a no name college, but they wouldn't get in trouble for taking someone from Stanford. Plus, Stanford does the filtering for them. It's like NFL scouts, yes, they could spend a lot of time looking for players in places that aren't big names schools, but that's somewhat risky and  Alabama did a lot of the leg work for them already. 

 

Yes it is. From the key insights page of McKinsey's recent study "Economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier": 

"Current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today. In contrast, we previously estimated that technology has the potential to automate half of the time employees spend working. The acceleration in the potential for technical automation is largely due to generative AI’s increased ability to understand natural language, which is required for work activities that account for 25 percent of total work time. Thus, generative AI has more impact on knowledge work associated with occupations that have higher wages and educational requirements than on other types of work."

and 

"The pace of workforce transformation is likely to accelerate, given increases in the potential for technical automation. Our updated adoption scenarios, including technology development, economic feasibility, and diffusion timelines, lead to estimates that half of today’s work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045, or roughly a decade earlier than in our previous estimates."

I really feel for all of the CS/accounting/pre-law undergrads that will graduate with a mountain of debt and find themselves fighting for a smaller and smaller pool of entry-level jobs. Once this shift becomes apparent to the masses we are likely to see a rubber band style drop off of college applicants. Why get a degree for a job that has been eliminated by AI? 

 

Those 3 because the associated post-grad roles (developers/accountant/paralegal) all heavily rely on manipulating data within a system of defined rules. One could argue that many finance roles fall under the same banner. I'm not saying CTOs/CFOs/lawyers will go away; I'm saying the entry level positions will likely be automated more quickly than other roles. 

I don't consider myself bright enough to be telling young people what to get in to, but the best advice I've heard came from a PM managing hundreds of billions (not a typo) - be a generalist. Get a degree in something that offers flexibility and can help many types of companies earn revenue. For many, this is a general business administration degree.

Also, this isn't life advice. This is advice for people to pay attention to what is happening in the world, because we don't each live in a vacuum. The technologies being funded by the billions in Silicon Valley will impact you. So learn what they are and how to pivot quickly. 

 

Agree w/ accounting and law. On CS, I've heard the argument both ways -- I'm unsure which way this will go. Inclined to believe most of it will be automated away but others who are much more familiar with the field suggest demand for CS majors will remain strong. I don't know enough to comment

You're right that this will be a huge driver behind declining enrollments into the future. What would you suggest as career paths for folks who are 5-7yrs into a finance career? I'm in AM right now and wondering if this is the right field to be in LT. Or if it's something to do for another 5-10yrs and if that's the end, what to pursue afterwards 

 

Sequoia

Agree w/ accounting and law. On CS, I've heard the argument both ways -- I'm unsure which way this will go. Inclined to believe most of it will be automated away but others who are much more familiar with the field suggest demand for CS majors will remain strong. I don't know enough to comment

You're right that this will be a huge driver behind declining enrollments into the future. What would you suggest as career paths for folks who are 5-7yrs into a finance career? I'm in AM right now and wondering if this is the right field to be in LT. Or if it's something to do for another 5-10yrs and if that's the end, what to pursue afterwards 

Re CS: what compelled me the most was hearing this from (very intelligent) CIOs / VPs I'm close friends with. They are seeing their own workforces adopt AI tooling faster than any other area of business, and those tools iteratively improve through use (training). Meaning the devs are literally training the tech that will be used to replace them. It is eerie. 

I don't want to give personalized recommendations, more-so promote independent research. That said, good people will find paths forward. The best general recommendation I can give right now is be a value add on a personal level (extending beyond results/kpis). When people start getting fired, negative / pessimistic people will be gone first. Be someone clients and coworkers consider a friend and you will do okay. 

 

I had a 1.9 GPA in high school went to a dog shit state school and just got a job at one of Jane Street/HRT/Citadel as a new grad. Throughout 2 months of interviews they did not once ask me where I went to school or what my grades were it was all about what I know and proving it. Idk if it’s just HFT but the winds are definitely changing and interviewing there was super refreshing coming from fintech internships where I was competing with Cornell leetcode nerds who thought they were so much better than me.

 

Congratulations. Amazing achievement.

I'm surprised to hear this - I thought these firms were obsessed with Leetcode / Kaggle.

What type of questions where they asking and why do you think they chose you over the 'leetcode nerds'?

 

There was a bunch of leetcode stuff in the earlier rounds which are basically just filters, but once you get past the OA and the live coding interviews it gets more nuanced and it depends on what your interviewers are interested in. For me there were lots of questions about stuff like fix messaging, networking, multiplexing, collocated infrastructure, latency mitigation, order lifecycles, understanding best execution, NBBO, options basics, spreads, arbitrage, then there were lots of scenario questions about algo strategies, disaster mitigation, order routing, etc

 

To answer your other question I think they chose me because I had quite a bit of relevant trading knowledge from my almost 2 years of experience building an OMS at a fintech unicorn while I was doing college online. I don’t think most new grads were able to have in depth conversations about trading systems with the interviewers and that helped me stand out enough to get an offer despite coming from a no name school and not being the best at leetcode or academic CS

 

Ok that’s your opinion but I literally have a contract signed, you don’t need to be an “MIT math champ” to get a job at one of those firms, yea there is lots of luck but they interviewed me for two months I had to go through 5 rounds. Also I had two years relevant experience working on a software development team building an order management system at a fintech unicorn

 

I mean, idk. I get courted by some pretty cool people at the MMMT. 

Sure if you want to be a middling, average IB drone who hates his life you can do that with low gpa, lukewarm IQ, etc. 

If you actually want to be in a part of the industry or at a company that makes waves, pays you your worth and become filthy rich....you're gonna wanna have some accolades to back that up. I feel like a lot of non-target public school kids with low intellect have found a way to scam the system for IB jobs and then report back and make it sound like a literal monkey could do it. Congrats on your shit sell-side job, meanwhile the Harvard/MIT math majors will continue to earn $300/$400K at the entry level and not work 100 hour weeks because we are credentialed. 

 

Do you even have any experience in the industry or are you a troll? If not damn bro what is your problem, you are going to have a very hard time getting “filthy rich” with that kind of attitude people really hate working with elitist assholes

 

No I just have actual math skills and as such get to work for one of the few places (Jane Street, Citadel, Ren) that actually hire and pay based on merit. You don't have to be angry at it. Until five seconds ago you never even knew people like me where out there making 3x what you do for 1/2 the hours. 

 

Hmm I can see this being true but to steelman the other side, does increased scarcity of credentials longer term lead to more value towards credentials? If fewer people opt to go to the M7 / get their CFAs / etc I'd argue that helps those folks differentiate 

I don't have a strong view on this btw, just offering some thoughts 

 

Yes this is right. Because ultimately, old money and billionaires value education and will send their kids to these schools, even if its a vacation for them or to go back to their family office/business. 

No better time for networking if you can foot the bill. 

Array
 

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May 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

May 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (21) $373
  • Associates (91) $259
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (14) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (68) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (205) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (146) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

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