Graduate Degree - Banking
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I got into a bunch of top law schools (think 4 out of 6 of NYU/Chicago/Columbia/Penn/Virginia/Michigan) and realized I wanted finance. If you don't want law, don't go to law school. Period.
Yeah, don't go to law school.
The only sector hurting more than finance right now is law. To be fair, with your stats Harvard Yale and Stanford would all take you so not having a job post graduation really isn't a concern.
However, if cost is a concern recognize that kids from top programs typically graduate with >150k worth of debt. That means you're going to be a slave at a corporate law firm for several years, and the only people I've met that are more miserable than I-bankers are corporate lawyers.
As for the MS at LSE, don't do it simply because you want a job in finance, that would be a huge waste of 2 years. The industry is contracting right now, not expanding. Better to try and network your way in or get an MBA later when the economy is good.
Why not look for work that isn't engineering but requires a technical background ? A good friend of mine graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, and now works on the competitive bid team of a major construction company. He makes good dough and is a solid candidate for tier 1 business schools.
Getting a job in finance or law is very difficult right now. However, as Babyj said, your stats (provided other components of your apps are solid) will get you in the Harvard, Yale, Stanford and on down the line of the top 14. Graduating in the top half of your class at the HYS will just about guarantee that you will be employed at a well-paying law firm. You may or may not graduate with a large debt load. In your first year, the amount of debt that you will need to take out will be largely determined by your incoming academic profile; the amount of debt that will be necessary to finance your education in your final two years will affected by your academic performance as a 1L and 2L. If you have an exceptional year as a 1L, you will, most likely, be given more scholarship money.
Before you go to law school you must be very sure of two things. Firstly, you must be VERY certain that you want to be a lawyer. Yes, the pay is fantastic, but the pay doesn't mean a goddamn thing if you hate your job, which many lawyers do. What kind of law are you interested in practicing? What region of the country? Do you want to practice law internationally? All of these questions need to be on your mind and, preferably, answered before you commit to the 3-year cluster-fuck known as law school. You need to reach out to any lawyers that may be willing to talk with you; you need to ask them what precisely, on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis, they do. If you are interested in a particular area of the law, then you should try to speak with a lawyer practicing in that area. Again, you need to know what their day is like on an hour-to-hour basis, IN A VARIETY OF ENVIRONMENTS. Secondly, you have to understand the academic commitment that is necessary to be a good a law student. Unless you're Bill/Hillary Clinton, Ann-Marie Slaughter, or Scalia, you will need to spend an incredible amount of time studying. It makes undergrad look like middle-school and it makes business school (even at the graduate level) look like high-school. You must understand that choosing to attend an elite law school, which given your profile, you are likely to attend, means that you are choosing to throw yourself into an amazingly competitive environment with people who are, frankly, a bunch of douches. Just imagine every asshole/gunner you've had in every class in undergrad, multiply that by a hundred or so, and BAM! you have your law school classmates. One the most difficult things about law school is the fact that your semester grade is entirely contingent on the score of one test in each class. You have one chance to earn an A. If you fuck up....well, you've just fucked up and that's it. There is no mid-semester opportunity for feedback. Your professors are, in all likelihood, multiples smarter than most people you've ever met. Law school was a breeze for them and they often fail to understand how difficult it is for most law students to get a handle on lawyerly thinking ---> you're tests will be hard as shit. If you're not spending 6-8 hours/day studying (10-12 hours on weekends), you don't have a fucking chance at graduating near the top of your class. Furthermore, even if you spend an enormous amount of time studying the law, if you are unable to grasp what it means to think like a lawyer, then you will be a middling student at best. You can know the black letter of the law like my penis knows fantastic vagina (something your penis will come to know as well, young padawan learner....if you do well in law school and can make it rain when you get a job thereafter), but if you cannot apply the law to a set of facts... ---> middling student = middling vagina.
All of that said, if it turns out that you like being a lawyer, it's soooooooo worth it. If you can secure a position at a very legit firm and work hard, you will most likely make partner. In the case that you do make partner, you will be making it rain for the next 30-40 years of your life. If you develop a nice book of business, you could possibly go off on your own, start your own firm and make absolutely ridiculous money. As a lawyer (a legitimately elite firm) you have an advantage over the young I-banker: your job is much more secure over the span of the entire business cycle. Law firms in the upper echelon try like hell not to lay lawyers off as it sends a bad signal to graduating law students coming from elite law schools. I'm not saying that law firms don't lay people off - there were a ton a layoffs in the crisis - I'm saying that they try like hell not to. There will come a time when, as a lawyer, you will look across the fence and the grass will seem unbelievably green...it isn't. If you like practicing law, you'd better have a damn compelling reason to jump ship.
Hope this helps!
Back_That_Thang_Up
Informative post. +1 sb
Deleted
I did want to make the switch to PE. If you're employed in Big Law and make partner, you can expect to pull in $350k and above (into the low millions if you're TRULY ELITE and live in a market like NY). I wanted to make stratospheric money though, and I did not see myself doing that in law. I COULD see myself doing that in PE, hence the motivation to jump ship.
That wasn't the primary reason I wanted to make the switch though. Unlike a lot of lawyers who want to make the step into the business world, I thoroughly enjoyed refereeing deals, which is what lawyers in my practice area do. The old saying goes "Investment bankers sell ice to Eskimos and lawyers make sure that what's being sold is neither liquid nor gas." I was perfectly okay with that role. BUT, I was very enamored with the idea of making the actual business judgments/decisions in a deal. Furthermore, when I spoke with my colleagues in PE, young in their careers like myself, about what they did on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis, it seemed liked used their creative abilities a lot more than I did sitting in a cubicle reading decently dry material and arguing with lawyers in another country about where "and" goes in this sentence or whether this comma should really be a semi-colon. This is going to sound a little strange, but, I was okay with that kind of stuff too (I double majored with philosophy being one of those majors and was used getting in someone's ass in an argument because of their linguistic sloppiness), i just thought that making the "big picture" decisions in a deal would be more enjoyable.
Then I got a chance to sit down with two partners at two different firms and my mind was quickly changed. Sleep is hard to come by when the majority of your wealth is tied up in a fund, the operation of which is not subject to your SOLE discretion but to the discretion of a number of individuals. You may work with very good people, but it's still very difficult (from what I'm told) to not be at least a little paranoid when other people can override you on decisions that put YOUR money at risk. I also didn't realize what it means to work in a very cyclical industry until one of my young colleagues in PE was laid off. Dude is (or was, rather) jobless with an very legitimate MBA. WTF?! Not my cup of tea. I said in my previous post, the best law firms are loathe to lay lawyers off; they will avoid this at all costs ---> my job is fairly safe no matter the economic climate.
Those realization made me appreciate (even more) the importance of my work. The fact of the matter is, nothing sticks in a deal if it's not rock solid from a legal perspective. I began to notice that the business decisions that get made in most of these deals are fairly unimpressive and do not require much intellectual engagement, unlike the legal work. I've decided as well that if I am not satisfied with the money that I make as a partner in years to come (provided I make partner), then I'll explore starting my own firm. If I can develop a nice book of business and keep that business in the event that I do start my own firm, I'm pretty sure I'll be satisfied with the cash. I billed just north of 2,400 hours last year. I obviously don't take home what my firm charges for me on a per hour basis. By the time I'm even capable of starting my own firm, I could command $500-1000/hour. I would also be raking in most of the revenue from the hours billed my associates. I'd be cool with that.
Read www.abovethelaw.com and carefully reconsider
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