Is "high finance" becoming more competitive compared to other fields like medicine or law?
My nephew didn't get into business but was able to get onto the pre med track which made me wonder if business is becoming more competitive. Of course that's just one anecdote but just curious to see if that's the case especially across semi-targets (students at targets probably have a bit more freedom). Especially with 2020 when everyone was staying home and kids had more time to explore different fields and tiktoks glorified careers with day-in-a-life videos.
I applied to college around a decade ago and I thought that it would become a bit easier (of course IB will always be competitive because it's high-paying and relatively low barrier entry) due to tech and consulting. But it seems that these high finance fields are becoming more competitive on the other hand.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/why-college-gradu…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/business/inves…
Also came across these articles few months ago and I was still pretty surprised that even at UPenn people still choose Wall Street over consulting and tech. Even with Gen Z being more concerned about hours and making the work environment more friendly.
Medicine and law are also known to be grueling and expensive paths to choose and unless you have a passion for either them it's gonna be tough.
I know this forum has many current college students + recent analysts so just wanted an overview.
**Also to be clear I am NOT making a discussion of which field is better
Bruh pre med track. Check back when he’s actually applying to med school lol.
You can get a top bank with a 3.5 GPA. Good luck getting into a top med school with anything less than a 3.8 in classes that are significantly harder. You’re also much more fucked in med school applications if you’re an ORM
Yeah true. Many of my friends were on the pre med track but dropped out and went into Econ or CS
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Medicine has become more competitive. Met an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon whose been on the staff of NFL teams. He laughed and said with his test exam scores, there was no way he would have matched nowadays into the same specialty.
I'd argue high finance has gotten less competitive and become an easier industry to enter. Back in the 2000s, early 2010s - I felt I never met a single banker who didn't go to a Ivy or outside of the top ~30 schools in the country. Know a bunch of bankers who came from decent schools that had above average business programs nowadays (including my undergrad, we have a handful of bankers across top MM/BB nowadays compared to none when I graduated). And at the MBA level, consulting appears more competitive than IB overall. Was the opposite I heard pre-2008 as per an ex banker from those days who graduated from a HSW MBA program.
Its for the “prestige”
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What are you doing nowadays?
Law is probably more risky as I’m sure the median individual who strikes out in Big Law will have far more debt than the median individual who strikes out in high finance early in their careers.
Probably less competitive given the attractiveness of SWEs too
Your example may also just stem from the fact that it is often a lot harder to get into top undergrad business schools than it is to get into the liberal arts colleges at the same university. I know this is true for Wharton, Ross, McDonough, Olin, and Mendoza, among others.
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