Ranking the Douchiest People You Will Meet On Wall Street by Where They Went To Undergrad
Update: See the Non-Target Edition here.
The HPY Kiss Ass:
Imagine this: The entire analyst class has to sit through an hour long information session with the Compliance team. There is really no need for this, other than the fact that every other important group at your firm got to present to the analysts, so now it's Compliance's turn to feel important. You're hungover, have to shit and the lecture finally winds down, exactly one hour in. You're thanking Christ that it's all over so you can go back to browsing Twitter on the stool - when suddenly the black-frame glasses wearing Analyst, who has been intently writing notes in his notebook the entire meeting, raises his hand and asks a stupid round of questions that ends up making the entire waste-of-time take an additional thirty minutes, just so everyone knows that he was paying attention and is intellectually engaged.
Congratulations, you've encountered your first HPY Kiss-Ass.
The HPY Kiss-Ass is the first person to raise his hand to introduce himself to the rest of the analyst class, and typically mentions every investment club he was apart of in undergrad, along with the fact that he day-trades in his freetime and is currently up 43% on the year due to a new international arbitrage strategy he programmed. The HPY Kiss-Ass will make menial changes to your work during group projects, just so he can feel in control of the project. He will talk over you in every meeting when presenting your work, and will take charge of any stupid philanthropy or other non-essential project that is lobbed to the Analyst class throughout the course of your tenure. The key is to allow the HPY Kiss-Ass to fall on his sword. Chances are, he'll end up doing 70% of your work for you and will take 100% of the blame when something goes wrong.
The UVA Guy:
The UVA Guy is something of an anomaly. He's generally the only guy in the room that went to a public college, except for the other UVA Guys sitting around the table, yet he seems the least nervous. He's the least hard worker, yet the most well liked by the Senior Analysts. The first Friday of your SA stint he showed up looking hungover and red-eyed, yet to the dismay of the HPY Kiss-Asses, he's already developed a series of inside jokes with the FT Analysts.
The UVA Guy will be the only one to not show up to the SA happy hour after work, because he has better plans to go hang out with his fraternity brothers from undergrad. Monday morning, while you're updating spreadsheets and checking market activity, you can hear the UVA Guy yelling about sports to your boss, and you wonder why he's the only one who never seems to have enough work to do.
The Sheltered Kid From Dartmouth/Columbia/Williams/Amherst:
The Sheltered Kid seems shy, but deep down he is really just dripping with contempt for your shallow finance education and bourgeois tendencies. The Sheltered Kid rejects the UVA Guy's attempt to engage in conversations about sports or alcohol. In fact, sports, alcohol and fun are among the most loathsome activities the Sheltered Kid can think of. He prefers drinking glasses of red wine that the UVA Guy cannot pronounce, while at candle-lit French restaurants with his other liberal arts friends.
Nobody knows about the Sheltered Kid's background, other than that he lives by himself because he cannot stand the way the presence of others clouds his intellectual energy. He allegedly also can play the clarinet really well, although the one time he mentioned it, the UVA Guy snickered to his other UVA Guy friend, so he went back to quietly mulling over how un-intellectual everyone else in the room is.
The Group of Asians From MIT and Carnegie Mellon:
This group of 3 or 4 Asians prefer to stick amongst each other and speak in Mandarin. They eat lunch together, sit next to each other at meetings and develop selective mutism when their counterparts are not around them. They are great to be stuck with in elevators because unlike the HPY Kiss-Asses, they wont try to impress you by talking about recent market activity, nor will they ask you if you saw the UVA basketball game last night.
The Golden Child From UPenn:
The Golden Child is somewhere between the UVA Guy and the HPY Kiss-Ass. Hailing from Wharton, he has clearly been taught by his undergraduate career services advisors how to act in business gatherings. He takes notes every so often during information sessions, but he wont actually go back and read them like the HPY Kiss-Ass. He can talk sports with the UVA Guy, but he rolls his eyes when the conversation strays into the UVA Guy's recount of how blacked out he was last night.
Moreover, the UPenn Golden Child seems to be the only living creature with a non-liberal arts degree that the Sheltered Kid doesn't display contempt for. "You know, you and I are the only ones in this Analyst class that aren't total fucking brainlets" the Sheltered Kid may mention to him, without making eye contact. The Golden Child is the best partner to work with on a project. He's a reluctant leader that will take charge when he has to, but prefers letting the HPY Kiss-Ass wear himself out by doing it anyway. The UPenn guy is the only guy who can genuinely go out on a Thursday night and drink one or two beers while still making it home by midnight.
The Notre Dame Cult
Concisely, these guys are overly obsessed with their alma mater and the only thing they can talk about when together is ND football. Lot of them are douchebags. Have similar tendencies as those from UVA, Georgetown, Duke. It's a cult in South Bend.
When I wrote about the UVA guy I definitely had Georgetown and Duke in mind too.
Yeah neither of those are public schools brih, they're both probably the farthest thing from considering the absurd cost of tuition
Kids from ND will tell you within the first couple of minutes of conversion that they went to ND without you even asking. Absolute cult.
Do you tell people you work in LBO PE when you first meet them?
Truth!
They really do. My grandfather played quarterback for ND. They get starry eyes every time I tell them that. Especially the older guys. If we are near a computer they will rush to google his name and reminisce about how football used to be and the development of the sport in general and at ND. So sometimes I hold my tongue as that is usually the most boring 30 minutes of your life, unless you're into that stuff.
BC Eagles right up there as well. If they're a self-proclaimed "Double Eagle" (BC High -> BC UG), or worse yet, a "Triple Eagle" (BC High -> BC UG -> BC MBA/BC Grad School), begin constructing an implementing your escape from the situation before being dragged to the outskirts of your sanity by unending rambling on how "great Doug Flutie was," that they're "always shocked to find out when people didn't know their Men's Baseball Team plays the Sox at the first string training game every year," and how "they're not conceding that BU has a better Ice Hockey program, only clarify that even if they did, their other teams suck, so BC is still the better sports school on Comm Ave.". These guys love to hear themselves squawk, especially loudly in public places; beware when one Eagle sees another in the wild as they're prone to breaking out into a screeching mating call; if you ever hear these words in the presence of an eagle "Fly Eagles, Fly..." evacuate the area immediately as it is likely that you are about the be swarmed by a hoard of squawking Eagles.
I've never seen a BC kid in my life in NYC
This is great! What about Canadians though?
EDIT: didnt see title said "douchiest" nvm
replace UPenn Golden Child with Ivey HBA Golden Child
LOL can we do canadian edition with UBC, Waterloo, Rotman, Schulich, Queens, McGill and the rest?
no because no one gives a shit about canada
Fuck off and OD on maple syrup already!
wharton guys I have met are more like how you've described HYP people. they know more about finance than you and they want to make sure you know it. HYP kids who end up in finance tend to be more chill
OP, based on your descriptions, I'm guessing you're a golden child from UPenn.
Uva
I tried to SB you and accidently threw MS.. thought that the entire time reading paragraph and contemplated not finishing it. But then again, I’m the UVA guy
Edit: spelling
I appreciate the attempt at giving me an SB though!
Saying UPenn shows lack of sophistication. Everyone who is really in-the-know calls the school Penn. UPenn is reserved for use only in the company of unsophisticated peasants in order to prevent the dreaded confusion with PSU. When in the company of fellow ivy grads and other elitists of that sort, a Penn grad can safely say Penn. A certain amount of well-conceiled insecurity and anxiety about this whole name debacle never leaves him though.
The Harvard kiss-ass shares a lot of traits with his YP counterparts but deserves a separate mention. He appears to be either unabashedly arrogant or nauseatingly modest but even in the latter case manages to be more conceited, extra and eye-roll-inducing that anyone else.
YP kids have mastered the art of ever-so-subtly reminding the non-HYP ivy kids that they are actually plebs while masterfully concealing their own insecurity towards Harvard.
Finally, you forgot the two stepchildren of the ivy league, Brown and Cornell, which anyway proves my point. Some Brown and Cornell kids can be douchey but in general they are just very happy to be there against all odds. No easy feat making it to WS from a hybrid state school or the bastion of trustafarians, laziness, softness and leftist ideology.
Other than that I find your descriptions to be quite accurate lol.
"hybrid state school"
haha perfect
There's certainly a distinction between Penn-Wharton and Penn-SAS on WS, yes? Please elaborate on that. Do the SAS alums live in shaking fear someone will ask if they went to Wharton?
no, we don't - we get the same jobs
The distinction is there but usually gets blown out of proportion. The best comparison would be the distinction people make between Harvard vs Yale. It is there but not huge. Still, the best way to make a Penn CAS or SEAS person hate you is probably to ask them if they went to Wharton after they have already told you they went to Penn. A bit of underlying insecurity is always there. Not too different from a Yalie's insecurity towards Harvard.
What happens with recruiting is that non-Wharton Penn is not on par with HYP+Wharton. Still, I d say it is right below. Tons of non-Wharton Penn kids get great WS jobs and they tend to know their stuff because usually they have taken tons of Wharton classes and been involved in Wharton clubs.
haha
lol this is hilarious
non target checking in for SA, ill keep my mouth shut and try not say anything stupid.
lol saving this
Clearly the OP is a Wharton grad
You're a community college grad
he is actually uva i think based in his other posts. and sadly no one says wharton grad anymore. It was already kinda douchey saying wharton grad instead of penn grad pre-donald but after donald it is a no-go zone. he spoiled it for all of us.
Was obvious. Op thinks uva is right below HPY...
LSE grads can be pretty bad imo.
And I'm saying that as a future one!
Wait till you meet the try-hard Warwick ones haha
So which one are you?
Hopefully not one! ;)
Interested in the European version of this
The Sheltered Kid From Dartmouth/Columbia/Williams/Amherst:
The Sheltered Kid rejects the UVA Guy's attempt to engage in conversations about sports or alcohol. In fact, sports, alcohol and fun are among the most loathsome activities the Sheltered Kid can think of. He prefers drinking glasses of red wine that the UVA Guy cannot pronounce, while at candle-lit French restaurants with his other liberal arts friends.
I can't imagine this description to ever apply to a Dartmouth kid.
Agree. Not sure there’s such a thing as a sheltered kid at any of those schools. Definitely not at Dartmouth.
My Dartmouth friends have described it as an incestuous, drunken dystopia...definitely didn't get a sheltered vibe from their stories lol
The rich white kid whose parent's were able to essentially buy him a solid education despite the kid being an under performer, and thus studies at one of those mediocre, solid but not selective private school for rich kids like Hobart, Skidmore, Bucknell, Richmond, Rollins College, Sewanee, Loyola Maryland, College of Charleston, Gettysburg College, Trinity, etc. This kid dresses well, has nice hair, knows how to behave among upper management and is one of the good boys, yet knows jack shit about finance.
Haha, as a Trinity student, I can say this is almost hurtfully accurate. Although I'd say it's not entirely accurate to equate HWS and Gettysburg with the rest you mentioned. * no offense or whatever *
U will be a janitor..
Richest old money kid I know went to Hobart.
Why are HWS and Gettysburg different from those others?
What about the kids from NYU, Michigan, UT Austin, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA?
Bump. Want to see the non-target that doesn't forget to tell you how hard their journey was.
When I read stuff like this it makes me sick but I have to laugh because I know it is spawned from ignorance. Education is one of the most important skills someone can acquire. Whether you acquire an associates degree from your community college or a PhD from Harvard it is an accomplishent. It shows you set long terms goals and achieve them. It is good for the economy and it is helps everyone.
Not every one like most BOMS think they are going to pass the CFA exam and manage the Magellan Fund. That is comical.
Yes but the reality is high performance jobs have a disproportionately large amount of the massively insecure overachievers. Let’s not forget the Goldman HR practices that target individuals who exhibit low amounts of self esteem with long track records of success. In conjunction btw.
Pedigree is a great starting point for people to get an idea of you and your potential. But it is not the be all end all. Let’s not forget Einstein’s education, or lack thereof. The college system in many ways is a modernized expensive day care. Most material is within reach at a typically inexpensive cost and most bright minds can be tapped into via biographies and or videos all over the web. But our society is lazy, and finds a formalized four year structure is the most effective. We all know this, it’s no surprise. We also know that 90% of those at top tier universities were statistically incredibly fortunate. Typically brought up in relatively nice environments, with the luck of not having horribly debilitating disabilities. However, the entitlement persists.
The sad thing though is that those who define themselves by their pedigree or current employment set their foundation on weak bedrock. The minute you lose your job, do you become nothing? Are you defined only by your past? Is it genuinely how you define yourself as a person.
Having gone to a target which I chose to exhibit massive gratitude towards the whole experience, I feel bad for those that define themselves of this as not only does it support the continuation of a shallow form of self worth but it also further perpetuates the pissing contest that lives in many corners of the Wall Street community.
Cheers though! Can’t change most minds, and judgement is a burden best left elsewhere!
It’s a perpetuation of the Wall Street pissing contest. Unfortunately, many forget how statistically lucky they are. Gratitude becomes dismal in the face of greed and pride. To have the opportunity, let alone the ability (the absences of disability) is an incredible blessing.
Having gone to a target I chose to not define my self worth by it because I realize the great fortunate that it was to attend it. Most kids who crush the standardized tests were prepared to do so, whether through tutors, or just overbearing parents. I try to Keep in mind some kids don’t have either.
Accomplishments or lack thereof are too often defined and measured when compared to others. “Oh you graduated from community college? Well I went to Yale!” “Oh you work on Wall Street? So what?! I just sold an app for 20 million and wake up at noon!”
There’s always a bigger or smaller fish. Defining yourself on pedigree or relative accomplishments not only perpetuates the external pissing contest that exists on Wall Street, but it creates a shallow internal bedrock of your own existence. What happens if you get fired? Is that it? Does life end? Of course not. But the same prideful thinking that makes some resent others is the same thinking that creates the most devastating falls.
Gratitude has a tough time existing in the presence of greed, pride or envy.
But try not to let it bother you. I’ve found the burden of being sad that this culture exists is one best left behind.
But these are just thoughts from me, an anonymous person on the internet.
Cheers! :)
Hear hear
Phil from Arizona State, only got in because Drew, the resident asshole at your firm thought he was, super sick.
Few others:
The Harvard bro. For shits and gigs, convinced people he was in a secret society at school. Likely to make up tons of stuff, but shit he went to Harvard who can prove him wrong?
The state school kid who looks down at his school more than the people from Ivy’s. Everyone thinks he’s smart and that it’s impressive he got a Wall Street job while still having fun at a state school, but he feels weird about it. Why are you mad?
The CS kid. Smart as hell, definitely has a photographic memory. But, down plays his intelligence in social situations almost to the point where you end up believing “maybe he’s not that smart” only to realize his sociopathic tendency for your ass, as he later recites word for word a text book definition on some level of technical analysis.
The addict. What the hell do you do when you get off work? Wait... I actually don’t want to know.
Wall Street is a interesting place.
Few others:
The Harvard bro. For shits and gigs, convinced people he was in a secret society at school. Likely to make up tons of stuff, but shit he went to Harvard who can prove him wrong?
The state school kid who looks down at his school more than the people from Ivy’s. Everyone thinks he’s smart and that it’s impressive he got a Wall Street job while still having fun at a state school, but he feels weird about it. Why are you mad?
The CS kid. Smart as hell, definitely has a photographic memory. But, down plays his intelligence in social situations almost to the point where you end up believing “maybe he’s not that smart” only to realize his sociopathic tendency for your ass, as he later recites word for word a text book definition on some level of technical analysis.
The addict. What the hell do you do when you get off work? Wait... I actually don’t want to know.
Wall Street is a interesting place.