College vs the real world experience (your opinions)

"3. Do you feel that you have more fun during college or after?"

If after, you did it wrong.

1. Professors (on average) much more intelligent. There are always those few professors that suck and get by because they're not actively being supervised, which doesn't happen in the working world as much. Bosses above me much more practical smart, likely due to relevant experience.

2. Absolutely my co-workers. Lots of people can scrape by and get a degree.

3. After (for me). Granted I'm in an FLDP, so my hours aren't as long, and I worked 30 hr/wk through college so not much partying went on then.

4. College is a great environment for exploring the real "you" as an adult, not the kid following around their parents or whatever high school confines you to. It's also a great place to learn concepts, topics, and get an intro to certain areas. But work has the more practical learning opportunities which are much different.

4+ years in Corporate America. Here's my take:

1. Do your bosses (employers) seem smarter than your college professors?

- My professors had some nice anecdotes and gameplans, but most of those fall apart in 'the field'. My bosses do what works, not what 'should' work.

2. Do your colleagues seem smarter than your classmates? (Or more ambitious)

- Based on the hours of study vs hours of work, I'd say that my colleagues are more ambitious by necessity. We never had more free-time than in college.

3. Do you feel that you have more fun during college or after?

- ^^ See #2 above. However, I'd say that life is much more rewarding now, because what I do actually counts for something besides a grade.

4. Did you learn more from college or the real world?

- Similar to point #1. College was mentally stimulating, but I found the working world to be more challenging and rewarding. Rote memory is much less useful than the critical learning you pick up along the way.

Hope this helps.

college is more fun and academic mistakes stakes a lot less than errors in professional environment. I do like the street smarts a lot more, because it's more applicable to daily life than book smarts, and adding theoretical applications of book smart to street smarts makes it double effective.

Engineer here

1) Professors by far. No contest really. Math major here. 2) Depends. Went to a state school so the students were very average. No surprise my engineering co-workers are a bit smarter. But the PhD students I knew from school are even smarter. 3) I was very poor and couldn't afford tuition, so my life now is way better. No money meant no certainty in life. I now own every toy I've ever wanted growing up. 4) I learned the most probably in high school. Then college. Then real world. I was forced to deal with the "real world" relatively early. The older I got the less "selfish" i could be.

I'm in REPE

1. It comes down to street smart vs book smart

2. My colleagues seem smarter and more ambitious which I think is due to our competitive recruiting.

3. This is a tough one and probably depends on the day of the week. I had an incredible college experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. Monday-Thursday I'd take college any day. Nothing beats being able to be outside during the day or eating lunch on your couch while you watch ESPN. On the other hand, I work 50-55 hours a week now with no weekends, and nothing beats being able to do whatever you want all weekend without worrying about studying or how much money you are spending (to an extent). In college, I had to worry about spending $50 at a bar on the weekend. I also had to spend half my Sundays at the library. I live in SoCal now and spend my Saturdays drinking on the beach and on Sundays I can watch NFL games and bar hop all day without worrying about drinking too much to make it to the library later. I've also been to Vegas several different weekends in the last year, travel to different cities to visit friends, go to a different music festival every couple months, go to nice dinners on Friday nights, etc. which are things I couldn't really afford in college.

4. College gave me a great base to start with but left me with a bunch of loose ends that I've been able to tie up after working in the real world

I don't know what you are doing in your work, but your life must suck if college was unbeatable. On the other hand you are all young monkeys doing the tossing without enjoying a little toss once in a while, understandable why you might not enjoy work and life as much, yet...

College was ok - working in sales as a 20 something with a corporate card taking your mates and clients out was unbelievably fun. Having the money to go out and enjoy great restaurants is brilliant, seizing life and taking holidays wherever you want is good as well. Etc...

What I am trying to say is that life does not stop after college - getting shit faced 4 nights a week and hooking up with some big tittied sorority chick might be fun for a bit, but it gets old. Not that I don't think it was fun, but there was a time and place for this.

I don't work in investment banking, so take this for what you will.

1. Originally before writing this, I thought it was roughly a wash. Now that I'm reflecting, I think the answer is still about the same except you will quickly realize just how many successful folks are not actually all that intelligent. They are smart, a difference already noted in this thread, but also tend to specialize, grind, network or any other various thing that will maximize their success. It's a much different measure. I'd go so far as to say that the absolute best teacher you had and high level bosses are going to be on similar footing; as you move down the ladder the difference becomes much more distinct.

2. This is very, very group, level and office dependent. On the whole, yes I think they are probably smarter than my classmates were but (I'm counting everyone in the firm from partner on down as colleagues), unfortunately, lack many of the real world skills to make that difference have any impact on their careers.

3. After. This being said with a college career that quite literally was all about maximizing fun. In general, your world is so much smaller in college. While you have a lot of options, odds are you won't have nearly as many as you do once you graduate. Oddly, there is more to life than natty light and tailgates.

4. This is a tough one for me, since they both taught me vastly different things. College sharpened all of the skills you'd generally expect and allowed me to grow as an individual. The real world has taught me how to grow and develop as part of a team (ironic when I think about it). It has also given me the experience, work ethic and insistence on execution of simpler ideas rather than always getting complex and esoteric about things.

3 Years in the real world, 5 months of IB.

1. 50/50. The guys I work with in my current position are real smart. My prior corp. fin job, not as much. However you get all kinds of professors. Some seemed like complete tards while others were incredibly smart. My finance professor who received his Phd at Booth was out of control smart.

2. My colleagues are definitely smarter than my classmates and more ambitious. A lot of kids were clowns and were pushed through school. Even the kids with the 4.0 weren't all that smart, they just studied a ton. When it came to retaining for example "NPV" from finance 1 to finance 2 they couldn't remember.

3. This one is tough because the experiences are totally different. In college I had time but no money, now I have money and no time. The experience I have now are awesome because I can take some great trips but there's nothing like sitting around a keg in a dorm room watching football. I'll give the slight edge to college giving that it was more worry free.

4. Definitely more from the real world. Social skills definitely came from college however.

Five+ years in the Corporate world -- this relates to Grad School (undergrad was too long ago and in the hard sciences)

1) No. But my employers typically know what works. In the real world, you have to deal with these things called people. People don't always fit nicely into theories and models.

2) No. Then again, I have an MBA and work in an office where my boss and I are the only MBAs.

3) Now. I TA'd and worked my way through Grad School, so I had very little free time. (On an aside, I had to work while in college -- worked full-time and found ways to schedule all of my classes in the afternoons/evenings. so now, too. and for those that say I did this wrong...I had to work to pay my bills. It was my reality).

4) This goes back to #1. I learned a lot in Grad School; I learned how to execute on what I learned in the real world.

1. Absolutely not
2. Slightly more intelligent, much less ambitious (went to a low ranking school)
3. More fun in college
4. Book knowledge from college, soft skills from the real world, hard skills self-taught

1. My college professors had more intellectual firepower. There is no question about that - the very concepts they deal with in their everyday research would be meaningless to most college grads. But my bosses are incredibly successful, for reasons that are different from why my professors have tenure at HYP.

2. On average, classmates are a bit smarter, but there are colleagues of mine who are smarter than my average classmate. The skills required to excel in academia and in banking are very different. I would say my colleagues are more meticulous and perhaps better at communicating, especially in a professional context.

In terms of ambition, most of my colleagues think of the same things - the best exit, the best bonus, brand names on resumes. But there seems to be a lack of passion? Some of my college friends pursue things because they care about what they're doing, not how other people will perceive it or the ramifications it has for their bank account.

I do think my colleagues have a better sense of work-life balance, ironically.

4. I doubt I will ever be intellectually challenged like how I was in college unless I complete a PhD. So I think college has taught me more about rigorous intellectual analysis than anything else. Again, academia is not banking, and banking has taught me so much more commercially, including understanding industries quickly, managing expectations and developing a presence in a room.