The Prestige

The Prestige

Recently, I've become inundated with questions/concerns regarding prestige from recent grads working without banking offers and analysts that have been laid off but still lined up jobs. I've also seen a few posts on WSO with people letting off steam regarding prestige and working in ops.

This is my reply to anyone in their shoes. Anyone who has an offer to work in ops, corp fin, boutique banking, audit or Chinese gold farming.

Being employed is more prestigious than being unemployed.

Exit ops? Bust your ass and earn your 55-70K a year. Money in the bank should be your concern.

 

Thank you, Cornelius, for your bit of common sense.

This really helps put things in perspective for those thinking that "operations" and such is below them. Sure, it's not what you signed on for, but it's better than an outright reneged offer. Because then you wouldn't be working for a BB, period.

Stick out the best you can...it'll work out with time.

 

Agreed on all counts except for the Chinese gold farming one - those guys only get paid $100 USD a month. :) (Obviously I know you were joking)

And while I've steered people away from going to Ops / non-front-office roles in the past, with the way things are currently I think a "Take what you can get" mentality makes a whole lot more sense.

This is one reason why I refuse to "rank" banks despite numerous requests to do so - it's a silly exercise even when the market is good, but when things take a turn for the worse it is even dumber as it makes you focus on the wrong things.

 
Best Response

I made a post about this in the "get a job" section a few days ago. I picked Citi ops (in hindsight not the greatest idea since I couldve done UBS or Deutsche). Certain banks are more likely to let you make the jump to front office, so pick one of those banks. If you're the top operations analyst (which isn't too hard if you're a high gpa target kid with a bunch of state school kids) , you should be able to get into trading if you bust your ass and the market improves (Despite the message board, there are MANY people who did ops to trading that I know of personally). I guess if you want to do ibanking instead of trading its a little harder.

 
studentx:
I made a post about this in the "get a job" section a few days ago. I picked Citi ops (in hindsight not the greatest idea since I couldve done UBS or Deutsche). Certain banks are more likely to let you make the jump to front office, so pick one of those banks. If you're the top operations analyst (which isn't too hard if you're a high gpa target kid with a bunch of state school kids) , you should be able to get into trading if you bust your ass and the market improves (Despite the message board, there are MANY people who did ops to trading that I know of personally). I guess if you want to do ibanking instead of trading its a little harder.

studentx, you underestimate a state school kid's potential. I know a lot of kids from state schools that landed front office jobs over target school kids even in these markets. Also, it is not easy to be the best operations analyst considering your competition is not really stupid. A lot of people in operations have the same goal, i.e, land a front office job. Also, I have come to realize from experience that GPA and college rep. is absolutely insignificant once you walk through those doors. It's all about how much work you put in. You could be the smartest kid in the world and still not do well. I do agree that many people who did ops managed to secure front office roles in trading. Actually, people in risk control have a preference over ops. Although, if markets don't recover in the future, then this opportunity will be more unlikely.

 
fordhammasta:
(which isn't too hard if you're a high gpa target kid with a bunch of state school kids)

Maybe true for the good old days but quite a few semi-target kids were rejected BO/MO jobs at BBs this summer. I would think the kids this summer would be of a higher standard this year. For example, even my Umich Ross friend was not taken for PWM or Ops at GS/MS. I know even more NYU kids who couldn't even land first round for any position at BBs.

Furthermore, what everyone said on this thread is pretty correct. The market's bad and by working hard (not necessarily thinking you have to screw over your peers), you will probably have great opportunities wherever you go. Other than that, networking is always key. I was able to secure asset management in a BB and do a rotational through networking and reaching out to past alumni and I only consider myself at a semi-target at best.

Finally, the original poster is right. Focus on getting paid and remember that top MBAs are not looking for IBD candidates. If anything, being a cookie cutter will hurt you. Plenty of consultants, PWM, and BO ppl at BBs get into top MBAs and I would say its not a disadvantage at all. Furthermore, even if you don't want to hit the big reset button of a top MBA, a VP in, say, Ops is not bad at all concerning hours and compensation if you don't mind the 5-6 years.

Even my FT friends at Booz Allen who were lowballed (50k-53k) can expect decent hours/compensation if they work hard and hit a 3 and above. (Booz tiers go from 1 to 6). And hey, at least they get 40 hour weeks and get to sleep safe at night knowing Mr. Obama has their back.

 

I agree with what you say on being appreciative to at least have a job, however your attitude on becoming the top ranked analyst in operations is laughable. A) You go to NYU and say you have a high GPA. Why then, not using the markets as an excuse, did you not land a front office job? The markets suck for everyone, but if you are such a shoe in to be great in the back office, why couldn't you do well in recruiting? You insult back office jobs on here like you are too good for it; and you act like you are merely using it to get bumped up to the front office.

B) You went to Stern and did well...AWESOME. But then you say that you will be #1 analyst which "which isn't too hard if you're a high gpa target kid with a bunch of state school kids". Virginia, Michigan, Indiana to name three, have pretty solid business programs and you cannot assume they are idiots. Your boss will not care where you came from, he/she will care about your work. You no longer go to NYU once you walk through the doors at Citi, you wear the same uniform as the guy next to you who went to a different school.

That is all I have to say. I never post negative stuff on here, but the arrogance of some people on this board is the reason why they failed that special front office interview; I am sure you have no intention of coming off as a dick, therefore these types of dooshy comments come out in an interview without you even knowing it.

 

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Since when is a 3.4 at Stern qualify you as a "high gpa target kid"...In these times, you don't have either going for you. Stern is not a "real" target school right now given the recruiting environment and you certainly don't have a high gpa.

Coming from someone who has admitted on prior posts that they were happy with their BONY internship and are ok not doing banking or S&T because they are self-described as "lazy", I wouldn't get too excited about your upside prospects.

Best of luck to you - when you see kids from Michigan, UVA, Indiana, and even Penn State outperforming you - I hope you can still speak as optimistically about your prospects of moving to the front office.

 

I agree that once you walk through those doors, where you went to school doesn't matter. You quickly develop a reputation based on your attitude and ability. If you can't hack it, hiding behind your school does nothing. It's funny, most of the people I work with have never heard of the college I went to (mostly because I changed geographies). This doesn't change expectations one bit. Heck, when the senior guys talk about really good past analysts, they have no idea where the analysts went to school.

By the way, nothing wrong with ops. Tons of incredibly intelligent and hard-working people are in ops. Not everyone has the desire to take on the lifestyle that we do in banking or the stress from S&T.

~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

I'm just wondering why so many people still insist on doing finance, front office or not, simply because of the prestige of working for a GS/MS/JPM. It makes the most sense to just do something else out of undergrad that would allow most of the opportunities of a BB (except P.E). Consulting comes to mind (management, economic/litigation, technology), as do management trainee programs, industry experience, or just something else altogether. I don't see why people would rather work for something like PWM, Operations, or even IB in an environment like this when there are plenty of opportunities just as good if not better elsewhere. Sure, there are some people who love finance and do it because they enjoy the work, but I'm positive that prestige is a significant factor that cause people to choose finance for the wrong reasons.

As a person who interned at a top BB (MS/GS) last summer and had full time offers from two top places (one of them from Moelis/Evercore/Lazard), I chose not to take any finance offer and did something just as good. I'm not going to be able to boast "I work for Goldman" and won't be partying with "models and bottles," but my exit ops into the industry and b-school will be on par and I won't have to worry so much about the markets and my job security for the next two years.

Am I missing something here, or is finance just that good?

 

studentx - I went to a semi-target at best. I paid half the tuition you did, but I busted my ass and didn't sit on the glory of some school name to land me a job. Now you're going to end up in ops at a struggling bank that is firing people left and right, while others like myself, the people you call not too hard to surpass, are getting much better jobs at much better companies. Please allow me to break it down for you - with your GPA, you've average at best. And I know swarms of talented people that went to state schools that would smoke you. So while I'm not happy with how hard it is for everyone to get good jobs now, I can't help to smile knowing that a dbag like you got put in his place. And that place, sir, is anywhere but at the top of the pile.

 

I didn't mean my post to be arrogant, I just feel I have better excel skills and work ethic due to the difficulty of my classes/prior internships. I don't think I'm better than them because of their school, but no way their classes were as hard as mine coming from a state school, and we had excel, group projects, extremely small time frames to do huge projects, etc. My Bony internship was fastpaced as hell. I talked to other people interviewing, they were smart, but most only had a PWM internship at best - which from what I hear is really easy. When I say I'm lazy I mean I go out just about every night, but during work hours I work hard as shit.

 
studentx:
I didn't mean my post to be arrogant, I just feel I have better excel skills and work ethic due to the difficulty of my classes/prior internships. I don't think I'm better than them because of their school, but no way their classes were as hard as mine coming from a state school, and we had excel, group projects, extremely small time frames to do huge projects, etc. My Bony internship was fastpaced as hell. I talked to other people interviewing, they were smart, but most only had a PWM internship at best - which from what I hear is really easy. When I say I'm lazy I mean I go out just about every night, but during work hours I work hard as shit.
This has to be a joke. Better excel skills? I can tell you one thing, the best analysts and their relative excel skills coming into the job are rarely correlated. Excel is just a tool, nearly every smart person can master it within 6 months on the job.

And as far as work ethic goes, there are as many if not more kids who bust their tails in state schools because they're paying their way through and NEED to do well or else they can't stay in school. Anyone thinking they are a better candidate for banking because they did a lot of excel work in college is delusional.

 

how can you misread this?

"If you're the top operations analyst (which isn't too hard if you're a high gpa target kid with a bunch of state school kids), you should be able to get into trading if you bust your ass and the market improves"

you think you're better because you went to Stearn and that you can do better than me because I went to Illinois. Seriously, dude, sanity check...

 

again, I'm not comparing state school kids who had a 3.9 and got FO jobs to be me. I'm comparing state school kids who have the same GPA as me who got into ops, which seems to be the majority of the people I was superday with. Stern has a much stricter curve with higher caliber student body and with more intensive classes, just as the Ivies are better than my school in all those areas.

I don't know why its considered bad to go into a job wanting to be one of the best...

 

But I guess the point I was trying to make is that there are people that were aiming for front office, got the superdays, had the internships, but just missed it because of the subprime mess. There are other people who just aimed for ops their whole college career and are presumably less motivated - not that there's anything wrong with this, but my friend got into ops at another bank without even knowing what the credit crunch is. I don't think it's controversial to say the first group has a considerably better chance of standing out and make the transition.

 

Haha I can't wait till studentx gets outperformed in "excel skills and work ethic" by a Baruch grad. I'd be worried more about your competition from kids from state schools since those are the ones who had to work their ass off to even land an ops position in NYC. And yea I'm sure your excel skills will really save your ass. Good luck.

 

first off

1) I'm from a poor family and worked 20-30 hours a week since freshmen year, which is the main reason my GPA is only 3.5

2) I'm ridiculously in debt, so don't play the elitist bullshit on me

3) One of the main reasons I had trouble getting into front office is because I don't have a relative in the business like everyone else in Stern. Somewhere in excess of 75% of the kids here got their freshmen/sophmore internship through family connections. furthermore, since I was busting my ass just so I could afford to eat, they had plenty of time to get better grades and do unpaid internships during the year, something that isn't a luxury.

so don't give me shit about my work ethic. This, on top of the ridiculous amount of work and curve my school has, I really don't think its wrong of me to assume I'll be a good analyst - which was the point I was trying to get across, if you a-holes bothered to read it.

4) I don't even know why I'm defending myself on a message board, I'm out.

 

"I don't see anything wrong with going into a job with the aim of outperforming your peers."

You really want to work with a guy whose sole aim is to outperform you?

Founder, Volunteer Forever http://www.volunteerforever.com
 

"You really want to work with a guy whose sole aim is to outperform you?"

I don't know how it works in Ops, but I think it's pretty rare to have multiple analysts working on the same deal team. Therefore, I don't think it will really ruin the team dynamic since you end up with an analyst just trying to do his/her best job as possible.

Also, I think you've really twisted the phrasing. I don't think that's their SOLE aim, but it is ONE objective. If you don't have good relationships with other analysts, your growth is hindered since you won't be able to learn from them. But there are obviously other ways to outperform your peers such as a positive attitude + delivering work with minimal errors.

Finally, I think all of you are pretty naive if you don't think people enter into a work environment looking to be obtain a high ranking for the bigger bonus or promotion. Isn't that what your goal was in school? To be in the top percentile in order to get that lucrative job following graduation...

 

Look at all these asses flinging shit at Stern. Whenever you get the opportunity, right?

And btw, high potential state schools transfer out if they have balls unless they go to UMich or Berkeley. Then they might as well stay.

 
startarevolution:
Look at all these asses flinging shit at Stern. Whenever you get the opportunity, right?

And btw, high potential state schools transfer out if they have balls unless they go to UMich or Berkeley. Then they might as well stay.

I'm assuming that was a joke. Does anyone on this site find more value in a college (and for that matter a college experience) than it's target status to investment banks? I go to one of the state schools mentioned in this thread and got a great FO job in S&T at a BB. Never even for a minute thought about giving up the great experience, friends and football I have at my school. I worked hard there and ended up where I wanted and I'm not the only one with this type of story.

Bottom line, despite popular belief, it's not Ivy or bust in this industry. If you love where you chose to go to school, why mess with a good thing? Just work with what you have and find the a way to make it work. Transfering is the easy way out.

Studentx: while the attitude probably needs some adjustments, better to go in feeling motivated than not. I do however, highly doubt that you will be the only kid from a target in ops, especially this year.

 

but here's my thoughts; now is the perfect time to do things outside of finance, that are prestigious and might in fact have been things you wanted to do in your life. i think the "take what you can get" mentality is silly, to some extent; just because the economy sucks doesn't mean you have to. sure you can't get a job in GS TMT, was that the only job that existed when the economy wasn't going to shit? Was banking/finance/wall street the only place where people could make a living? Your offer from DE Shaw was rescinded; fine, go apply to Facebook; you can't get a job at MS anymore, that's cool you've always been more of an entertainment/media type anyway, go drop your resume at William Morris or CAA; your final rounds at Citi just got cancelled, screw it, go apply to Grameen bank, you always wanted to do something "great" with your life eventually so might as well do it now. Or start your own thing; now is a GREAT time to start a revenue-generating venture, especially with large seed stage funds taking advantage of the environment, albeit via lower pre-money valuations (i'm not talking sequoia and kpcb here, more like softtech vc and Founders Fund types). the point is, this should be a blessing for you to actually have the freedom to do things you want, and still make the 55k-65k (or at least close) you would have made in an ops job. all of this is obvious, but it is worth reinforcement.

 

"go apply to Facebook"

they didnt even give me a first round haha.

I think I might start a bar with some friends if we can get he money together,, but I'd still stay in finance. I really dont know anything else I can do with a finance/marketing degree that will give me enough money to stay in Manhattan and pay off loans...Which sucks because there's plenty of jobs I couldve applied for at lets say valuation shops or the like, that pay 40-45k a year, but would be a great place t jump to a BB when things get better.

I could possibly get a job outside the city, but I love it here, so that kind of ruins the point.

 

Nice post. I am constantly reminded how lucky I am to get a competitive internship at a business magazine for this summer. I look forward to working hard and learning new things, rather than glorifying prestige.

 

In case you didn't know, DMouth > Stern. Yale is in bumblefuck CT, what does that have to do with anything?

That may hurt your feelings, but its a fact and not open for debate.

NYU accepted 32% of applicants, of which 37% ended up attending. DMouth accepted 14% of applicants, of which 52% ended up attending. Harvard accepted 8% of applicants, of which 76% ended up attending.

NYU students in top 10% of HS class: 67% vs DMouth 91%, vs Harvard's 95%. NYU academic rating: 83(out of 100), vs Dmouth's 96, vs Harvard's 99.

So simplified, the student who applied to NYU, DMouth, and Harvard, and got accepted to all 3 went to Harvard. The one who got accepted to NYU and DMouth went to DMouth, and the one who got rejected by Harvard and DMouth, is sitting next to you in class right now.

 

I got into Stern and Brown, and though I liked my visit to Stern very much, I chose Brown.

Interesting, the statistics reminds me - though universities are very 'socialistic' entities in their organizational model and internal operations, in the wider world they are the perfect expression of capitalism, when it comes to competition between schools and the rankings, etc. When people believe in the value of something (such as education), competition provides the most appropriate solutions for everyone.

 

I was only talking about NYU Stern. Bunching up Stern with the rest of NYU is like bunching up Wharton with the rest of UPenn.

I'd take Dartmouth over Stern too, but they're on the same fucking playing field. In fact, more BB and boutiques recruit at Stern than Dartmouth. Regardless, if you're going to talk that horseshit, at least come from HYP so I won't be able to shit on you.

Btw, why the fuck does this forum want to quantify school rankings so much? What do those fucking numbers mean if you can't even get on the street?

 

Thanks, they certainly do. Just the other day Rich Friedman, an alumni and large donor, came to class and gave a little presentation on the economic crisis and what he does at Goldman. GS is a great firm, my cousin is a VP there and he likes it. Good luck to you too.

 
ThirdYearAss:
GS fucking loves Brown. Goodluck Putz

I hate Brown kids. The school, not the color (in case morons are reading this). A bunch of pot-smoking hippies, who likely didn't get into Yale or Harvard, and who didn't want to apply to Penn, Cornell, MIT because of the "structure". Brown is never someone's first choice, it is the choice school for somewhat-intellectually inclined stoners who try to dress shitty (they do succeed).

I honestly don't know how these people end up on The Street. I guess you find out one way or another that your Philosophy degree / No GPA, doesn't mean shit.

 
MoneyKingdom:
ThirdYearAss:
GS fucking loves Brown. Goodluck Putz

I hate Brown kids. The school, not the color (in case morons are reading this). A bunch of pot-smoking hippies, who likely didn't get into Yale or Harvard, and who didn't want to apply to Penn, Cornell, MIT because of the "structure". Brown is never someone's first choice, it is the choice school for somewhat-intellectually inclined stoners who try to dress shitty (they do succeed).

I honestly don't know how these people end up on The Street. I guess you find out one way or another that your Philosophy degree / No GPA, doesn't mean shit.

Thanks. Your stereotype is half true, around half of the student body is overtly leftist/hipster/hippie, wears ridiculous clothes, smokes pot often, etc.

Columbus Day holiday was actually voted to be renamed to "Fall Weekend" by the staff for PC reasons, which is quite ridiculous. Sure there was a lot of suffering that the Native Americans endured but history is history, if Columbus did not land in the Americas when he did and where he did none of us would exist today. The universe is not black and white, but rather shades of gray and hippies don't realize this.

However, the other half of campus is moderate and rational. I must say there is a sizable contingent of business oriented Brown students within that rational half. I applied to and was waitlisted for Wharton, am definitely going to put my GPA on my resume (everyone does), and am majoring in Business Econ or Entrepreneurship, haven't decided which yet. Just standing up for my school.

 

I remember that "emo kid" song, hilarious portrayal of all those fools moping around high school. Perhaps Brown too, but the ones here are in post-metamorphosis immature hippie or angry leftist form.

Anyways, I meant that of course humans would exist, but none of us as individuals would exist in this alternate universe, as our grandparents would have never had met, that unique short-lived sperm in dad's nads wouldn't have joined with mom's specific egg, etc.

 

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