NYC undergrad attitudes to prestigous internships

[sw20001]

When I was in New York I went to my Columbia friend’s birthday party, where everyone I met seemed to be doing summers at prestigious firms: BCG, Bain, MS, OC&C, JPM, GS, you name it. But I didn’t know that until my friend told me the day after the party.

What surprised me about this? That grouping all these banker and consultant-to-bes did not result in any work talk whatsoever and I presumed half of them were in the arts.

[Talking to my friend]:
“I loved your friend X, he’s SO cool! Great music taste.”
“Oh yeah, he’s a DJ… but he’s also doing sales and trading hahaha”

Of course, I don’t know if this is typical of NYC students and my friend just attracts a niche, but he did say that it’s sort of expected that if you’re at an Ivy League in NYC, you spend your summer in a big bank/consultancy. It’s old news here. Now as I understand it, LSE is a London equivalent that churns out ambitious students like those doing finance/management NYC majors, but different to Columbia, they will TALK about it and not much else.

If anything, they’re dumbing it down over there. Take asking my friend about his day for example:
“Ohhhh you know, it was meetings all day. So boring. I got to sneak out at 4 though, we loooove that” - said no MS intern in the UK ever, but NYC? Different story.

I wonder if this is a symptom of American colleges, whose tuition fees are so extortionate that they pool a very skewed cohort of students with very successful (and rich) parents and the normalised expectation to follow suit. While I don’t love this potential reason as to why Wall Street internships are treated like any other work experience, I do love that people aren’t putting Wall Street internships on a pedestal.

I guess it must feel a shame for the people who have come from nothing and worked really hard to get to where they are to not get to show off a bit about their internships, but if that’s the biggest problem about this hustle culture, it could be a lot worse!

Any Americans reading, please tell me if you found this to be the case at your college, or if it was completely different!

 

[JustAnotherHuman1]

Not an American, but:
1. Your comparison is although true, is not really a fair one. LSE is a specialised university (as the name suggests, 'of economics') so naturally a much higher percentage of students will go on to work in finance or management when they graduate compared to their target counterparts such as at Oxbridge, Imperial or Warwick, which all offer a broader range of different types of degrees and are all still targets for banks. What you described is frankly your own confirmation bias. Put in slightly more technical terms there is no relationship between whether you attend a target in the US or the UK and the number of students as a % of the total accepting a job offer in banking. Roles in high-finance (not accounting in a small town, mind you) are highly competitive and are sought after for good a reason and qualified candidates will gladly take on them. In both countries, investment banking, for sake of the argument, is a very attractive career option for reasons I'm sure you are aware of (pay, learning curve, job opportunities) for which there are not many alternatives in either of them. Especially as a generalist in IBD, one can learn a lot about different industries and how companies are ran and in fact, they are often used as a stepping stone for pursuing entrepreneurship, roles at start-ups, buy-side roles in private equity for instance or corporate finance at any large corporation. It really is, a second to none opportunity out of university for ambitious and competent students. And quitting happens only after a couple years on the job. As some previous members shared here, it's up or out. Going off on a tangent here, but you get the idea: LSE is quite a niche institution, and so a comparison with Oxbridge is not fair, even if a relatively large percentage of students there will join a banking desk in London once they graduate.
2. Quite important to note: if you are a high achiever or wanting to become one, most successful professionals often have a diverse range of interests outside of work, or if not diverse the least, one strong one. Did you know that the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a decent electronic music DJ and plays at festivals? You do make a good point, though, that students attending an university in the ivy league generally come from privileged backgrounds. And those people, have it much easier than others. Don't get it twisted, I'm not trying to belittle any of those achievements as it still requires dedication and hard work to achieve impressive results, but imagine if your biggest worry isn't where your next meal is going to come from, but whether you can break your previous record swimming 200 meters (while having your butt taken there and back, in let's say a luxury car). Hardly fair and might sound like an exaggeration, but the reality is that there are students in both categories and none of them asked for it and the latter student does not deserve "it" more. In other words, you need ambition to achieve anything out of the ordinary, but students with a troubled family are going to have a MUCH harder time and as a consequence are more likely to not "make it".
2. Life isn't fair. It's cliche, but true. No one has any kind of control over which family they are born into and we are all a product of our environments, in capitalism people invest in their own offspring rather than strangers, so is not something that worth wasting any time mulling over. There will always be someone with much more (or less) privilege than you, and as we all know, like 9 out of 10 times privilege breeds success. So work hard, and appreciate that you are in a great position. Good luck.

 

[sw20001]

Not an American, but:
1. Your comparison is although true, is not really a fair one. LSE is a specialised university (as the name suggests, 'of economics') so naturally a much higher percentage of students will go on to work in finance or management when they graduate compared to their target counterparts such as at Oxbridge, Imperial or Warwick, which all offer a broader range of different types of degrees and are all still targets for banks. What you described is frankly your own confirmation bias. Put in slightly more technical terms there is no relationship between whether you attend a target in the US or the UK and the number of students as a % of the total accepting a job offer in banking. Roles in high-finance (not accounting in a small town, mind you) are highly competitive and are sought after for good a reason and qualified candidates will gladly take on them. In both countries, investment banking, for sake of the argument, is a very attractive career option for reasons I'm sure you are aware of (pay, learning curve, job opportunities) for which there are not many alternatives in either of them. Especially as a generalist in IBD, one can learn a lot about different industries and how companies are ran and in fact, they are often used as a stepping stone for pursuing entrepreneurship, roles at start-ups, buy-side roles in private equity for instance or corporate finance at any large corporation. It really is, a second to none opportunity out of university for ambitious and competent students. And quitting happens only after a couple years on the job. As some previous members shared here, it's up or out. Going off on a tangent here, but you get the idea: LSE is quite a niche institution, and so a comparison with Oxbridge is not fair, even if a relatively large percentage of students there will join a banking desk in London once they graduate.
2. Quite important to note: if you are a high achiever or wanting to become one, most successful professionals often have a diverse range of interests outside of work, or if not diverse the least, one strong one. Did you know that the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a decent electronic music DJ and plays at festivals? You do make a good point, though, that students attending an university in the ivy league generally come from privileged backgrounds. And those people, have it much easier than others. Don't get it twisted, I'm not trying to belittle any of those achievements as it still requires dedication and hard work to achieve impressive results, but imagine if your biggest worry isn't where your next meal is going to come from, but whether you can break your previous record swimming 200 meters (while having your butt taken there and back, in let's say a luxury car). Hardly fair and might sound like an exaggeration, but the reality is that there are students in both categories and none of them asked for it and the latter student does not deserve "it" more. In other words, you need ambition to achieve anything out of the ordinary, but students with a troubled family are going to have a MUCH harder time and as a consequence are more likely to not "make it".
2. Life isn't fair. It's cliche, but true. No one has any kind of control over which family they are born into and we are all a product of our environments, in capitalism people invest in their own offspring rather than strangers, so is not something that worth wasting any time mulling over. There will always be someone with much more (or less) privilege than you, and as we all know, like 9 out of 10 times privilege breeds success. So work hard, and appreciate that you are in a great position. Good luck.

Thanks for your insight.

I don’t disagree with you on what you’re saying with respect to LSE and how it compares with other target universities, but it veers away from what I was trying to get at, which is the UK/US differences in conversations when you put a group of very clever students all going down a similar career path into one room. In my British experience, however far removed the setting could be from academia or the office, there’s always some trickle of career or course talk between those pursuing highly sought after and competitive positions, even if it’s a joke or a shared eye-roll about SJTs (and I’m not making a dig at non-stop banking chat in a social setting here because I think it’s nice to get excited about your friends’ jobs). I’m making assumptions here as I don’t know your backstory (!) but if you did a summer, do you remember enthusing about, say, the glamour of the office you were at over a pint with friends? I think that’s pretty normal. So, I was just surprised that there was none of this discussion at the Columbia party.

Definitely true that all the most driven people I know are driven in something besides their career. I didn’t know that about David Solomon, fun fact!

 

[JustAnotherHuman1]

Thanks for your insight.

I don’t disagree with you on what you’re saying with respect to LSE and how it compares with other target universities, but it veers away from what I was trying to get at, which is the UK/US differences in conversations when you put a group of very clever students all going down a similar career path into one room. In my British experience, however far removed the setting could be from academia or the office, there’s always some trickle of career or course talk between those pursuing highly sought after and competitive positions, even if it’s a joke or a shared eye-roll about SJTs (and I’m not making a dig at non-stop banking chat in a social setting here because I think it’s nice to get excited about your friends’ jobs). I’m making assumptions here as I don’t know your backstory (!) but if you did a summer, do you remember enthusing about, say, the glamour of the office you were at over a pint with friends? I think that’s pretty normal. So, I was just surprised that there was none of this discussion at the Columbia party.

Definitely true that all the most driven people I know are driven in something besides their career. I didn’t know that about David Solomon, fun fact!

I was actually trying to make a point but I can see it didn’t go through. So let me try again. I don’t believe there is any relationship whatsoever between US and UK attitudes towards chatter about banking internships or jobs. Some crowds are more career-focussed whereas some are not, it’s that simple. It might had been the case that you happened to meet more career focused people in the UK and not so much in the US. And now you have a bias. And yes, LSE is notorious for its banking heavy culture for good reasons. And that might skew your perception. Also, SJTs are not really thing in the US - recruiting is done on campus and virtually nothing online, so that might be a reason why you don’t hear US students chatting about it at all.

 

[sw20001]

Ok yes I see what you’re getting at now. I posted to see if anyone has had the same or different experiences, and I’m glad you’ve raised the point that whatever any one of us has experienced, no trends can be taken away from a couple of answers on here since they will be built upon multiple biases. I’m just curious