Ezra Klein has a balanced, sympathetic interview with an anonymous Harvard grad (history and political philosophy, my kind of guy/girl) who worked for Goldman Sachs after being recruited at Harvard. The key paragraph, the one that allows Ezra to suggest that the Ivy-Wall St. pipeline is not all about following the money, is this one:
Investment banking was never something I thought I wanted to do. But the recruiting culture at Harvard is extremely powerful. In the midst of anxiety and trying to find a job at the end of college, the recruiters are really in your face, and they make it very easy. One thing is the internship program … if that goes well, you have an offer by September of your senior year, and that’s very appealing. It makes your senior year more relaxed, you can focus on your thesis, you can drink more. You just don’t have to worry about getting a job.
Really? Extremely powerful? I’ve gotten a few emails from recruiters, and a ton more from career services people promoting their recruitment events, and I just have to say: I don’t see how you could get dragged into this “culture” if you weren’t already having, just a little bit, maybe even sub-consciously, visions of becoming a Wall Street tycoon.
I mean, really, if it was something you thought you never wanted to do, then why on Earth did you respond to the emails and go to the schmooze-fests? Let’s not pretend we don’t have a good degree of control over where we end up. If anybody in this world should be held responsible for their choices because they have just so darn many of them, it’s Harvard students. Being able to drink more in your senior year does not have to be an overwhelming consideration.