Posts Tagged: choosing a career

Will the economic downturn stop the best and the brightest from flocking to investment banking, management consulting and corporate law? I hope so.

During my freshman and sophomore years at Yale, I’d sit with friends for hours in the dining hall, loving the debates about politics and literature and history. It was exactly what I’d hoped college would be like. Sometimes I’d look around the table and feel as if I were peering into the future: I could easily see my smart, hardworking, well-rounded classmates becoming history professors, investigative journalists, human rights activists, entrepreneurs, museum curators and diplomats.

And then senior year rolled around and a strange thing happened. Instead of talking about Milton and Kant and Jefferson and Elizabeth I, everyone started talking about Goldman and Lehman and McKinsey and Harvard Law. The best and brightest people I knew suddenly considered no other career paths than investment banking, management consulting and corporate law.

I see this happening just as often today. As I travel around to college campuses, I meet smart, articulate, worldly and personable students. And, inevitably, the best and the brightest always ask me how to get jobs in investment banking, consulting and law (“not necessarily to be a lawyer,” they often say, “but using a law degree to do something else.”).

For the students who are fascinated by finance, business strategy and legal study, then these paths are excellent choices. But, in my observation, intellectual interest is rarely the reason that students select these post-college career paths.
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