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"Students destined for Wall Street tended to arrive at MIT with weaker high school records, and later graduated with lower college GPAs." This is also true at
by huac 10y ago
"Students destined for Wall Street tended to arrive at MIT with weaker high school records, and later graduated with lower college GPAs."
This is also true at Wharton! The really high GPA kids go to consulting instead.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoMy experience has been the opposite, and more in line with the article. High IQs go to research, high EQs go to banking and the others consult.
- huac 10y agoI meant this mostly as a joke, Wharton kids don't get PhD's. Though here, the really smart kids do go to quant finance, so maybe we're just playing at a lower part of the curve than MIT.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoI was a quant trader and hired quants out of MIT, et cetera. I never found them as brilliant as MIT's proper engineers nor as creative (or savvy) as other schools' proper financiers. (Part of the effect may arise from pure finance aspirants focussing less on their studies than research aspirants.)
- chris_wot 10y agoThere's actually a fourth group, they become President.
- stale2002 10y agoI don't even consider the finance and consulting industries to be distinctly different industries. It is basically the same industry.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoTraders are trusted with balance sheet. Bankers and consultants aren't. It's true that low-level banking and consulting are both grunt work; at their higher echelons it's relationship driven.
- raincom 10y agoConsulting vs Finance: well, many McKinsey kids go to HBS/Stanford GSB for MBA, only to go back to PE/HF (finance). The only people who go back to consulting from Stanford GSB/HSB are those who did not come from consulting/finance.