At Harvard, a graduating senior, who handed on a full scholarship to a different faculty, advised me that he felt immense strain to point out his dad and mom that their $400,000 funding in his Harvard schooling would enable him to get the type of job the place he might make one million {dollars} a 12 months. Upon commencement, he’ll be part of the non-public fairness agency Blackstone, the place, he believes, he’ll study and obtain extra in six years than 30 years in a public-service-oriented group.
One other pupil, from Uruguay, who spent his second summer season in a row working towards case research in preparation for administration consulting internship interviews, advised me that everybody arrived on campus hoping to alter the world. However what they study at Harvard, he stated, is that really doing something significant is simply too laborious. Folks surrender on their desires, he advised me, and resolve they may as properly earn money. Another person advised me it was frequent at events to listen to their friends say they only need to promote out.
“There’s undoubtedly a herd mentality,” Joshua Parker, a 21-year-old Harvard junior from Oahu, stated. “If you happen to’re not doing finance or tech, it could really feel such as you’re doing one thing unsuitable.”
As a freshman, he deliberate to main in environmental engineering. As a sophomore, he switched to economics, becoming a member of 5 of his six roommates. A kind of roommates advised me that he hoped to run a hedge fund by the point he was in his 30s. Earlier than that, he needed to earn a superb wage, which he outlined as $500,000 a 12 months.
In keeping with a Harvard Crimson survey of Harvard Seniors, the share of 2024 graduates going into finance and consulting is 34 p.c. (In 2022 and 2023 it exceeded 40 p.c. The official Harvard Institutional Analysis survey yields decrease percentages for these fields than the Crimson survey, as a result of it contains college students who aren’t getting into the work power.)
