what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

this is a surprisingly interesting book btw http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Quant-Reflections-Physics/dp/0471394203

^ subtle dayo diss xp

lool

yeah but those people also make 100k out of undergrad, no need for a phd

armscrossed.gif

my biggest failing as an azn is that I am terrible at math

dayo are you working at the moment?

nope

L I V I N.

yeah i mean if i did it it would be because it became clear in the next year or two that academia wasn't going to work out via not being the one. fingers crossed. my main concern is in 3 years time i take "maybe" for an answer, and then by the time i'm 40 i'm fucked.

This is basically my fear too.

all my friends are unemployed too. I think I made the wrong kinds of friends in undergrad. ;_;

haha that's why they're all likable tho

pro-tip: having half your friends go into finance is not a good thing.

haha yeah

guess nobody is ever gonna invite me to go snort coke off a gold toilet seat *sigh*

armscrossed.gif

haha sorry!! i had no idea you went to y4le!

anyway in the coming economic collapse well all be glad we dont work on wall st. imo

haha no offense taken

my point was more that if you just wanna make 6 figures out of undergrad, ibanking/hedge fund is probably the way to go

i mean this is pretty much the ultimate first world problem, but the main thing that worries me about going the finance route is i know so many people who said "i'll do it for a couple of years and then may my movie/write my book" whatever, but you get used to this standard of living or, even worse, you take out a mortgage, and then you're trapped. nearly 10 years later, none of them left. (although tbf one has retired.)

― caek, Thursday, September 15, 2011 1:34 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah my friends boyfriend works in finance, he's from this really small town in saskatchewan, totally unpretentious/salt of the earth type dude. but about six months in he started wearing a movado watch (that clashed horribly w/ the plaid he would wear when not working), started talking about buying expensive jackets, etc.

there was some article about how it's less that the random yalies really wanted to work in finance and more that they have big companies approaching them w/ paychecks and even if they would prefer working in a nonprofit or something, it'd actually be *more difficult* cause you can't jut expect a job out of undergrad

just

ie sorta aimlessness / laziness / competitive job market and less that they're inherently bad people (tho don't hold that out either)

yah ime finance is p attractive industry especially if you have any kind of student loans. i started as a summer associate after my first year of college and stayed on for the next four and half years. i got regular raises and bonuses and made more than enough to cover my private colleges tuition. compared w/ almost any other industry where i would have been working unpaid or lowpaid internships and still tossing a coin on postgrad employment. for all its flaws ibanks take care of their workers

I tried to make this point in the generation limbo thread but yeah I think finance is probably one of the few industries left that still hire based on a 'meritocratic' system i.e. hard work in undergrad will correlate w/ high salary

in a lot of other industries yeah you are fighting for scraps & doing something that a high schooler could do in starting positions

whole generation's most valuable minds goin into invisible money & trying to find ways to make ppl click ads

what a fucking world

the prob is it's not really *in spite of* their flaws that they can pay well - their flaws lead to the gobs of money, some of which they'll toss to an intern. some random govt agency or nonprofit with a stretched budget will never afford to compete.

looking back I should have probably tried to get placed at a tech company str8 out of undergrad, huh

it's boring but it helps

hedge funds, pe, merchant banks &c &c are a lot more selective (and remunerative) about who they recruit and are more interested in math/physics/engineering majors than any random yalie w/ a 3.8

― Lamp, Thursday, 15 September 2011 18:47 (16 minutes ago)

do many of those recruit straight from undergrad tho (esp hedge funds)

yeah my impression was the focus of your degree wasn't so important for recruitment out of undergraduate.

like me having a physics BA wouldn't have done me any harm, but it wouldn't have opened any more doors than PPE

like I just said they just care about your ability to cram huge amounts of info + apply it - so major is not really important

subtle zing ^^

ok I guess if you were a psych major you're SOL

haha this conv prob shoulda happened on dayo's wall street thread

nahk it depends on the size and the strategy of the fund but ime the bigger hedge funds and pe firms do some undergrad recruiting. even w/in the big banks different depts. will have different recruiting strategies/needs

everyone here goes to college but we all start at c. 20k once we graduate, a master's would have pushed you up to maybe 30k depending on sector a few years back but not any more.

I found the article I'd been looking for! It wasn't the shark fishing industry, but rather the swordfish industry.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=148896§ioncode=26

haha I don't know if it's necessarily implied that he's doing his new job for the thrill

yeah maybe I saw a souped up version of the article at one point? this seems shorter than what I'd read. But this is the main idea.

otoh it is implied that he's doing it for the thrill, no? from high-stakes hedge fund financial math to blackjack in Vegas to swordfish fishing: all's pretty intense, no?

possibly...but there is a difference between people willing to risk their money and people willing to risk their lives. I'm sure for lots of people there is overlap, but I more read it 'he's doing it cause he wants/needs the money'

I dunno, I think a guy like that doesn't need the money; he made enough of it so quickly that I'm sure he's got some (a bunch) squirreled away. I know people who know him directly (& are quoted in that article) & they've never indicated that he wasted the money.

google suggests he's into competitive fly fishing now? so I mean on some level he does seem to just enjoy fishing. (that doesn't rule out what you said)

I like that the grad school thread has devolved into finance and fishing

was thinking recently that people "like us" don't just "go fishing" anymore & so this is nice to think about

n.b. I've only gone fishing a few times so I'm part of the problem

it's fairly likely that I will live my whole life without ever going fishing

haven't ever done the deep-sea leisure fishing, but there's plans afoot for this year sometime

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/education/22grad.html

“The decline in domestic students is very bad news for the nation’s economic future,” Dr. Stewart said. “Higher education and, increasingly, graduate education are what drives prosperity, and if we get to the point where only people with significant bank accounts can afford graduate education, the country is doomed.”

I know it's her job to say this, but eh, 'it's complicated'. I mean that last part is true and the country obviously is doomed, but how much do MBA/MPA programs 'drive prosperity' vs. 'parcel out prosperity'?

I meant when the economy was working, outside of top programs they mostly just parcel out debt for a weak signal on your resume

http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_ED2010.pdf

breakdown

private for-profit grad level 'certificates' grew 59.7% over a year
private for-profit...phds?? grew 15.8%