J. Chan remarked in that thread that "Goldman Sachs recruits" at BYU. I had remarked earlier in the thread that what Wall Street firms really value is an Ivy League education. They will hire outside the Ivy League, of course, but your very best chances reside in having an Ivy League alma mater. So I looked into it.

I just went down the list of the Goldman Sachs executive officers and board members (all the names listed on Wiki along with Esta Stecher, Sarah Smith and James Shiro.) Out of the 17/20 who were educated in the U.S.A., 13 were educated at Ivy League schools. In addition, J. Michael Evans, who was educated at NYU and Colgate, is a trustee of Princeton. The biggest commonality is Harvard, from which eight of them hold degrees, sometimes multiple degrees (Harvard College, Harvard Business, Harvard Law.) Other Ivy League institutions represented include Cornell, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth.

Other non-Ivy League institutions represented include M.I.T., Virginia (Darden,) Northwestern (Kellog,) and American University. Other public institutions include the Universities of Minnesota and Washington.

BYU is not listed as an alma mater among the top officers and board members. Sure, Goldman Sachs might recruit there (I'm sure they recruit *everywhere*) but I don't like the odds of a BYU graduate getting hired or (more importantly) promoted to a position of consequence.

http://ldsinformation.net/2010/10/04/financial-times-the-rise-of-a-new-generation-of-mormons/

"Smith says Mormons were rare on Wall Street when he first got a job in the early 1980s. But, as he puts it, 'banks like nothing more than finding an undervalued stock. And Mormon graduates were just that: a stock which was cheaper to buy, and which over-performed.'"

Mmm hmmm, perfect definition of stupid people in the workplace: bargain-basement-priced overachievers. No wonder Wall Street jumped on them--they had "cheap-suit sucker" written all over them.

"Engebretsen uses a different analogy: Michael Lewis’s baseball book, Moneyball. 'Remember how Lewis talks about how the Oakland A’s would find a second-rounder, and bring him in the first round instead? He’d perform way better. The same is true for someone at BYU. If they think this is their chance to play in the big leagues, they are going to work really, really hard.'"

Two phrases spring to mind: "ready-trained gopher." "You like me! You REALLY LIKE ME!!!"

"In the meantime, the calls are coming from headhunters. Scott Nycum, a managing director at JPMorgan, confirmed that BYU is now seen as a top source of graduate talent: 'These students are bright, mature, well-educated, share our emphasis on adhering to highest standards of integrity, have impressive work ethic and are very team-oriented,' he says. 'They fit extremely well with our firm’s corporate culture.'"

Umm, professionally-speaking, really guys? Those are qualifications for low-level personnel, not top-tier officers. You will never hear a top-level candidate described with that kind of generic "cooperative" terminology.

"A Goldman Sachs executive, meanwhile, says the bank is hiring LDS graduates in increasing numbers, also impressed by their work ethic. The same was true, I heard anecdotally, at top-tier law firms in the US. And the CIA is reported to snap up LDS graduates for, if nothing else, their language skills."

Wow.
"Work ethic"? Quick! Hire more Mormon gophers!

"I heard anecdotally, ..." ANECDOTALLY? I heard, anecdotally, that Obama was born in Kenya, that the check is in the mail, and that no Mormon male would ever come in your mouth. Anecdotally.

And... (and here is where you really should get yourself all lathered up) ...AND "the CIA is reported to" ...have found evidence of weapons of mass destruction! ...have never released hiring statistics! <<Yawn>> NEXT!

And as an aside to all this frivolity: if there IS actually any significant increase in the percentage of Mormons working on Wall Street, their known penchant for MLMs and financial fraud schemes back home in the Mormon Corridor only serves to make me even more wary of potential future Wall Street dirty dealings with Mormons at their core. It's bad enough with the Poison Ivy League running the place.

I've got nothing against people going to a JC. I'm just a blue collar guy who happens to have a white collar job. Neither of my parents went to college. If going to a JC is the best opportunity a person's got, he or she should take it and make the most of it. The OP on the original thread, however, seemed to have the prospect of better opportunities, and should take one of them.

Especially community college. One's not likely to make the top brass at GS without an Ivy League degree. To make the top brass there, you've almost gotta come from the trading side, and the trading side at that firm is Ivy League. Then again, one's not likely to make the top brass there, at all.

On the other hand, GS does recruit associates and analysts out of BYU. They make a solid living. You won't find them on Wall Street. You'll find then in Jersey and Salt Lake City, where GS is moving its back office operations. As for work ethic, anyone who has worked for or with GS will tell you it's a place where you're expected to bust your ass, whether you're a peon or an exec.

That said, my point was that if a person is capable is getting into a halfway decent college, he or she shouldn't settle for community college. GS was just an example of a decent firm with well-paying jobs that will recruit at a major college but won't give you a sniff out of a JC - or likely if there's a JC anywhere on your resume. It's rough out there.

to go to BYU but to go to some other major school (not a community college). In the present economy, settling for a JC when one has the grades and test scores to go somewhere better would be a terrible mistake. Competition is very tight.

I didn't know that GS had moved (or is moving) part of their operations to SLC.

I wasn't surprised that the top execs still tend to be Ivy Leaguers. I was surprised that so few women have made it to the top. It's still a good 'ol boys club.

Why go to an institution that could limit you to only a "solid living" via a glass ceiling?

You are aware that most people in SLC are NOT Mormon, right? You are aware that other factors enter into the decision as to were to move back office operations than what schools are nearby, right? I mean seriously, if they were looking for BYU grads, why not pick Provo?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2011 06:33PM by MJ.

While non-Mormons outnumber Mormons in SLC, Mormonism is still the predominant religion here. I'd say about 60 percent of the current GS employees in Salt Lake are Mormons.

Other factors certainly went into picking SLC as the back office location. That's obvious. I never said anything about that decision being tied to BYU, the University of Utah or any other school. The primary factors are cost of doing business and the anti-regulation political climate here.

As far as why one would go to work there, that's self-evident. They're hiring, and they're paying well. There's a glass ceiling of some sort almost everywhere. Do people take jobs as sales associates at Wal-Mart thinking that someday they'll be the CEO? Of course not. It's conceivable, however, that the best of them could become store or regional managers, however, and make a reasonable living. It's the same story at GS. Ninety-nine point nine of the people they hire have no shot at the highest level jobs, but that's not to say they can't make a living. Some "low level," "grunt" positions at a firm like GS can pay well in excess of $300,000 per year even in a market like Utah.

Absolutely.

...worked as an analyst for a competing firm. Not really what he pictured coming out of a top (non-Ivy) business school, but he hit that glass ceiling rather quickly. He ended up really liking his career, though, and financially he did quite well. What he *really* liked were the relatively sensible hours (about 8-6, if I'm remembering correctly, and he didn't take anything home with him) -- far from the insane hours that investment bankers put in.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=10059110&nid=148

Also, BYU biz placed as many grads with GS as Wharton in 2010. Again, my point isn't that this makes BYU a desirable place to go or GS a desirable place to work - it's that GS and similar firms recruit at BYU and at similarly sized and resourced schools.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37872991/Mormons_Wield_Influence_in_Business