U.S. News and World Report confirmed this week what will come as no surprise to Dartmouth students: Internship experience is the norm, rather than the exception, on this campus ("College receives high ranking for internships," Sept. 30). More surprisingly, none of the other Ivies approach Dartmouth's percentage of graduating seniors who have previously held an internship. Dartmouth, which ranks third in the newly released U.S. News list, is the only Ivy to crack the top 10. This statistic is a powerful reminder of how Dartmouth's career-focused culture shapes students' expectations and beliefs in ways we often take for granted. The internship, practically a rite of passage for juniors on off-terms, is an integral part of Dartmouth's social current a current that also pressures students of all backgrounds and interests into participating in corporate recruiting each year.
The unmistakable pressure that our culture places on seniors to participate in corporate recruiting and secure a high-salaried, entry-level corporate job by Fall term manifested itself clearly at this week's career fair. Juniors and seniors packed into the stiflingly hot Alumni Hall to score facetime with some of the most prolific corporate recruiters of Dartmouth graduates. Next door at the Top of the Hop, a much smaller cadre of not-for-profits fielded questions from a respectively diminished group of students.
This culture is perhaps the natural and expected byproduct of combining driven, motivated students with the stress of searching for a job in an uncertain economy. Corporate recruiting does provide a stable, accessible path to job opportunities for many students, and the presence of corporate representatives on campus eliminates many of the difficulties of communicating with prospective employers based thousands of miles from Hanover. But we cannot mistake the obvious, most-hyped career path for the only career path.
More importantly, we should not continue to blame Career Services' offerings for this pervasive mindset on campus. To a large extent, we are the people perpetuating the Dartmouth stereotype. A volatile job market and the overwhelming expectation to succeed has led many of our peers those who once denounced corporate recruiting as something for economics majors and future MBA-holders - to now talk in embarrassed whispers about the impending resume drop deadline.
But for the first three years of their time at Dartmouth, students seemingly have little trouble exploring their unique interests there is no compelling reason for that to go by the wayside when contemplating post-graduate life. It is particularly senseless for those of us who have invested so much time and energy cultivating expertise in unrelated fields to allow ourselves to be pressured into professional lives that we are less passionate about. Lacking employment by graduation is neither an indictment of one's abilities nor a harbinger of future difficulties. Students who aren't passionately interested in corporate careers should not feel like oddballs or failures if we bypass corporate recruiting in favor of pursuing less traditional careers.
We hope we will all reflect carefully on our values and priorities before beginning down a career path, and remember to give voice to our passions in our post-Dartmouth lives, whether those passions are corporate or not.
