Lured by the promise of six-figure incomes, a fast-paced atmosphere and prestige, many Dartmouth students enter the finance world immediately after graduation. Despite the popularity of this career track, a significant number of Dartmouth students said that as underclassmen they knew little about what investment banking and consulting actually entail. The Dartmouth Business Group has been working to remedy this knowledge gap.
DBG, a new student organization at the College, ran the third in a six-part lecture series about investment banking and consulting on Tuesday. The lecture, conducted by Scott Orleck Tu'08 and Rob Higgins Tu'08, focused on the consulting interview process by demonstrating how to do a case study. Case studies are scenarios students are asked to analyze in interviews, especially for consulting jobs.
Ben Arad '10 and Aaron Damato '08 said they created the lecture series in response to a similar event held last year that drew large crowds. Arad and Damato are the current co-presidents of DBG and former co-presidents of its predecessor, the now-defunct Consulting Club.
"Turnout was huge for the event," Arad said. "We held it in Rocky 1, which was filled beyond capacity."
Arad said he found that many of his peers were interested in investment banking and consulting, but few of them seemed to know many details.
"I certainly didn't know nearly as much as I'd like to," he said.
The lecture series is focused on informing students who already have some interest in consulting, investment banking or business, Damato said.
Most of the crowd at Tuesday's lecture, which Damato estimated as 45 people, were freshmen and sophomores.
"By the time they're juniors or seniors, most people have a general idea of what they want to be," he said.
Arad predicted the lecture series will help students as they move on to corporate recruiting.
"It's never too early to start," he said.
Dru Sil '09, who went through corporate recruiting to find a leave-term internship, said he knew little about consulting or investment banking when he decided to switch from a pre-medical school trajectory to a corporate track at the end of his freshman year.
"As a freshman and sophomore, most of what I learned about corporate recruiting was from upperclassmen," Sil said.
The Dartmouth culture pushes students to work in finance, Sil said.
"There is a lot of unconscious pressure to go on to Wall Street," he said, citing what he saw as the limited Career Stervices options for students interested in other fields, such as pharmaceuticals.
Some students at the lecture had identified their interest in the financial sector even before finishing their first year at Dartmouth.
"It's definitely a career I'm considering," Tarang Agarwal '11, who plans to major in mathematics, said. "I think I have a fair understanding of what the job generally entails."
Ben Beckerman '10 said he may go through corporate recruiting, but knows little about the jobs offered.
"I feel like I know a lot about the hiring process of big i-banking and consulting firms, but I don't know a lot about the day-to-day process of employees," he said.
Conversely, some students enter Dartmouth interested in finance, but end up pursuing other career paths by the time they graduate.
Franklin Rea '08 was a co-founder of the Dartmouth Society of Investment and Economics. He said that though he entered the College with a solid base of financial knowledge, he decided not to pursue a career in finance due to the workplace environment at financial firms.
"I looked into it for a long time, but I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do because of the hours," he said, noting that many new analysts work 80 or 90 hours per week."
