It's hard these days to walk across campus without encountering impeccably groomed seniors, wearing their Sunday best and fixed expressions of concentration. Senior portraits explain a few of the snappy dressers, but the more common reason is that our class is making a pilgrimage, in droves, to the Career Services office to interview with the handful of banks and consultancies whose crushing workloads and stratospheric entry-level pay claim a huge proportion of newly minted graduates each year. In the Class of 2002, fully 53 percent of students who got jobs straight out of school worked in banking or consulting.
There are, no doubt, a lucky few who really do find spreadsheets fascinating. They get the best of both — an interesting, "fun" job that pays well. And there's nothing wrong, per se, with high-paying drudgery. Access to these jobs is one of the benefits of a Princeton degree, and the pay is good enough to make concerns about quality of life, socially responsible employment and possible burnout fade into the background.
On the other hand, many of us are lost. We aren't sure what we want to do, aren't sure how to make our way after graduation, feel a hunger to keep our options open. With Princeton's undergraduates so disproportionately focused on banking and consulting, it has become a default option for many of us. This needn't be — there are plenty of offbeat, niche jobs out there, and spending a few months sorting things out after graduation has never proved fatal to the career prospects of a Princeton graduate. If your honest, inner answers to the interviewer's questions — "Why this job? Why now?" — have to do with uncertainty and the fact that everyone else is doing it, take heart. There's plenty of room in the happy minority of Princeton students who find fulfillment in other fields. Daily Princetonian editorials are written by the Editorial & Opinion Editors, Managing Editors and Editor-In-Chief.
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The CPUC must not gut its Judicial Committee
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Ending the Judicial Committee’s jurisdiction over initial complaints would embolden abuses of power, allowing the administration to evade accountability for University rule violations without the pressure of student and faculty authority.
Princeton, let’s adopt a digital prox
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