In the nation's financial service

Why do so many Princeton students go into financial services?

This question is asked with a measure of perplexity and disgust every year. After all, entry into the financial services sector immediately after Princeton is surprisingly common. Of those members of the class of 2006 who are employed, a whopping 46.8 percent are in financial services, with another 26.6 percent in related services like financial consulting, according to Career Services.

Yet, joining the financial services sector is rife with unflattering metaphors here at Princeton. A friend who signs on with an i-banking firm is "selling his soul" or "selling out." Joining the financial services industry, in other words, is seen as a lapse in character or judgment, a sacrifice of one's true ideals for short-term material wealth (and meals other than Cup Noodles, the true artist's ambrosia).

So considering the industry's apparent low repute among the undergraduate body, why do so many students sign up for what frequently amounts to 100 hour weeks, forsaken social lives and allegedly ignoble work?

Maybe we're just greedy organization kids, like the experts say. We were raised in households that got us into Princeton by prioritizing personal achievement over moral values, material success over civic engagement, etc. You know the spiel.

Or maybe it's Princeton's fault, as some advocates for the Robertson family may believe. Princeton hasn't been teaching us proper civic values, and so we've lost sight of the greater good, etc. You know that spiel too.

I don't think the high attraction to financial services is a matter of greed or a faulty Princeton education. I think it's more a matter of laziness. From my own informal conversations with financial services industry applicants over the years, it seems most are going into finance because they haven't figured out what else they could do. Finance employers are seeking them out, telling them they're qualified for finance, and they haven't taken time to find what other jobs they might be qualified for.

Financial firms have found that Ivy Leaguers, no matter their department, are well-conditioned for entry-level finance jobs. The graduates are often hardworking, ambitious, concerned about socioeconomic status and willing to withstand slave-driving authority figures.

And so they recruit. Hard.

At today's career fair, there will be 104 firms represented. According to Princeton's Career Services website, at least 60 of those will be offering jobs in financial services or consulting. They also come bearing gifts. As any returning student knows, in the days following any career fair, the number of black company-logo umbrellas floating around campus is astronomical.

Financial firms also offer well-publicized open-houses stocked with free food (a major draw), tons of snail-mail and recruiting emails sent by content, solvent young Princeton alumni to campus email spam lists.

These businesses are telling us that they want us. Some of us may have never held a real job, and still companies are telling us we're qualified, we're perfectly qualified.

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This is in sharp contrast to most other internships and entry-level positions. The student usually has to get off her butt and find those jobs; she is not usually invited to apply. Given her lack of professional experience, why should she think she's qualified for any other job? It might take a lot of work to prove otherwise.

True, there are a passionate few students who gravitate to financial services because finance is their lifelong dream. But in my experience, most Princetonians entering the financial sector have already capped the number of years (usually two to five) in which they will work as an i-banker or consultant; they know ahead of time that financial services is not what they want to do, but they just don't see better options for the coming few years.

Some see the high number of entries into the financial sector as a problem for Princeton. I'm not so sure it is; alumni working in the financial sector have honest jobs just like the rest of us, and they'll probably be able to donate more to Annual Giving!

But if we do think this is a problem, how do we rectify it? Should we have Princeton subsidize recruiting trips made by nonprofits? Should we further pump up the egos of Princeton students with yes-you-can drivel?

So far, the only decipherable change that seems geared to diversifying our career choices has been the attempt to get students to diversify their academic major choices. But I think, perhaps counter intuitively, that the pressure to join smaller departments may attract more students to the financial sector. As more students join departments that have no obvious professional use and that may not have a diversely-employed network of alumni, we may still turn to the jobs we know we're qualified for because they're recruiting us.

After all, most of the financial sector jobs at the career fair say they're interested in students from "All Liberal Arts/Sciences, Engineering and Applied Science" majors, departments both large and small. Majors from tiny departments still like to feel like we're in demand. Catherine Rampell is an anthropology major from Palm Beach, Fla. She can be reached at crampell@princeton.edu.