The Running of the Bulls Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street

by Ridgway, Nicole

• ISBN13: 9781592401253
• ISBN10: 1592401252
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-18
• Publisher: Gotham

Summary

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the number-one undergraduate business program in the country, considered by many in the financial world to be the equivalent of an MBA. Since its founding in 1881, Wharton has pioneered innovative business curricula and launched the careers of thousands of Wall Street titans and Fortune 500 tycoons, including such famous alums as Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Revlon CEO Ron Perelman, and real-estate mogul Donald Trump. Every autumn five hundred of the world's best, brightest, and most driven students enter the school, where they will spend the next four years battling it out with classmates in rigorous exams graded on an unyielding curve and pulling all-nighters to build financial models or hone complex group projects to perfection. They will try to outwit one another in the contest to win the most prestigious internships, and in their senior year, these young bulls will put their hard work and the $120,000 investment in their education to the ultimate test during a grueling ten-week long recruiting rush as they vie for positions with elite investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lazard Freres and highly sought-after consulting firms such as McKinsey and Bain-with the possibility of a six-figure income on the line.

Author Biography

Nicole Ridgway writes for Forbes magazine, and her articles have appeared in major newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and The Star- Ledger (Newark).

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE	ix
PART I: THE BULLRING	1	(38)
CHAPTER ONE: WELCOME TO THE WHARTON SCHOOL	3	(21)
CHAPTER TWO: GOLDMAN OR BUST	24	(15)
PART II: THE YOUNG BULLS	39	(64)
CHAPTER THREE: THE TEN-WEEK INTERVIEW	41	(20)
CHAPTER FOUR: BATTLE OF THE BULGE BRACKETS	61	(16)
CHAPTER FIVE: THE WHARTON WAY	77	(26)
PART III: THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS	103	(92)
CHAPTER SIX: HEDGING IN AUTUMN	105	(18)
CHAPTER SEVEN: WITS AND NERVES	123	(22)
CHAPTER EIGHT: RUNNING ON FUMES AND ADRENALINE	145	(21)
CHAPTER NINE: AN UNFORGIVING WINTER	166	(29)
PART IV: AFTER THE RUN	195	(44)
CHAPTER TEN: A NEW SEASON BEGINS	197	(22)
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE FINAL MARCH	219	(20)
EPILOGUE: IN THE ARENA	239	(30)
AUTHOR'S NOTE	269	(4)
SELECTED SOURCES	273	(8)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	281

Excerpts

Chapter One WELCOME TO THE WHARTON SCHOOL Every August they arrive in droves.From Philadelphia International Airport, the New Jersey Turnpike, I-76 and I-95, parents drive their children to the University of Pennsylvania in order to release them into the wilds of college life. As the family car navigates through the streets of University City in the western section of Philadelphia, its passengers are treated to a spectacle of students moving through campus sporting the bronzed glow and peeling noses of summers spent under the sun. Slung over their shoulders are duffle bags stuffed with crumpled T-shirts and jeans, their arms embracing boxes and milk crates carrying sundry belongings?CDs, toiletries, socks?as they anxiously flock into the massive collegiate gothic buildings that house the dorm rooms and frame the perimeter of the Quad. Like parasitic gatekeepers, gargoyles perch in various poses on the corners of the campus buildings, watching over the procession of this year?s new crop. It is a hub of activity as the dorms seemingly swallow these family units whole and spit out new ones, absent a son or daughter and without the burden of their belongings. As it is with the start of most school years, there is a sense of anticipation about things to come. It feels as if the air has changed. It?s somehow fresher than the day before. Freed from the shackles of curfews and chores, it?s a whole new beginning for the 2,400 freshmen joining Penn?s ranks. There is a sense of anticipation about the friendships and future careers they will forge here. Their Penn diplomas will not only help them land jobs, but will travel with them throughout their lives, gracing the walls of their future homes and offices. In these humid early days of college life, the 500 freshmen enrolled in Penn?s Wharton School?the university?s esteemed undergraduate business program?are just like any other fresh-faced seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds settling into their first day of college. They awkwardly break the ice with new roommates, scan the masses for potential friends and wander through campus frantically searching for their classrooms on maps. It is in this confused, dreamlike haze that they begin their foray into college life. Come orientation, freshmen are divided into groups based on which of Penn?s four schools they are enrolled in, whether it?s the School of Arts and Sciences (known as ?The College?), the School of Nursing, the School of Engineering and Applied Science or Wharton. Wharton?s new students are now corralled together, looking just as lost as the engineering students who have been gathered together for their orientation. Yet, in a matter of days, their new world will come into sharper focus. The stark contrast between the experiences that lie before Wharton?s new brood and the ones facing their peers enrolled in Penn?s three other undergraduate schools will become startlingly evident. These newly branded Whartonites soon begin to discover that during their time here, they will be defined not by what fraternity or sorority they join, but by the career choices that they make and the amount of effort they put forth to achieve that career. What they choose to tell their fellow students about their goals will become the foundation of their identities and friendships and will determine whether, in the rank and file of overachieving Whartonites, they are going to stand out. In the late-summer swelter of August 2003, Wharton?s Class of 2007 began taking their own measured steps into the world where some 77,000 Wharton alumni once trod before graduating to Wall Street or Corporate America?s mahogany-paneled boardrooms. With no one else to cling to, the freshmen hang on every word uttered by their upperclassmen ?Team Advisors? (TAs), who will guide them through orientation and provide a road map to their new life for the next four years. Wearing blue Wha