Elite Colleges and Wall Street's Recruiting Machine Despite Wall Street's reported recruiting problems, which made headlines after the resignation of Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive, the nation's financial firms are still drawing top graduates with six-figure incomes that can relieve the financial burden of student loans, a recent college graduate writes. Laura Newland, a 2010 graduate of Duke University, discussed her recruiting experience with financial firms in a post on DealBook. She said that the students who excelled in the recruitment process were those who were "ruthless and cunning." Ms. Newland writes: The financial pressures manifest themselves in different ways on different campuses, but at the country's most-esteemed schools, the economy has precipitated Wall Street's recruiting supremacy. When a six-figure income, including bonus, is dangled in front of a 22-year-old's nose, it's tough to stomach the thought of taking on the average $158,000 debt-load of today's medical student, or shelling out $50,000 a year for a master's degree. So we head to Wall Street, rationalizing that we will stay for "just a year or two." Once there, it's tough to leave. A 2011 Bloomberg article reported that a banker with 10 years" experience specializing in mergers will earn $2 million a year - more than 10 times the salary of an equally experienced cancer researcher or aerospace engineer. But to attribute the industry's appeal solely to our financial predicament is simplistic. We've been deemed the "Me Generation" for good reason. And Wall Street recruiters are more than happy to cater to our sense of entitlement. They and their Ivy-pedigreed employees bombard campuses for weeks to shower us with fancy dinners, lavish trips to Manhattan and promises of a challenging, rewarding career. They tap into our competitiveness, so their internship programs begin recruiting us as sophomores, knowing that if we are offered opportunities to build our résumés, we won't just apply, but we'll commit ourselves so fully that we'll mistake our desire to win the race with a desire for what it is we're chasing. I navigated a salacious recruiting process. I watched ruthless and cunning peers excel, and the more good-hearted crumble. I saw that being popular, good-looking and able to drink hard seemed to matter more than being smart. And as I began my internship search in the midst of the financial crisis, while the industry and our economy crumbled around us, not a single banker I met acknowledged blame on Wall Street's part. Ms. Newland turned down a "coveted offer" from one firm, she said, because the culture was "toxic." What do you think of Ms. Newland's statements?