Time was, landing an offer from an investment bank in the fall of one’s senior was something to be proud of. Secured employment at Goldman/JPMorgan/Lehman Brothers et al for the following year was something you didn’t try to hide and you’d happily join Facebook groups started around the common cause of spending one’s signing bonus on kegs and in some cases, perhaps used it as a way of facilitating the bedding of chicks. Back then, a simple “I need to find a place before my job at [insert firm of choice here] starts” more than lubricated the situation in your favor and the notion of not whipping it out in social situations, with members of the opposite sex and otherwise, would’ve sounded crazy. Now? You keep that shit under wraps. Continue reading »
Dartmouth
As you may have heard, Bridgewater Associates is a hedge fund committed to probing the depths of any situation until it finds the truth. And, when one makes it his or her business to go after the truth, one must be persistent, and not take no for an answer. For example, at other funds, recruiters would probably not care to find out why any given individual chose not to work them, especially if said person had never even gone through the interview process in the first place, whereas Bridgewater simply rejects your rejection and demands a detailed list of valid reasons why you’ve chosen not to even consider what life could be like with BDubs. Last August, we learned of a Dartmouth student who was paid $100 to “explain why she did not want to work for them” and today, a Yale senior** relates being crammed into a hotel room to do the same. Continue reading »
Earlier this week, a Dartmouth College undergraduate wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper in which he recounted “vomiting in my mouth” after hearing an anecdote about Bridgewater Associates supposedly paying a girl $100 to write an essay about why she chose not to participate in their summer recruitment session. That the hedge fund would be so aggressive in its attempts to convince Dartmouth’s best and brightest to waste their potential “manipulating capital” and “perpetuating class-based systems of power and dominance” sickened him, as did the fact that, as he sees it, Dartmouth has become a “vocational school for investment bankers” and those learning the skills necessary to work at “faceless hedge funds.” A ravenous reader of The Dartmouth, alum and Bridgewater co-CEO Greg Jensen saw the op-ed and today chose to take the young man to task re “impressions,” via a letter to the editor. Continue reading »
Hank Paulson was recently interviewed for the latest issue of The DAM, Dartmouth’s alumni magazine, by fellow Dartmouth grad, Jake Tapper. The Kegs talk about a whole mess of topics, including but not limited to gal-pal Tim Geithner (the two have an “excellent” relationship), Paulson’s hippie daughter Amanda (her friends in college were people son Merritt would call “granolas,” if you know what HP means and I think you do), his nickname to SAE fraternity brothers (“The Phantom,” because no one ever saw the shady motherfucker), Christian Science (when Hank prayed during the crisis, it was “for humility, to take ego
out of it, for insight and judgment and wisdom”), and the worst kind of heave (sayeth Big P: “All my life, if I’m really exhausted—it doesn’t happen much—I will have dry heaves”). Then Tapper steers the conversation toward his subject’s death, like any seasoned pro is trained to do (my preference is to ask at the beginning of the conversation, as an ice breaker, but anywhere you can fit it in is fine). “What might be the headline of your obituary?” Jake wonders aloud. This is Paulson’s response.
Continue reading »
Add Dartmouth to the list of crashed endowments:
Dartmouth College, the smallest school in the Ivy League, will fire 60 employees after its endowment value fell $700 million, or 18 percent, because of the global recession.
An additional 70 employees have accepted buyouts and 28 others will have their hours reduced, the college in Hanover, New Hampshire, said today in a statement. The school will increase undergraduate tuition 4.8 percent, raising the total cost of attendance to $49,974 a year, starting in September, and will expand financial aid.
Dartmouth joins Harvard University and Yale University among Ivy League schools in the northeastern U.S. that are slashing budgets after fund losses. Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lost 22 percent, not including investments in private equity and real estate, in the four months ended Oct. 31, and said its losses for the fiscal year may be 30 percent. Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, said its endowment fell 25 percent in five months. Outlays from Dartmouth’s fund contribute 35 percent of the budget, excluding professional schools.
Maybe they will extend summer break?
Dartmouth to Cut 60 Jobs After 18% Endowment Decline [Bloomberg]
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