Richard Mo: Decrying the terrible unfairness of meritocracy

Last week, I interviewed for a "typical Wharton job." While I was waiting to be called, I sat across from another student.

"I forgot to look up the 10-year treasury note rate this morning," the student said worriedly. "Do you know what it is?" (I learned later that finance interviewers love to ask about the rate.)

"Sorry buddy, can't help you there. I don't read the Journal."

"You're not in Wharton, are you?" he asked, his face slightly agitated.

"God, no."

My last response had set him off. "It's people like you who steal jobs from people like us," he said, with hostility in his voice.

I held my tongue. But I started thinking about what he had said. Doesn't stealing mean taking something unlawfully? When has there been a rule that certain jobs are reserved for Wharton students and no one else?

When I thought more about his comment, what struck me as even more ignorant is how something has to belong to someone for me to steal it. Was this job my Wharton counterpart's to begin with?

I do not mean to pick on Wharton in particular -- the incident is indicative of a larger Penn fault, and of an Ivy League fault.

Penn students are arrogant.

We believe that, Penn degree in hand, we deserve a certain job, salary and lifestyle. A place at the top companies and graduate schools are a right, no matter how woefully unqualified some of us might be.

As much as the admissions office loathes to admit, all a Penn degree means is that a person met the office's criteria as a high schooler and through four years maintained a C-average. Our education, as expensive as it is, does not guarantee fame and riches.

Of course, a Penn degree also signifies a student being part of an intellectual environment which, if properly taken advantage of, will bring good things his way post-graduation. But if he has never been to the library and parties to a fault, he will, rightfully so, likely not find the success he feels he deserves.

Before the school year began, I bumped into my Harvard-educated cousin, who works at a major New York-based financial firm. When she heard that I was going on the job hunt, she had one simple piece of advice: "don't go thinking that you're hot stuff."

As part of her job, she recruits at her alma mater. What strikes her is "how awfully arrogant [students] are and how awfully unappealing it is to hear that."

If recruiting were up to her, she would take the emphasis from the Ivies and turn it to other schools with students just as qualified but who work harder because they don't have the sense of entitlement.

Her current boss is a City College of New York graduate from her analyst class. A Harvard classmate was fired in the first year for ineptitude.

I'm pretty sure that she is not alone in her feelings. A poll of corporate and graduate school recruiters would find that the biggest fault with Penn students is our sense of entitlement. We cannot comprehend that there are equally qualified students at other "inferior" schools such as Penn State and Princeton who "steal" jobs and graduate school spots from us.

It is unfair of me to characterize Penn as full of egotistical elitists. There are definitely some students who come from family and educational backgrounds where nothing is taken for granted.

But unfortunately, there are many more of us who attended elite private and suburban public schools where anything short of the ivy walls is viewed as a failure. Instead of leaving our haughty attitudes behind, we bring them and exhibit them for everyone to see.

No wonder the real world dislikes us so much.

When recruiting season has come and gone and some of us are left holding stacks of rejection letters from Goldman or McKinsey or Yale Law or Harvard Med, we complain bitterly. How unfair the admissions process is. How useless Career Services is. The interviewer didn't like me. I didn't want to go there anyway.

But we never stop to think that perhaps we are left disappointed because we are too confident in ourselves and in the Penn name that we stop worrying about our qualifications.

Meritocracy -- what a new and unusual concept!

Richard Mo is a senior History and Economics major from Fresh Meadows, NY.

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