New York Sun – Private equity, venture capital firms, and hedge funds are replacing more traditional investment banks as the most coveted destinations for Harvard Business School students thisrecruiting season.
“Almost 75% of HBS students want to do private equity or venture capital. Only about 10% get to do it,” a student in Harvard Business School’s class of 2006 and member of the student senate, Abhishek Agrawal, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Agrawal has taken a job in private equity for next year.
A professor at the business school, Felda Hardymon, told The New York Sun that about half of the class of 2006, which has 800 students, had signed up for his Venture Capital and Private Equity course, though there was room for only 192 students. Mr. Hardymon, who has been teaching the course since 1998, said that in the last five years the number of students who wanted to take the course has increased 50%.
The business school students, some say, are just doing what more-established financial industry professionals are doing when they leave jobs at Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan to start hedge funds or try their hand at private equity: They are following the money. The median base salary for members of the Harvard Business School class of 2005 who took jobs at private equity firms was $115,000 a year, compared to $95,000 a year for those working in investment banking. Bonuses can bring total compensation sharply higher.
