I signed up for this. Having just completed the recruiting process as a senior engineering student at Cornell trying to go into some of the industries listed I call BS.

I could expound for a while on this but to make it brief:

1) Undergrad recruiting for finance and consulting out of Cornell is not as good as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but it is very easy to break into these industries coming from Cornell compared to coming from any state level schools.

2) It is not an old boys club, anyone can break into the industry from any background. A number of people I spoke with in industry failed to get a job out of college in the area they wanted. Persistence and networking can land you an analyst level banking job in less than three years after graduation. If you want to be a banker you'll do it.

3) A number of programmers I knew wanted to go into the financial sector, partially because of pay, partially because they got tired of geek.

4) I had a lab partner that played on the football team. His day started at 6am with videos (for the team), then breakfast, then weight lifting, then classes/lab, then practice. He didn't settle down until 9pm at which time he could actually start on his homework. His GPA was crap but I find it pretty ignorant for a bunch of hackers to diminish those who pursue athletics in college based upon their own personal bias. Athletics indicates someone willing to work 15+ hours a day, and mind you standard industry work weeks vary from 80 to 130 hours (looking into Moelis and UBS LA if you doubt the 130 hours).

5) My understanding and experience implies that "recruiters" are less involved with the process than they let on. Cornell, and most other high ranked schools, have career services offices that coordinate with a staffing member at the hiring firm. That staffing member will take resumes from the school and send them to employees working the position that is being hired for. While this may generate an element of bias based upon existing employees it is not one to be faulted too heavily when taking a pragmatic standpoint (look at the biases displayed in this thread regarding community college and athletes)

7) I have ~18 resume drafts saved on my computer completed over a 3 months period, ~50 cover letter drafts from a 1 month period, I applied to a total of 49 positions, and it took me a total of 4 months from start (beginning of last summer) to finding a job. I beat my target base salary by 30%, I beat my target max potential bonus by 30%, my promotion schedule works out to be twice as fast as I anticipated, and I will have a much more reasonable work week than those listed above. I am an average to below average applicant (from a resume only perspective) in a down job market, recognizing this I put in a great more effort than my peers that are just starting to look.

@PostOnce: I worked two jobs to support myself through community college. We acted as a feeder college for a Top 10 engineering school. It eventually trickled back from transfer students that the courses at my community college were harder than the equivalents at the Top 10 school. EVERY course in math, science, physics, and engineering transferred completely to the top engineering school and I received FULL credit upon arrival at Cornell for my previous coursework. In response to your lack of respect for community college I offer this: to discount an institution, firm, or individual based upon a potentially baseless or anecdotal prejudice is naive at best and moronic at worst. Maybe you simply wouldn't have been able to take advantage of community college and it is truly a lack of respect for yourself?

Anywho, I've ranted enough.