The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the number-one undergraduate business program in the United States, considered by many in the financial world to be the equivalent of an MBA. Since its founding in 1881, Wharton has pioneered innovative business curricula and launched the careers of thousands of Wall Street titans and Fortune 500 tycoons, including such famous alums as Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Revlon CEO Ron Perelman, and real-estate mogul Donald Trump. Every autumn five hundred of the world’s best, brightest, and most driven students enter the school, where they will spend the next four years battling it out with classmates in rigorous exams graded on an unyielding curve and pulling all-nighters to build financial models or hone complex group projects to perfection. They will try to outwit one another in the contest to win the most prestigious internships, and in their senior year, these young bulls will put their hard work and the $120,000 investment in their education to the ultimate test during a grueling ten-week long recruiting rush as they vie for positions with elite investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lazard Fr?res and highly sought-after consulting firms such as McKinsey and Bain—with the possibility of a six-figure income on the line. In The Running of the Bulls, financial reporter Nicole Ridgway takes you inside the ivied walls of Wharton and into the maelstrom of the Class of 2004’s recruiting season, through the eyes of seven seniors with a broad range of backgrounds and career paths. The son of an Indian glass-making magnate must choose between accepting an offer with a prestigious American consulting firm or returning home to help run his family’s business. An African–American woman from suburban Washington, D.C., sacrifices her social life to become not only the first in her family to graduate from college, but the envy of her peers as a Goldman Sachs analyst. A budding entrepreneur from the Philadelphia area must decide whether he should forgo the high pay and one-hundred-hour workweeks of I-banking in order to take a position that would give him enough freedom to develop his dream company. Along the way, each of these students endures high-pressure interviews in which recruiters spring arduous mathematical problems or scrutinize perceived deficiencies in their almost-perfect r?sum?s, overcome late-night meltdowns due to the crush of competing demands from coursework, recruiting, and extracurricular commitments, and face the ultimate decision about selecting a job that will either set them on the fast track to success or lead their nascent careers to a dead end. Gripping, insightful, and provocative, The Running of the Bulls is a fast-paced portrait of the high-stakes game Wall Street plays when choosing its next generation of leaders.
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