To find those employees, recruiters flooded the campuses of America\u2019s elite universities. In 1976, less than 5 percent of surveyed seniors at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School were headed to Wall Street for investment banking. By 1987, it was one in three. At Yale, 40 percent of the entire graduating class of 1986 applied to work at the investment bank First Boston. At Princeton, hopeful students waited all night to secure a spot on recruiters\u2019 schedules. In his book \u201cLiar\u2019s Poker,\u201d Michael Lewis describes trying to get an interview with Lehman Brothers in the early \u201980s: \u201cI had stood in six inches of snow with about 50 other students, awaiting the opening of the Princeton University career services office.\u201d<\/p>\n
The number of WASPy white men at elite schools was simply too small to keep up with the torrent of financial deal-making. Chasing rapid growth, banks and law firms began to hire all sorts of graduates \u2014 first Jewish and Irish and Italian men, then, as the women\u2019s and civil rights movements diversified the university-bound population, a growing number of white women and Black, Latino and Asian men and women. In an age of ruthless competition, identity mattered less than workers\u2019 credentials and willingness to work grueling hours.<\/p>\n
Robert Jen, who grew up in a Chinese immigrant family in New York, was one of those new hires. As a student at Columbia, Mr. Jen saw John Gutfreund, the chief executive of Salomon Brothers, speak at an event. Even though Mr. Jen had had no background \u2014 or even much interest \u2014 in finance when he arrived at Columbia, he accepted an offer from Drexel Burnham Lambert\u2019s New York office, where by 1981 he was working long hours as a junk-bond trader. \u201cThat\u2019s how I came to the Street,\u201d he said later. \u201cIt was basically by accident.\u201d<\/p>\n