When I opened my Penn acceptance letter, I felt a surge of hope. Confetti flew across the screen, and I was promised that I would use my education to change the world. That feeling only grew when Penn President Larry Jameson stood in front of my class at convocation and called us the most impressive group of students Penn had ever admitted. I believed both of those things completely. Then the semester started.
Within weeks, I watched my most curious, idealistic peers, first years who had barely unpacked their dorm rooms, start showing up to consulting and finance info sessions in blazers. I watched people who had described, days earlier, the causes they cared about start talking instead about resumes, recruiting timelines, and the best clubs for an application. Sociologists call this career funneling: the process by which an elite university’s recruiting cycles, peer status systems, and campus resources channel students toward the same narrow set of prestigious jobs, regardless of what drew them to campus in the first place. I watched career funneling happen in real time to people who never got the chance to figure out their interests.
At Penn, career funneling is well-documented. According to the “Employment by Industry” graph in the Penn Career Services Post-Graduate Outcomes report, 64% of the Class of 2025 who entered full-time employment took jobs in finance, technology, or consulting (FTC). It’s not just the Wharton School. That number was 57% for the College of Arts and Sciences. Nearly two-thirds of all Penn students didn’t independently discover a shared passion for private equity. This is the product of a pipeline.
I don’t think FTC is an inherently wrong career choice. Plenty of my classmates genuinely love that work, and I have no interest in telling them otherwise. My problem isn’t with the destination but the absence of a real decision. FTC is the path most visibly rewarded, most aggressively recruited for, and most available as an answer when a stressed 19-year-old just wants to know what’s next. It’s the path of least resistance rather than a genuine preference.
The recruiting infrastructure for FTC — info sessions, coffee chats, case-competition workshops — is everywhere on campus, and Penn lets it take root. Finance and consulting firms spend enormous sums, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year per school, to secure premium access to students. This includes money that flows directly into university career centers. These firms routinely recruit first years and sophomores, well before most students have taken more than a couple of classes toward whatever they wanted to study. Public service, government, education, and the arts don’t have the same kind of recruiting resources, so they don’t get that kind of access, timeline, or rewards. One path is paved, lit, and staffed while the others sit as unmarked trails. “Choice” turns into a technicality.
This is why I feel betrayed. Penn didn’t lie about having opportunity; it has more of it than almost any school in the country. But what Penn calls “career readiness” is really a campus environment where nearly every road sign points to the same three destinations. How can an institution with this much money, faculty, and brainpower let so many of its most impressive minds fall into the same few industries, then call that a success story?
I’ve only completed one year here, but between my own reflection and conversations with other students, faculty, and administrators, here’s what I've learned: you can ignore the road signs. You can notice whether you’re doing something out of curiosity or a fear of falling behind. And while these individual choices matter, they aren’t enough.
That’s why I’m starting a campus chapter of Class Action, a national student organization challenging elite universities to live up to their obligations to the public. We’re urging our schools to stop funneling talent into the same few industries and start building real support for every path.
We’re asking Penn to level the playing field and fund students who want to intern at nonprofits, small organizations, and local governments that can’t afford to pay the same as FTC. We’re asking Penn to limit when corporate recruiting can begin each year so students get real time to figure out what they want. And we’re asking Penn to put meaningful career services resources behind public service, research, education, and the arts — not just the three industries it already overserves. Sign our open letter and join us in asking Penn to live up to its promise of helping us change the world.
Penn is an extraordinary place. The faculty, the resources, the sheer density of brilliant, driven people around you; none of that is an illusion. But it means nothing if we never get the chance to ask ourselves what we actually want. Penn can’t hand us our purpose. It never could. But it owes us the real chance to go looking for it.
MAGGIE FLEISCHER is a sophomore studying nursing from Stamford, Conn. Her email is mfleisch@nursing.upenn.edu.
