At this year’s opening convocation, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 stated that Brown’s Open Curriculum is “an approach to education that’s designed to encourage intellectual exploration, which means taking risks.” With thousands of available courses, the ability to take classes outside of a student's concentration is the spirit of the Open Curriculum. But outside of the classroom exists a culture that competes with this approach: preprofessional clubs.
There are more than 20 preprofessional clubs at Brown, about half of which are geared towards students who aspire to work in finance. These clubs simulate the cutthroat environment of working on Wall Street, demanding multi-round interviews after applicants are already required to submit rigorous in-depth applications that test their skills on financial modeling. The overbearing nature of these clubs begs the question: Is the careerism perpetuated by preprofessional clubs at Brown harming the spirit of the Open Curriculum?
Clubs should serve as a natural extension of Brown’s academic mission, and pigeonholing first-year students into preprofessional clubs seems to contradict the values of an institution that is supposed to invite exploration and curiosity. The University touts academic exploration as its main selling point, but competitive preprofessional clubs directly oppose this. But the clubs are not entirely unjustified in their intense application processes, given that Wall Street recruiters begin hiring analysts as early as students’ sophomore spring, starting with early talent programs which can become internships and ultimately post-grad jobs.
If a biology and economics dual concentrator didn’t know whether or not they were interested in finance and wanted to participate in one of these clubs, they would be met with an application that asked technical questions on financial modeling. Since the application process asks students to demonstrate more than just interest, only those who know they want to do finance or have the time to dedicate to learning more about it are likely to get accepted. Moreover, a large number of their applicants are accepted in their first-year fall, potentially discouraging sophomores and juniors from applying in fear of being “late to the game.” With such an intense application process, it’s hard for students just hoping to explore to actually do so.
Other universities have tried to tackle the harmful effects of careerism in several ways. Georgetown University implemented a policy where first-years can only become official members of certain clubs during their second semester, allowing their first semester to be focused on exploration. But the results have been mixed: For some students, the change has brought more confidence and less pressure. But for others, it feels like the same process and timeline — just delayed by one semester.
Penn’s Wharton School of Business also recently banned multi-round interviews, following concerns about hazing and a stressful and unfair application process. Any student at Brown who has applied to one of these clubs has likely experienced similar challenges. Yet many continue to overlook how these processes impede students’ abilities to take advantage of Brown’s unique freedoms.
It’s true that students need the resources offered by preprofessional clubs to find jobs post-graduation. But the issue is not with the fact that these clubs exist, but rather the unnecessarily complex and competitive process they subject applicants to. Ultimately, this impairs students’ ability to benefit from both preprofessional resources and their academic experience.
Brown’s hard stance on academic exploration has made its alignment with careerism even more challenging. As humanities concentrators decline nationwide, preprofessional clubs grow. With a declining job market in mind, it's difficult to say exactly what Brown and other universities should do to find a balance between education and preprofessionalism. In any case, the solution begins with asking: Is Brown a liberal arts education that produces a well-rounded, independent-thinking student, or is it serving as a waiting room for students vying for a McKinsey internship?
Christian Yeung ’29 can be reached at christian_yeung@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Op-Ed Contributor
