Every year, Brown Investment Group asks its applicants to estimate the average revenue of Ceremony on Brook Street, the club’s favorite cafe. But this year, for the first time, the cafe reached out to BIG and pushed back against the exercise. Over 10 first-year applicants, in pursuit of the correct answer, had reached out to Ceremony to request confidential financial information.
BIG is not the only pre-professional group to note an unprecedented intensity among first-year applicants. Various campus organizations told The Herald that they have noticed an increase in first-year students who are already focused on their post-graduate careers.
BIG saw a record number of applicants this year, according to Faizaan Qureshi ’27, the club’s co-president, though he attributed some of the growth to the club’s recent collaboration with the Center for Career Exploration to boost outreach. Similarly, Collegiate Consulting Group saw its applicant pool increase from 180 to 300 submissions, said CCG co-president Brendan Rathier ’27.
Rathier partially attributes this phenomenon to the uncertain hiring landscape, which he thinks is the “biggest component” driving the competitive culture of pre-professionalism within the first-year class.
Alongside the uptick in quantity, the quality of applications has also increased, Rathier said. Many of these applications included “top-notch resumes” from first-year students who already had “significant entrepreneurship experience,” said Tanay Subramanian ’26, another CCG co-president, in a message to The Herald.
“Several applicants started their own businesses in the five and six figures,” Subramanian added. “They already had experience with finding a market gap and creating a business solution, handling everything from marketing and supply chain to finances and strategy.”
“If I were to apply to CCG again, there’s no way I (would) get in,” Rathier said.
Qureshi added that several incoming students even sent him emails in advance of A Day on College Hill, Brown’s admitted students day.
Rathier, who is also a computer science teaching assistant, recalled several first-year students approaching him to network about internships and job opportunities.
“I’m like, ‘you guys are freshmen, you need to chillax,’” he said.
Jena Forlemu ’27, vice president of Black in Business at Brown, described first-year students as “pretty eager.” During an Oct. 2 BIBB finance panel, many students jumped to ask questions about finding internships and other professional opportunities.
Some first-year students feel that this head start is necessary.
Max Donovan ’29 is “regrettably” already thinking about post-graduate career opportunities, “even though I just got here a couple weeks ago,” he said.
Donovan applied to several of Brown’s large finance-related clubs in the first few weeks of the semester, he said. He is now a member of BIG after receiving rejections from CCG and Bruno Finance Society.
For Donovan, “indirect peer pressure” played a significant role in his decision to apply to multiple finance and consulting clubs.
“If everybody’s doing it, you feel like you’re putting yourself at (a) disadvantage if you don’t do it as well,” he said.
This mindset does “introduce a lot of stress early on that maybe shouldn’t be present the first month of college,” Donovan said. But a poor job market, high competition and rampant pre-professionalism all characterize “the world we live in,” he added.
Jeremy Eisen ’29 recalled facing similar pressure to be proactive about building his resume.
“I’m hearing from everyone … that if you don’t do this stuff now, then you’ll have a hard time getting the opportunities later,” Eisen said.
Yoon Lee ’29 described her participation in pre-professional clubs as joining “the bandwagon.”
“I wanted to get hands-on experience because that's what a lot of these pre-professional clubs emphasize,” she said.
For others, planning ahead isn’t a product of pressure. Naima Bead ’29, who aims to go to law school and then pursue either contract law or mergers and acquisitions, has taken steps toward her goal by joining Brown Pre-Law Society and BIG.
Bead didn’t feel pressured to join these organizations, she said. Instead, she “wanted to build a community” and connect with students who “share the same passions and goals,” she added.
