MBA News: Playing Lacrosse as Good as an MBA?

Considering getting an MBA to land a job on Wall Street? Maybe you should just learn to play lacrosse instead. BloombergBusinessweek reports that for undergraduates entering finance, having played lacrosse in college is a major advantage to later landing a job. Lacrosse tends to be an East Coast sport, with many players coming from backgrounds that allow them to comfortably adjust to the Wall Street environment. More than sociability, work ethic is seemingly at the core of Wall Street’s affection for lacrosse players. Robert Cummings, a former Cornell lacrosse player and an employee at UBS, said that the best lacrosse players “are smart kids that put in the long hours. The same goes for finance, where you’re going to do well if you can outwork the other guy.” Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are full of former All-American lacrosse players, and some in New York even get together for a regular game organized by a Morgan Stanley executive director.