How to waste two years of your life
Pros
The graduate training scheme is unparalleled, a wonderful learning experience. For the first fifteen weeks of your career, you will feel like you made the right decision.
Cons
A corporate policy of Morgan Stanley is that there can be no promotion until you have served a total of nine years in higher education and the financial industry. If you have a bachelors degree, you will spend six years without any appreciable increase in salary or rank. The average bonus for new hires now is below three thousand, and the average raise is close to zero. There is a split culture; those who arrived before the crisis, in the "good times", still brag about wealth and insist on the best Champagne. For new hires, however, that could not be further from the truth. It is a long standing open secret that Morgan Stanley has the worst graduate salary of any large investment bank; the expectation being with advancement comes significant monetary improvements. What is likely to take you by surprise is that until the first promotion (6 years), the expected raise is zero.