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My wife, a former advertising professional, was one of the young initiates. She thrust herself into B-school orientation on the Manhattan campus and I tagged along. It started sedately enough with a day of lectures and welcoming speeches. It ended with bacchanalia in Midtown: an open bar funded by corporate sponsors, with bar-hopping afterward on somebody else's tab.

Next, the new class was given a fete at Chase Manhattan's headquarters so the bankers could get a look at the new crop of corporate warriors. With hors d'oeuvres piled high on the tables and the booze flowing liberally (my wife's first drink was a G&T with two inches of gin and half an inch of tonic), the students began to get a picture of their new life. "It's when you realize you're the one being recruited now," said one student happily. "It was pretty nice." Another female student described the glad-handing a little more succinctly: "These places have a hard-on for MBAs."

Indeed. Although many business schools can boast that their graduates enjoy high incomes and myriad job opportunities, admission to Columbia is virtually a ticket to the good life. Columbia may have trailed Harvard in the Financial Times as the No. 2 business school in the world, but the average starting salary for Columbia graduates is the highest in the world. Students can expect to make more than $150K their first year after graduation, which is not unreasonable considering Columbia's published salary ranges for its 1998 graduates hit $375K in certain industries. Some lucky students play companies off each other in bidding wars.

The university works with relentless fervor to get jobs for students, with a well-staffed career office and constant, almost paternal advice on the art of getting a job. Career staff hold students' hands as they navigate the labyrinth of interviews, offers, rejections and bids. In orientation week, networking seemed to take on a manic quality, as students attempted to catalog all their future recruiters as well as their 485 new classmates in whirlwind meet-and-greet sessions. And all of this with a drink in their hands and three already under their belts.

Next page | A week of unchecked excess on the corporate tab