sellout’s conundrum - by Rona Wang - return on net assets

First published on MIT Admissions in 2019. It’s been four years, but perhaps it’ll still resonate with some of you. Sometimes I went to recruiting events just to remember why I avoided recruiting events. The latest one, held in early May of this year, was at Abide, a bubble tea shop on the outskirts of campus. The recruiters had tried, they really did—wheeled in old-school arcade games, paid for limitless boba, etched the space in muted gold light. A woman in a crisp suit handed me a stack of poker chips. “Use these to place bets.” She gestured at a whiteboard that proclaimed two hundred dollars’ worth of chips could be exchanged for a backpack; a thousand dollars’ worth meant AirPods. I wondered at this approximation of Maslow’s. Who needed self-actualization when one could listen to podcasts wirelessly? A few minutes later, I was assessing the boba selection—passionfruit green tea, matcha milk tea, something reddish that involved guava—when a recruiter sidled up. Her greeting floated

First published on MIT Admissions in 2019. It’s been four years, but perhaps it’ll still resonate with some of you. Sometimes I went to recruiting events just to remember why I avoided recruiting events. The latest one, held in early May of this year, was at Abide, a bubble tea shop on the outskirts of campus. The recruiters had tried, they really did—wheeled in old-school arcade games, paid for limitless boba, etched the space in muted gold light. A woman in a crisp suit handed me a stack of poker chips. “Use these to place bets.” She gestured at a whiteboard that proclaimed two hundred dolla