Wall Street Jobs Deferred for Teach for America

An nice article about TFA:

Four years after the financial crisis, Wall Street hiring has remained weak, and many college graduates have searched for jobs and even careers in other fields. In the last several years, hundreds of such would-be finance professionals and management consultants have taken their high-powered ambitions and spreadsheet modeling skills to the classroom.

Teach for America, the 22-year-old nonprofit organization that recruits high-achieving college graduates to teach in some of the nation’s poorest schools for two years, in particular has garnered renewed interest among the business-oriented set. Teach for America says that its 2012 class contained about 400 recent graduates with a major in business or economics. Of those with professional experience, about 175 worked in finance.

Those participants include Zachary Dearing, 23, a recent graduate of M.I.T. Two summers ago, he was an intern at McKinsey & Company, and the year before, Goldman Sachs.

Yet, he was one of 21 teachers in this year’s class who had deferred job offers from a Wall Street bank, a management consulting firm or another corporate partner to join Teach for America.

“If somebody had told me I was going to be a high school math teacher in Dallas, Texas, when I entered college, I’d be like, ‘No, there’s no chance of that being true,’ ” said Mr. Dearing, who has deferred an offer from McKinsey. The teaching skills easily translate to office environments, he said. “I’m effectively the leader, every day, for 46 minutes, in front of seven different groups,” Mr. Dearing said.

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