Having worked in Asia for the past nearly 9 years, it still amazes me how many top diplomatic and business positions are filled by BYU grads. The top students at BYU really are on par with any of their contemporaries and are VERY upward mobile. Zooropa is right though that once you get past the top tier, it can fall pretty quick. Someone else posted (and got ribbed for it) that the guy must have been from Utah. While there are a lot of great Utah born-and-raised BYU grads, there are probably more that act like a fish out of water when outside Utah. I've seen it many times myself.

This is not to say they are bad or non-qualified for different jobs; they are just well out of their comfort zones and don't know how to react. Some adapt, some run back to Utah. Case in point, I interviewed with a Utah firm out of college and they had a very well paying management training program. As I went through the interview process, one of the things we discussed was what was expected of those in the trainee program and after (work expectations were not as high as the salary had lead me to think). The VP told me the reason they offered a salary that was a great deal higher than the market average is that it took that much $$ to get people to leave, and stay out, of Utah. He said well over 90% of the people they interview want assurances that after 3 or so years at a different location they will be brought back to work in Utah. Again, these aren't bad people, just out of their comfort zones when outside of Utah. As such, many of them aren't right for a wall street, large corporate type job.

Those attacking NJ Cougar or others who have posted similiar opinions need to take a step back and realize that not everyone is fit for every job. One of the most important parts of job searching/career planning is knowing where you are at, where you want to go, and the gaps you must overcome to get from here to there. If the work required to cover some of those gaps require conditions that you don't like, you need to reassess your plan. If you don't like it, good for you for knowing that and finding a career that matches what you want. But that is NO reason to thumb your nose at those who do enjoy what you do not. The person in this interview obviously didn't do his homework on the industry and blew his interview, on many levels.