Subtitled “Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street,” The Running of the Bulls chronicles the stories of approximately seven undergraduate students of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. The book focuses on the recruiting process that these students of the Class of 2004 went through, and what their lives were like for the first year at their Wall Street jobs. As a Wharton alum myself, I was naturally intrigued by the details of what students in the class of 2004 experienced as opposed to when I attended.

The book can be broken down into roughly three sections: an introduction to the school and the students, a brief history of finance in the United States with insight into working on Wall Street, and the detailed accounts of the career paths of several students.

There are a number of details in the book that I found myself disagreeing with, not being able to relate to, or felt could have changed about Wharton since my days there. But when thinking about it, most of those things I disagree with just seemed like nitpicking. The biggest problem I have with the book comes from the Author’s Note at the end of the book. The author states “I also wanted to demystify the infamous Wharton stereotype, one that was both Darwinistic and masochistic.” While I realize that the author tries to present several different perspectives of students experiences, job searches, and career goals at Wharton, the person who makes the biggest impression on the reader is a woman who sacrifices everything in pursuit of her career. For me, this only serves to reinforce the stereotype.

From my experience at Wharton, the people who fit the Darwinistic and masochistic stereotype certainly did exist, but these people were a small minority. The personalities of the students I knew at Wharton really were not all that different from college students I knew and met at other schools.

What I found differed most about being in the undergraduate program at Wharton was the rapid pace of learning in the curriculum. The curriculum advances the undergraduate juniors and seniors to a level that is similar to what is being taught at many graduate school programs. This fact and many other details about what makes Wharton unique were glanced over or left out completely from The Running of the Bulls. Aside from a few references to Steiny-D, Hey Day, and “The Red and Blue,” The Running of the Bulls could have been written about students who apply for jobs on Wall Street from any school.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10.