The jobs that really smart people avoid

But according to recent research from Pian Shu, an economist at Harvard Business School, the kinds of students who end up working for Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch aren’t always the best, the brightest — or the most innovative.

Shu finds that MIT science and engineering majors who took their first jobs in finance had more modest academic achievements, on average, than the high-flying types who pursued research careers right after school.

“The two groups seem very different even at college entry and pursue different activities in college,” Shu said in an e-mail. Students destined for Wall Street tended to arrive at MIT with weaker high school records, and later graduated with lower college GPAs. They were also more likely to be members of a fraternity or sorority.

In addition to confidential academic records, Shu also analyzed the self-evaluation surveys given to students at graduation. People going into finance were less likely to say they gained an “in-depth knowledge of a field” or that they better understood “the process of science and experimentation” after their four years at MIT.