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Rohit Singh arrives at Citigroup on Greenwich Street in Manhattan. Singh often works 18 hours a day. Photo: Rachel Morris

Rohit Singh has so much work to do that he is pulling an all-nighter. He sits at his desk, guzzling cans of caffeinated soda, working on a 50-page report. From time to time, he feels himself falling asleep while typing.

"You set a clock alarm for a 14-minute nap," he says. "You do these weird negotiations with yourself: 'It's 4 a.m., this is what I have to do before 8 a.m. -- how much can I sleep?'"

Singh isn't a procrastinating college student slogging through an essay in his dorm room. He is a young adult toiling as an analyst at a major investment bank.

Thousands of the most intelligent graduates of America's top universities spend their first years after college at investment banks. Though the firms operate nationwide, in New York, America's financial capital, young analysts work harder than most, routinely logging over 100 hours a week. For some, the high pay, the valuable experience and the sheer challenge make it all worth it. For others, the lifestyle is more than they bargained for.

Each fall, recruiters from investment banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase descend on Ivy-caliber schools, pitching to America's best and brightest. They promise a two-year program with an impressive entry-level salary (upward of $50,000, plus bonus) and experience in real-world finance that is a golden ticket to even higher-paying jobs or a prestigious business school. The competition is tough, with multiple rounds of interviews, and less than one in ten of those who submit resumes land a job.

Singh, nearing the end of his second year as a Citigroup recruit, is one of the lucky few. He wanted to be an investment banker so badly that as a high school senior, he studied independently with an Ohio State economics professor before moving on to University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Not long ago, Ann, now a third-year analyst at a major bank, was a starry-eyed young banker fresh from an elite university. (Ann declined to give her full name.) "All my friends had worked on Wall Street, and it sounded so cool," Ann said. "I was excited about working on big deals that were in The Wall Street Journal. That's still the exciting part: that you can call your parents and say, 'Look on page one.'"

But for Ann, the pressure of the job weighs heavily. "You think you can do the hours when you start, but I'm completely worn out, burnt out," said Ann, who rarely leaves work before midnight. "It's just like when you were in college pulling all-nighters studying for an exam. Except you have an exam every day -- it's always finals week."

The young bankers have no legal grounds for complaint about the long hours, however. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, salaried white-collar employees are exempt from restrictions on how many hours they work.

Frustration among recruits takes many forms, from punching computer screens to crying on their desks. Though the banks declined to comment on dropout rates, recruits at three different firms said that every year, half of their peers quit or are laid off.

After repeated requests for information, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup declined to disclose data related to the success of analysts after they leave the banks. While many analysts move on to lucrative, less-stressful finance jobs, the years toiling at a bank don't guarantee acceptance to business school, the goal of many bankers.

Indeed, with acceptance rates at leading B-schools hovering in the single digits, admissions officers can afford to be selective. "We are very focused on the individual," said Wendy Hansen, associate director of MBA admissions at Stanford University. "What we try to encourage people in the application is to share themselves in a sincere, straightforward way." While former investment bankers are strongly represented in Stanford's student body, Hansen says she sends rejection letters to hundreds of bankers every spring.

Last fall, after barely a year, Jeff Brown left his job as an analyst at the Palo Alto office of a major bank. Brown, who earned an undergraduate Stanford degree in 2002, was the third member of his six-person team to quit.

"In spite of getting to travel, getting to work on several premier deals within the firm and earning top-tier status, I never really liked what I was doing," Brown said. "[I] could no longer justify any reason for continuing to work in such an environment and subjecting myself to that level of pain." Brown says he plans to apply to dental school.

Despite the harsh lifestyle, though, banking alumni agree the knowledge gained was a huge career asset. "The biggest thing that banking does is, you put in four to six years of experience in two calendar years," said Greg, a 31-year-old former analyst who declined to give his last name. Greg is currently an investment professional at a Seattle venture capital firm.

"Yeah, it's a lot of hours, but the experience you come out with is phenomenal," adds Lisa Metrinko, a former investment bank recruiter and now a career consultant at a prominent business school.

Singh, for one, seems willing to put up with it all.

"I've worked 100-hour weeks, all-nighters I've pulled left and right, but on my last day of work there's a part of me that's going to be sad for leaving," he said. "Some of my fondest memories of myself are me at my cube trying to figure out why my [financial] model is busted at four in the morning."

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