College students today

For me, college and grad school were opportunities to see the future; at Stanford we used the Internet 10 years before everyone else, and Wharton let me learn concepts about finance or marketing that are only now becoming mainstream. So I am very interested in knowning what today's students do, because that ought to hint at what will be mainstream 10 years from now. Today I talked with a 20-something who gave me a couple of insights:

• Students go to http://www.vault.com for the inside scoop on what it's like to work at a company.


• Everyone uses IM, of course, usually with hundreds of buddies. It can be awkward when you split up with your girlfriend, because what do you do with all those "buddies"? There is software that can tell whether you are on somebody's block list.

I've been disappointed with some of the college students I've met through Stanford's alumni program. They aren't as gadget-centric as I would have expected, for example, though maybe that's just because gadgets are expensive.