Graduates from all walks of life compete for a limited number of available full-time employment opportunities at Pierpoint, a top investment bank in London; the graduates include Harper Stern, a Black upstate New York native who uproots her life in pursuit of success, despite having lied about the university she attended, Hari Dhar, a state-school graduate and child of Hindi-speaking immigrants, Augustus "Gus" Sackey, a gay Black British graduate of Eton and Oxford, Robert Spearing, a white working-class Oxford graduate who is eager to please and Yasmin Kara-Hanani, a privileged, well-connected child of Lebanese parents with an underachieving, drug-addled boyfriend.