ascothink - The pay is not "fabulous."
Here's a 2014 pay table. Note that it's base salary. Most new grads do pretty well on that salary, and you get a pretty decent bump after two years when you make O-2.
None the less, it's not going to be the 150K that many 22-year-olds think they're going to earn!
You won't be making anything close to $77K until you're 5-10 years in. Yes, some of your salary isn't taxed, so you may SEE more than you would expect for that kind of money... but if you're looking for making big bucks while you're serving, you'll have a few dacades to wait.
Also note, most 22 year olds aren't making $150K. In fact, most 52 year olds aren't making $150K.
In all honesty, this isn't the 1960s and 1970s, where guys like Lou Ranieri are joinging firms out of high school, and then working from the back rooms to eventually become partners of firms. MAYBE there are some exceptions to that, but it's certainly not the norm.
In general, a bachelor's degree won't be enough. Wall Street is littered with service academy graduates. Maybe they aren't the norm (hint: being a service academy grad will never put you "in the norm"), but the opportunities exist.
The "stepping stone" to those more lucrative jobs these days are MBAs (or pushing through crap before a bubble pops... but that's risky).
I don't have an MBA. I have an MPS. For what I do, I didn't really need a master's, but, eh, what the heck, it can only help, and I did enjoy it. So, considering I DO like my master's, most would agree that an MBA is the most useful master's degree out there.
But, as the demand for MBAs has gone up, so has the supply. It also matters, in many cases, where your MBA is from. Top 10 programs like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Warton, Chicago... etc. give you a better MBA leg to stand on than other business schools.
Once you graduate from a service academy, and do some time serving, that bachelor's program can present some doors, but you have to open them.
And then, there are of course other options, besides banking.... such being a lawyer on Wall Street.
The financial community is VAST... not just bankers (and don't forget, there are different kinds).... analysts, accountants, auditors, lawyers, and on and on.
There are many service academy graduates who make their way into this community, or related communities, or business in general.