(FORTUNE Magazine) – At Harvard in the spring, all seniors' watches are set to the same time: the eve of greatness. Even in coffee shops, one hears wonders of a world to come. Three seniors, eating eggs the morning after final exams, discuss another senior's plight. He had planned to goof off for a while, but his parents are insisting he take over the family mines and steamship line. (''His dad, like, owns Thailand.'')

A bummer. But even here, where every graduate is guaranteed an in with at least one honcho somewhere (Say, that's a coincidence -- I went to Harvard too), some ins are more valuable than others. Among the best: the network of friendly grads attached to the Harvard Lampoon. As the whole world knows, NBC picked Conan O'Brien -- an unknown -- to succeed David Letterman. And as almost the whole world knows, Conan O'Brien is a Lampoon man ('85), the most recent in a long line of grads-gone-Hollywood that includes Rob Ulin, co-executive producer of Roseanne; Jim Downey, producer of Saturday Night Live; and high- paid gagmen who write for SNL, Letterman, The Simpsons, and a constellation of other shows. When FORTUNE dropped by the Lampoon Castle, we learned two things: First, Conan's name was on every lip; second, entertainment scouts had preceded us. Senior Lew Morton says, ''Agents call here all the time, looking for talent.'' The Tonight show had interviewed three seniors. Mark O'Keefe (author of the accompanying Top Ten list) had heard also from Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz's all-powerful talent agency, which expressed interest in possibly representing him. ''It was totally cool,'' says O'Keefe, a philosophy major with no particular career plan. ''I was beginning to think I was completely shiftless. Maybe comedy writing isn't the most traditional kind of work -- but at least it's work.'' Lew Morton sees dollars dancing: ''I know somebody at Comedy Central who started at $1,000 a week.'' As commencement approached, no senior actually had a job yet. But all signs were promising.