(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's 5:30 A.M. at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. MBA students are everywhere, sipping coffee, wiping the sleep from their eyes, and climbing on a bus for the 90-mile ride to Manhattan. They're embarking on what has become a virtual rite of passage for any B-schooler with an inkling of entrepreneurial ambition: the trek.

Started casually by Harvard and a few Midwestern schools in the mid-1990s, treks allow elite students to court and be courted by boutique businesses that don't make the big-campus recruiting swing. Many--but not all--are high-tech or Internet companies that just last year were attracting the best, the brightest, and the bravest MBAs.

But the class of 2001 is surveying a radically different landscape. Since January 2000, 135 dot-coms have shut their doors, and, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas, some 31,000 Internet jobs have disappeared. "Last year the dot-coms couldn't go wrong," says Robert Bonner, head of career development at Wharton. "Now students have to think like venture capitalists. They're looking only at companies with good business models and at least a second round of funding."

Students comfortable playing VC with their careers use treks to do their due diligence. They meet the management, check the business model, and suss out if the company's a survivor. "This is an amazing way to find out about these places on their home turf," says Howard Behr, a second-year Wharton student and one of the 177 on this New York trek.

So, on a balmy fall Friday, the future MBAs cruise up the New Jersey Turnpike for a day of assessment. Last year trekkers cheered through a sunrise video of Wall Street. Now the screen is blank (a sign that the days of "Greed is good" are really gone?) and the bus is quiet, save for the occasional rustle of a prospectus or scratch on a Palm. A marathon of sessions awaits the students: Some 40 firms have prepared presentations to lure them into their ranks.

Behr decides to start with Datamonitor, an Internet analysis firm. Eight students sit in a windowless room with three Datamonitor executives. One, Hugh Jones, wields a computer that projects charts on a blank white wall. "You can see by our lavish offices that we spend money on talent, not perks," he jokes. One woman asks how Datamonitor distinguishes itself from larger competitors like Jupiter Communications. "Well, with Jupiter you have to be careful, because their options are under water. And their average age is higher, so they use MBAs to do analysis," says Jones. "Here you will be senior staff from day one, and since we are pre-IPO..." The students nod politely. The idea of getting in on an IPO still appeals, but thoughts are no longer of nine-figure payouts. "We are realistic," says Behr. "There's still opportunity out there, but it's silly to think of retiring in 18 months."

He hops a cab and rushes across town to the even sparer offices of Room 33, which calls itself a "mobile software and portal technology company." "These telecom companies, either they're going to be big or they are not going to be around in six months," Behr says in the elevator on the way up. "You can tell a bit by the real estate." By that measure, Room 33 may well be in the ether soon: The logo is Scotch-taped to the door, and the small presentation room overlooks a rooftop water tower. But even with these ominous signs, a dozen Wharton students listen intently as Todd Silverstein, Room 33's director of business development, shares his thoughts on the mobile Internet and WAP technology. His talk is heavy on buzzwords: "functionality," "robust," and, especially, "cool."

A jackhammer pounds as Behr arrives at his next stop, Boutique Y3K. The 25-employee fashion-consulting firm has been in its digs only six weeks: There's no coat rack, and the partially built server room has no servers yet. But the Boutique Y3K crew is enthusiastic. "We get to create visions," says Suzette Hunte Sheffield, a visibly pregnant Columbia Business School grad in charge of new business. The 31-year-old CEO and founder, Cecilia Pagkalinawan, in a striped sweater and leather pants, tells the trekkers the company is "expanding into other protocols organically." Then she asks if the students are afraid of dot-comming. A few shake their heads. "Good, you are in it to win it," she says.

The trekkers cap their day with a reception at Goldman Sachs. As if to remind them of what they'll miss by joining a startup, the investment bank offers vintage wine, caldrons of shrimp, and tuna tartare on rice crackers. But high-end canapes aren't enough to sell these students on the Establishment. Behr, for one, is planning to take a few more treks before making his next career move.

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