1) GS has become a darling because of its recent huge profitability more than ever before. The "most admired" companies attain bellwether status in the market, i.e. GS, MSFT, IBM, T, GM, X.
(2) It's also reflective of how the USA prides itself more on it's financial engineering, manipulation and trading ability than scientific and technical engineering prowess.
(3) In a liquidity-driven environment, money flow is important. GS would be extremely sensitive to that.