hawkette

Alexandre,
Many thanks for all of the data gathering. I know how much time and effort such activities take.

To look at it better just for undergrads,:

Rank , U Grad , College
1 , 62 graduates , Harvard
2 , 61 graduates , U Penn
3 , 35 graduates , Princeton
4 , 27 graduates , Dartmouth
5 , 24 graduates , Duke
6 , 23 graduates , Cornell
7 , 22 graduates , Yale
8 , 21 graduates , Georgetown
9 , 20 graduates , UC Berkeley
10 , 17 graduates , Stanford
11 , 17 graduates , U Michigan
12 , 16 graduates , Brown
13 , 15 graduates , Columbia
14 , 12 graduates , U Virginia
15 , 11 graduates , NYU
16 , 10 graduates , Boston College
17 , 9 graduates , U Texas
18 , 7 graduates , Northwestern
19 , 7 graduates , U North Carolina
20 , 6 graduates , Emory
21 , 6 graduates , U Chicago
22 , 6 graduates , Notre Dame
23 , 6 graduates , Williams
24 , 5 graduates , Middlebury
25 , 5 graduates , Syracuse
26 , 5 graduates , UCLA
27 , 5 graduates , Vanderbilt
28 , 5 graduates , W&L

465 graduates

My observations would be:

1. The numbers are probably what most would expect given the combination of:
a. the interest level/orientation of students at different schools even interested in pursuing a job in private equity; and
b. the geographic location of the schools and the firms you surveyed

2. There are several USNWR top-ranked national universities that did not make your list, eg, Caltech, MIT, Wash U, Johns Hopkins, Rice. Likewise with several highly rated LACs like Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley, etc. I agree that it is probably not a great thought to read too much into these numbers. But I do find impressive the absolute numbers for Harvard and U Penn (probably all Wharton) to be strong evidence of the placement power of these colleges with desirable employers like the ones you sampled.

3. The surprises to me were
a. Georgetown (I knew it would be good, but I am surprised that it was this good-they are probably the biggest beneficiary of the sample bias as there are probably a lot of them at Carlyle. Right?)
b. Boston College (I guess this is again a geographic beneficiary, ie, being in Boston and thus close to Bain and PEP. Right? But still, I doubt that many think quickly of BC as being an important supplier of graduates to the PE industry)
c. Syracuse-a surprise to me no matter how you slice it
d. W&L-impressive because of its small size and comparatively remote location

I also did an undergraduate population weighted comparison of the same 28 schools. In this method, Ivy colleges held the first five spots and 7 of the first 11. I think this demonstrates accurately the inclination of their students to pursue these jobs and these employers’ continuing strong interest in recruiting from these campuses:

Rank , , College
1 , 0.0092 , Harvard
2 , 0.0074 , Princeton
3 , 0.0066 , Dartmouth
4 , 0.0063 , U Penn
5 , 0.0041 , Yale
6 , 0.0038 , Duke
7 , 0.0031 , Georgetown
8 , 0.003 , Williams
9 , 0.0029 , Columbia
10 , 0.0029 , W&L
11 , 0.0027 , Brown
12 , 0.0026 , Stanford
13 , 0.0021 , Middlebury
14 , 0.0017 , Cornell
15 , 0.0012 , U Chicago
16 , 0.0011 , Boston College
17 , 0.0009 , Northwestern
18 , 0.0009 , Emory
19 , 0.0008 , UC Berkeley
20 , 0.0008 , U Virginia
21 , 0.0008 , Vanderbilt
22 , 0.0007 , U Michigan
23 , 0.0007 , Notre Dame
24 , 0.0005 , NYU
25 , 0.0004 , U North Carolina
26 , 0.0004 , Syracuse
27 , 0.0002 , U Texas
28 , 0.0002 , UCLA