hawkette

Alexandre,
A friend just pm’ed me ten more examples of top Wall Street figures coming from non-traditional sources. In your world, these folks would not even get a look.

Richard Fuld, fmr CEO of Lehman Brothers went to U Colorado

William Schreyer, fmr CEO of Merrill Lynch, went to Penn State

David Swensen, head of Yale Investment Mgmt, went to U Wisconsin (River Falls)

All three founders of KKR came from non-traditional sources
Henry Kravis (Trinity)
Jerome Kohlberg (Swarthmore)
George Roberts (Claremont McKenna)

Jim Davidson, co-founder of Silver Lake Partners, went to the University of Nebraska

Myron Scholes, of Black-Scholes fame, went to McMaster Univ in Canada

Marty Zweig, prolific money manager, went to U Miami

Dick Grasso, former head of the New York Stock Exchange, went to Pace

These are people at the top of their respective areas and undoubtedly there are thousands of others that came from less traditional colleges that are enjoying successful careers on Wall Street. I concur with you and others that well known schools with lots of embedded employees will help one get an interview, but ultimately the Street is hiring the individual, not the college, and they want the best people out there.

dstark,
In my opening post, I wrote:
“The following is my opinion of how Wall Street views these undergraduate institutions as determined by the intellectual quality of the students. I'm sure others will have different views.”

You clearly have a different opinion. I welcome other ideas. Perhaps we can all learn from your 25 years of experience. Do you think the list of colleges from which one can get to the Street is only 20-25 schools? Do you have your own thoughts on which schools a student must consider if they want to have a prayer of getting to Wall Street (feeder schools or otherwise)? Would you be willing to share those thoughts or even provide a counter list or grouping?

Here again is my list. I modified the names of the groups as I think this may have particularly rankled you. Please remember that I did NOT construct this as a list or ranking of feeder schools to Wall Street.

“The First Group
Amherst, Cal Tech, U Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Williams, Yale

The Second Group
Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Middlebury, Northwestern, Penn, Rice, WashU, Wellesley

The Third Group
Bowdoin, Cornell, Davidson, Emory, Georgetown, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Tufts, Vanderbilt

The Fourth Group
Boston College, Brandeis, BYU, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Colgate, UCLA, Lehigh, NYU, U Michigan, U North Carolina, U Rochester, USC, U Texas, Vassar, U Virginia, W&L, Wesleyan, Wake Forest, William & Mary

The Fifth Group
Bates, Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, Colby, U Florida, Fordham, George Washington, Georgia Tech, U Georgia, Hamilton, Indiana U, Lafayette, Mount Holyoke, Penn State, U Richmond, Smith, Syracuse, Trinity, Tulane, U Wisconsin, Yeshiva

… This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but merely to inform and serve as a starting point.”