the_prestige

yet another indicator that WashU is overrated

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

Sam Lee

alexandre,

can you list the locations of their biggest offices?

Alexandre

Hawkette, I actually forgot MIT. MIT had 8 undergraduates and 17 graduates. 25 in total.

Caltech, Johns Hopkins and Rice all had fewer than 5 undergrads.

Alexandre

Sam, here's an answer to your question.

Blackstone is headquartered in NYC. In the US, they have large offices in Atlanta and Boston. They also have large international offices in Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, Paris and Tokyo.

Carlyle is headquarted in DC. Of all the PE, it is the one that relies most heavily on its political ties. That may explain why Georgetown does so well. Carlyle also has major offices in Charlotte, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. In Europe, they have major offices in Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, Milan, Munich, and Paris.

Bain Capital is obviously headquartered in Boston. Most of their North American operations are out of Boston. Bain also has major branches in London and Hong Kong.

Silverlake is headquartered in Silicon Valley (Menlo Park). They also have major offices in London, New York and San Francisco.

Warburg Pincus is headquartered in NYC. They also have major offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai and Tokyo.

Providence Equity Partners is, as the name would suggest, headquartered in Providence, RI. They also have major offices in NYC, London, Hong Kong and New Delhi.

Sam Lee

Are there any top PE firm in Chicago?

Alexandre

Nope! There are no major Midwestern PE firms. Maybe that's why Chicago, Michigan and Northwestern don't do as well.

UCBChemEGrad

^ No, because PE firms know they'd get too many NU grads...



I kid, I kid...

xiggi

Isn't it interesting to compare the results of the very small sample of the PE firms to the reputations of the so-called graduate schools "powerhouses."

Jumping from the first and second ranked school (in Alexandre latest list) to a ten spots lower we can find

#9 University of California-Berkeley = Graduate: 6
#10 Stanford University = Graduate: 48
#10 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor = Graduate: 14
#13 Columbia University = Graduate: 33

Sam Lee

^But I suspect "Graduate" are mostly MBAs?

Sam Lee

UCBChemEGrad,

true...maybe they are allergic to cats!

dstark

Alexandre, for undergrads, what are the hiring practices at your PE firm?Just yours. Does your firm go to career fairs at various schools? Which schools does your firm recruit? Do you have gpa minimums? Are majors important? Which ones?

barrons

While not as hot right now as PE, running mutual fund investments is a much broader employment category employing far more people than PE etc. And most will still be around in 20 years.

According to Morningstar data, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's graduate program ranked #6 in placement of investment professionals at Morningstar rated funds. This is evidence of the school's long and rich tradition of training investment managers.
Graduate Degrees of Investment Professionals at Morningstar Ranked Funds
Rank Count Graduate Studies Index
1 1 University of Pennsylvania - Wharton School 100
2 2 Harvard Business School 46
3 3 New York University - Stern School of Business 45
4 4 University of Chicago Graduate School of Business 40
5 5 Columbia Business School 35
6 6 University of Wisconsin - Madison 31
7 7 University of California at Los Angeles - Anderson School of Business 20
7 8 Stanford Graduate School of Business 20
9 9 Northwestern University - Kellogg Graduate School of Business 18
10 10 University of Virginia - Darden School of Management 17
11 11 University of Southern California 15
12 12 University of Michigan School of Business 12
12 13 Cornell University - Johnson Graduate School of Management 12
12 14 Indiana University 12
15 15 Dartmouth College - Amos Tuck School of Business 11
15 16 MIT Sloan School of Management 11
15 17 Oxford University 11
18 18 University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business 9
18 19 Carnegie Mellon University 9
18 20 Duke University - Fuqua School 9
18 21 Cambridge University 9
18 22 University of Texas at Austin 9
23 23 University of Minnesota 8
24 24 University of Connecticut 7
24 25 Case Western Reserve University 7
Example: For every 100 investment managers that earned their graduate degrees from Wharton, 31 earned their degrees from UW-Madison.

the_prestige

There are far more people flipping burgers at a fast food joint than there are Michelin star chefs too...

Sam Lee

lol..that's not nice!