<p>Somehow I ended up with a half-post above…</p>
<p>I have known several people who went into consulting / banking from after Columbia, and none had internships during the school year. The same goes for other big schools in many major cities. Summers are more than sufficient to shine, and I would personally not risk fouling up my GPA when I could get a superior, full time internship come June. Not to mention landing a part time finance gig is quite difficult, as most companies of repute do not want to be bothered with 15-20 hours a week. Especially problematic is that human resource divisions in a desire to look more objective have come down hard on individually negotiated hiring outside of standard recruitment pathways, which traditionally has been a big source of term time employment. </p>
<p>There is certainly a little bit stronger regional pull to NYC for Columbia insofar as you will get more alumni support in the interview process, and more students will want to stay in Manhattan due to an inherent selection bias. But no more so than Northwestern / UChicago graduates have stronger than average ties to Chicago or Stanford / Berkeley alumni to Silicon Valley. It total, you are going to see more Columbia alumni on Wall Street, but in finance in aggregate, no more so on a numbers adjusted basis than its peer schools. The only pseudo elite school at UG level you can make a serious case for based on internship opportunities is Georgetown, since two days a week over the majority of your degree in a congressional office definitely positions you well to garner a full time job on the hill after graduation.</p>