<p>Hyeonjlee - I think it’s accurate to say that, in terms of sheer numbers, Chicago is not as well represented as its peers on Wall Street. From what I know, this has nothing to do with a lack of perceived strength at chicago, and much more to do with wall street culture and how it runs at odds with what Chicago aspires to be.</p>
<p>Put another way, I’d imagine the top students at a Dartmouth or Princeton or whatever aspire to join a bulge-bracket firm. As an Princeton Anthropology major recently told me when I asked what he wanted to do after college, “If you f<em>&$#</em>& breathe the air at Princeton, you go into finance.” At Chicago, I just don’t think that’s the case. The very best students in economics probably want to go on and do grad work in economics. </p>
<p>Also, Chicago’s more bookish culture leads to a lack of marketability on the “social” side of finance. My U of C friends who went on to great financial firms quickly grew tired of the “work hard/play hard” lifestyle. In many ways, the fratty, loosely team-based culture of lower-rung finance positions is a continuation of what Dartmouth and Princeton folks see at the college level. Like begets like, and the sheer numbers are higher from those other schools.</p>
<p>Chicago just doesn’t have that culture, and it does produce more scholarly, intellectual types. Having met and instructed scores of future bankers during my time at Penn, I can tell you that I would not think of young finance associates as “scholarly and intellectual.” Those are certainly not the first two adjectives I would use to describe these sorts of people. </p>
<p>With all that in mind, it just leads to less Chicago people on the Street. If Chicago started recruiting more brazenly pre-professional types, focused more creating connections to wall street, and had more alum/college mixers, etc. I’m sure this would change. That’s just not Chicago’s focus, however.</p>
<p>Edit: Put another way, my friends that did the best in the finance route were those that had the “finance” mentality in their heads early on. These were the guys who knew how the finance culture worked, knew how to play the game, so to speak, and were willing and eager. They all went on to great post-grad opportunities (work at Blackstone or Goldman Sachs, business school at HBS or Wharton), but what really set them apart was their mentality. At least when I was at chicago, the school didn’t attract a ton of the “true future business” types. There were definitely some, but they were outliers. This contrasts, say, the atmosphere around a Princeton or Wharton, where sometimes when I walk around, I feel like I’m in the middle of a Brooks Brothers ad.</p>