Please rank following schools for a prospective I-Banker

Majayiduke09 · December 20, 2007, 10:29pm

Correctamundo

system · December 21, 2007, 1:29am

To the OP, this is what everyone who’s actually worked on Wall Street will rank undergrads - this is based on my experience with two SA classes, and having friends work at almost every major bank in NYC. There’s a ridiculous amount of misinformation on this thread, especially with people touting their own schools, so I’ll try to give you a good view of reality.

This is grouped into tiers which have fluctuating shifts within each one. Its also based on absolute numbers and not acceptance rate. This is based on summer '06 and '07 analyst classes in NYC at Bulge Bracket firms (MS GS JP LB UBS CS…BoA?), as well as some smaller firms (TW, Laz, Raymond James) with offices in the area.

I think this holds through for all divisions, though I’d expect a place like MIT to have more S&T or Research than IB and vice versa for Williams or Dartmouth:

Tier 1: Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Penn (mostly Wharton though)
Tier 2: Dartmouth, Duke, Columbia, Stern, Michigan, Berkeley
Tier 3: Yale, Brown, Cornell, Williams, MIT 
Other notables: Chicago, Northwestern, Amherst, UVA, UNC

Two things:

this reflects absolute numbers, so larger state schools like UCB and Mich. have lots of rep.
Places like Yale and Brown have less people interested in IB, which is why they have less placement on the street. Nothing against their curriculum/student body, which is just as smart as the top tiers on this list.
This is based on real info, not just people touting their own alma matters. You’ll see that this falls in line with what Slipper and Alexander posted, who are probably among the few on this thread you’ve actually worked on Wall Street and aren’t just pretending their school is higher than it is.

Northwestern and Chicago are great also for prospective fund managers; they dominate recruitment in Chicago offices and have plenty of opportunities to work in smaller prop trading firms. However, in absolute numbers they don’t have as many people in NYC BB SA classes. However, you should definitely consider them for a career in finance.

powergrid1990 · December 21, 2007, 2:40am

Nice job, thethoughtprocess. Very enlightening summary there.

I hope people here would not underrate Yale and Brown simply because they are not that well represented in IB as Harvard or Stanford grads are.

the_prestige · December 21, 2007, 3:25am

thoughtprocess,

pretty decent list, though frankly, i just don’t put Cal (or for that matter Michigan or even Stern) higher than Yale or Brown.

for example, pound for pound, Yale and Brown are just higher represented than Cal (and to a lesser extent Michigan) in major Wall Street firms. Nothing against Cal, but its just not their strength. Silicon Valley? Tech firms? Different story. But Wall Street? Bulge Bracket? If we played a hypothetical game, and you had two candidates with identical backgrounds, grades, etc. One was a Cal grad, one was a Yale grad. Both are shooting for an i-banking spot. You’re convinced that the Cal grad has a leg up over the Yale grad? Really? Odds are just higher that the person doing the interviewing has a shorter degree of separation to Yale than Cal… (and you can reverse that scenario if they were shooting for a spot in Silicon Valley).

I get what you are trying to say about the overall relative interest being lower at places like Yale / Brown (conversely, their numbers at Harvard and Yale Law School are amongst the highest in the nation)… but even still, I wouldn’t put Cal (or for that matter Michigan or Stern) higher than Yale and Brown… (in fact, I wouldn’t put Cal above Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, Amherst, Williams, Stern, etc)… and I’d also boost MIT to Tier 2 as well.

Tier 1: Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Penn
Tier 2: Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, MIT, Yale
Tier 3: Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern, Williams
Other notables: Amherst, Stern

powergrid1990 · December 21, 2007, 5:24am

the_prestige,

When you say Cal, do you separate it from Haas? Or you take them as one institution? Same with Wharton and Penn. I’m a bit confused with their usage. I keep reading Wharton & Penn and Haas a& Cal in the same list.

powergrid1990 · December 21, 2007, 5:37am

But does that happen in the real world? Because if recruiters would do an actual campus recruitment activity at Cal, how would they be able to compare those Cal candidates with those from Yale? And how about those IB with offices in the West Coast? How they treat the candidates? Do they also prefer those from Yale than those from Cal? That’s why I kind of agreed with the list of schools which thethoughtprocess has came up with considering recruiters evaluate the schools that they go to for their recruitment spree before they study the candidates. I mean, when the school is in their list, that school is hot for them.

ixjunitxi · December 21, 2007, 10:58am

Looking at the resumes books i have for 4 banks i just counted up the number of people (from each school) and placed them into tier below. This is for ibanking (M&A, Leverage finance, FSG, FIT, and industry) doesn’t include S&T or capital markets

Tier 1: Penn, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale
Tier 2: Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Duke
Tier 3: MIT, Brown, Stern, Michigan, UVA, Northwestern ,Williams
Other notables:Emory, Villanova (they had alo…more than people would think), Amherst, UNC, NYU CAS, UIUC

the_prestige · December 21, 2007, 2:17pm

This is a good point powergrid1990. (I was talking about Cal not Haas).

I actually think when people are making up lists, they should separate business undergraduate programs from general programs – because it is like mixing apples and oranges. People can and should compare and contrast amongst Haas vs. Wharton vs. Ross et. all. – but I don’t like mixing up the lists – it just gets messy and it muddies up the picture.

In making up general lists people should stick to pure undergraduate programs not specialized ones.

The other general point is simply this: that while certain undergraduate bodies are inclined to be more interested in a certain area over others (yes, this is a blanket generalization but it serves a purpose) – but let’s say that a higher relative proportion of the MIT undergraduate population is interested in continuing onto graduate studies in the hard sciences, math, computer science, etc. vs., say, an average undergraduate population at your average college… and on the other end of the liberal arts spectrum (humanities), say that the average Brown student is much more likely to be interested in continuing onto law school (so, its no surprise that Brown students generally rank in the top 5 - give or take at Yale Law and Harvard Law per capita, after Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford):
[Harvard</a> Law School and Yale Law School Per Capita](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2997104-post25.html]Harvard”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2997104-post25.html)

Now that being said, what if a qualified MIT or Brown student is interested in going into i-banking or consulting? I’d say pretty confidently that whether its Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, that student isn’t going to be facing longer odds vs., say, a similar student at Stern or Michigan or UVA of Cal – but that is what some of these lists that have been posted is implying – (HYPS is a completely different story, every grad is going to be facing longer odds vs. HYPS but thats true for 100% of other colleges out there so this is a moot point)

In fact, I’d argue that their odds a slightly better vs. say, a Stern grad, even though a higher proportion of Stern undergrads may be more interested in going into i-banking –> just because you WANT to be somewhere doesn’t mean that you are going to be or DESERVE to be there. See what I’m getting at? In other words, a top student at MIT or Brown isn’t going to be limited in their post-graduate choices (whether it be a PhD at Caltech or a Harvard Law degree or a job at Morgan Stanley).

hawkette · December 21, 2007, 2:31pm

thePrestige,
I agree with your post and created a controversial thread on this earlier this year with the main idea being that there is a general consensus on Wall Street about the intellectual caliber of students from various colleges. I created five tiers of colleges and listed 60-70 colleges that have some measurable number of students on Wall Street. I was pilloried by some for creating this thread and presenting the viewpoint that there is a place in NYC/Wall Street for students coming from lower profile colleges and that it is attainable. That is not to say that there aren’t more-recruited schools out there, but for example, students coming from a MIT or a Caltech would almost certainly be respected and perhaps even welcomed over and above candidates coming from a Core/Target college. Students from different schools will received/viewed differently, but there is not a view that if you went to Brown (or something less conventional like W&M or Rice or USC), then your chances of Wall Street placement are zero. Longer for sure, but informed Wall Streeters know that there are a lot of quality students out there and some of them do get hired.

the_prestige · December 21, 2007, 2:41pm

^^^ yes I remember that thread and agree with what you wrote.

the key words here are “the intellectual caliber of students”

Majayiduke09 · December 21, 2007, 3:03pm

ixjunitxi,

That is a much better list than before and is similar to what I remember from my resume books. Although, if I remember correctly, I was surprised not to discover that many Yalies in IBD at Lehman.

system · December 21, 2007, 6:32pm

The Prestige and Ixj are both correct with their rankings. All three of ours are generally similar, and I feel the only differences are due to subjective perceptions (Though Ixj has empirical info based on the resume books).

Also, a note about Cal: their engineering school has as much/more placement as there business college, or at least I’ve met more from engineering than business.

Also, regarding separating colleges within a University, Penn is the only one in which a certain college has a clear leg up on another one (Wharton versus College), but I’d still say Penn College is a great place to attend regardless of Wharton for finance placement. Not as good as top tier recruitment colleges, but not a shoddy choice either.

collegebound9696 · December 21, 2007, 8:56pm

[JPMorgan</a> - Campus Schedule](<a href=“Careers Home | JPMorgan Chase & Co.”>Careers Home | JPMorgan Chase & Co.)

that should give you an idea

Click on the school to see what the recruitment is like. For every school on there which is A LOT of schools (even some no name schools), JPM collects resumes (i.e. resume drops). For a very few # of schools, they do ON-CAMPUS interviews. You will notice that some very good schools are not on that exclusive list. Those include the following: Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, Notre Dame, and Brown University.

powergrid1990 · December 21, 2007, 9:35pm

Wow, very interesting posts from the guys here.

thethoughtprocess,
can you comment on the ff: in relation to IB recruitment? Like if there’s a difference between colleges within the school just like there is at Penn and Wharton.

Michigan vs Ross
UVa vs McIntire
NYU vs Stern
UCLA vs it’s undergrad business school. (is there one at UCLA?)
MIT vs Sloan
Georgetown vs it’s undergrad business school

So, is it ideal/logical to count them as one?

Then in this case, it’s better to separate Wharton and Penn?

the_prestige · December 21, 2007, 10:00pm

I’m not sure why Brown is constantly being singled out (perhaps because of its strength in humanities / liberal arts / pre-law school strength???), but, for the record, the two premier investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both present and interview at Brown:

Goldman:
[Goldman</a> Sachs Campus Events](<a href=“https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?SID=U0lEPWIzZHVaWEk5TlRBd016UXdNaVp2ZDI1bGNuUjVjR1U5Wm1GcGNpWndiM04wYVc1blgyTnZaR1U5TVRJbWRYSnNQUzl6WldGeVkyaGZaVzVuYVc1bEwycHZZbk11WTJkcCZvd25lcj01MDAzNDAyJm93bmVydHlwZT1mYWlyJnBvc3RpbmdfY29kZT0xMiY]Goldman”>https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?SID=U0lEPWIzZHVaWEk5TlRBd016UXdNaVp2ZDI1bGNuUjVjR1U5Wm1GcGNpWndiM04wYVc1blgyTnZaR1U5TVRJbWRYSnNQUzl6WldGeVkyaGZaVzVuYVc1bEwycHZZbk11WTJkcCZvd25lcj01MDAzNDAyJm93bmVydHlwZT1mYWlyJnBvc3RpbmdfY29kZT0xMiY)
Morgan:
[Morgan</a> Stanley Recruiting - Events](<a href=“Careers in Finance and Investment Banking | Morgan Stanley”>Careers in Finance and Investment Banking | Morgan Stanley)

as does:
Lehman:
[Lehman</a> Brothers - Careers - Campus Calendar](<a href=“http://www.lehman.com/careers/calendar/Brown_University.html]Lehman”>http://www.lehman.com/careers/calendar/Brown_University.html)
Citi:

[Event</a> Calendar > North America](<a href=“http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/graduaterecruitment/site/portal/calendar_na.htm]Event”>Citi | Global Investment Bank and Financial Services)

as does Merrill, etc., etc., etc., – people tend to underrate Brown on CC.

collegebound9696 · December 21, 2007, 11:23pm

FYI, Lehman just recently started recruiting at Brown, which suggests that Brown is not a major ibanking place since JP doesn’t recruit from it still despite recruiting from schools that are 1000 miles+ from NY.

[Lehman</a> Brothers - Careers](<a href=“http://www.lehman.com/careers/applytolehman/school_contacts.htm]Lehman”>http://www.lehman.com/careers/applytolehman/school_contacts.htm)
It used to say, Brown (new recruit school)!

Majayiduke09 · December 21, 2007, 11:24pm

powergrid,

UCLA does not have an undergrad business program; there is Business Economics, which I believe is the closest, but I know for certain there is no undergrad program. Its business school, Anderson School of Management, is strictly a graduate program.

Additionally, in regards to Georgetown, I do not think its undergraduate business program, McDonough, has a HUGE advantage over other schools. I recall seeing a variety of students from the College, McDonough, and the School of Foreign Service, unlike with Penn and Michigan where the vast majority originated from the business schools – this is at Lehman Brothers at least; i’ll check the other resume books when I get back.

the prestige,

I think there is in fact a belief that Brown students do not have an interest in pursuing careers on Wall Street. I know from past experiences that people have this image of Brown students as more of the Peace Corps type than the Gordon Gekko wannabe

the_prestige · December 21, 2007, 11:36pm

The majority of Wall Street’s bulge bracket firms recruit at Brown (Goldman, Morgan, Merrill, Lehman, Citigroup, etc)… if anything, JPM wasn’t even in the business of investment banking until very recently (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) – even though you make it sound as if JPM is the epicenter of i-banking. If you know your history, you know that the Glass-Steagall Act effectively gave birth to the i-banking industry in the 30’s and is what split JPM into JP (traditional banking) and Morgan Stanley (i-banking)… (in other words only recent legislation has allowed traditional money center banks to enter back into investment banking)… Traditionally, the “bulge bracket” Wall Street firms (the firms which underwrote and advised on the “bulge” of the business) are as follows:

<ul>
<li>Goldman Sachs</li>
<li>Morgan Stanley</li>
<li>Merrill Lynch</li>
<li>Lehman Brothers</li>
<li>Credit Suisse (formerly First Boston)</li>
<li>Citigroup (formerly Salomon Brothers)</li>
</ul>

… but I digress.

I’m not sure what you’ve got against Brown, but the facts are plain to see - it does just fine in investment banking.

PimpDaddy1 · December 22, 2007, 12:41am

“Tier 1: Penn, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale
Tier 2: Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Duke
Tier 3: MIT, Brown, Stern, Michigan, UVA, Northwestern ,Williams
Other notables:Emory, Villanova (they had alo…more than people would think), Amherst, UNC, NYU CAS, UIUC”

Well that sounds about right. Also JPMorgan is a damn fine investment bank but if you’re going to look at where they recruited last year, it won’t be very indicative. JPM and Bear really really toned down recruiting this year and just because they didn’t recruit at a school doesn’t mean anything (and I can say for a fact that both didn’t even recruit at some of those Tier 1 schools this year).

the_prestige · December 22, 2007, 1:06am

Let’s be perfectly clear. Noone is saying that JPM isn’t an excellent investment bank – it most certainly is. As a firm, however, its been in the business of investment banking less than a decade (again, as a result of the relaxing of legacy legislation stemming from the market crash of '29 – including Glass Steagall – from the 30s).

But for those who have been followers of finance and investment banking, JPM has never been a traditional investment banking power. Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Lehman, First Boston (now CS) and Salomon (now Citi). Those six “Bulge Bracket” firms have basically been on top of the US underwriting league tables (for both debt and equity) – exchanging positions amongst themselves over the decades – but pretty much those six firms throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Run the numbers it’ll be pretty much those six firms in any given decade over the last 50 years. As for M&A, again, most of those six firms dominated the landscape historically and continue to dominate the landscape.

Now things have changed recently with the easing of banking restrictions –> allowing Citi to purchase Solly, JPM to enter i-banking, the increasing prominence of other money center banks, including European firms (such as Deustche and UBS) and Asian firms (such as HSBC), so the investment banking landscape has blurred traditional lines which were set in stone in the past. For example, many of these firms have leveraged their considerable balance sheets (e.g. Citi and JPM) to “win” business by tying financing (either through traditional loans or other forms of lending to clients) –> effectively “buying” marketshare (in securing both advisory and capital market mandates).

Please rank following schools for a prospective I-Banker

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