<p>This thread has sort of been hijacked and gone a little off kilter, but here’s my 2cents</p>
<p>I work for a hedge fund, having been educated at Yale (u/g) and Wharton (MBA). Out of college I worked for a major, what we used to call, bulge bracket investment bank. I actually now do recruiting for my firm, though, frankly we did not do much hiring this year (picked up one kid from Harvard and one from Columbia).</p>
<p>When you talk about the large ibanking firms (firms that are gonna hire several dozen or more college grads each year), then going to any of the ivies, Stanford, UChicago, MIT, and Duke will stand you in good stead. All the ibanks will be at virtually all of these schools will be there to recruit. It will be up to you, your grades, your achievements, and most of all, your personality to get you a job. In many cases, Harvard and Wharton grads may get a little more attention, or more recruiting schedules, as they are seen as having the largest bodies of ibanking-ready recruits, but students there will also find more competition from their peers.
UChicago is very respected on Wall Street and you’ll find Uof C grads all over the place. UofC does have the rap of producing grads that are less socially smooth than their peers at Harvard or Princeton, and social skills count a lot in many sectors of banking. (You gotta be able to charm the clients in the long run.) You see probably less of them than you do some of the ivies. It is absolutely true that Dartmouth punches way above its weight in Street recruiting; Dartmouth folks take really good care of each other and really help each other network. Much more so than any other school. You also see a lot of Williams folks on the street for much the same reason. (Stand outside any investment bank at lunch – you’ll see tons of young, handsome, kind of jocky males and perky, pretty blond females; places like Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams produce them in abundance. No, Virginia, the world is not fair.)</p>
<p>When you get to smaller firms, hedge funds, PE firms, etc., hiring needs are much smaller and firms are likely to factor in convenience. A lot of smaller firms in NYC, for instance, might go to Wharton and Harvard, maybe Princeton or Yale, but almost always to Columbia and NYU-Stern. Columbia gets visited by a lot of smaller firms for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>For the same reason, if you are open to working in Chicago or Minneapolis after graduation, you can probable do no better than the U of C. Starting in Chicago and moving later in your Career to NYC or LOndon or Asia is not a bad plan at all.</p>
<p>But the original poster was asking about Oxford vs. Chicago. I can honestly say that at least in finance, the best bankers I have worked with over the years are not Harvard and Wharton trained, but Oxbridge trained. There is something about Brits and their love of globetrotting and their negotiating panache that makes them particularly good bankers in my opinion, the present financial crisis notwithstanding. The British style of education makes them particularly quick on their feet in meetings with clients, at least I have found it so.</p>