And it bares pointing out the Williams has some of the very best FA in the country.
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Taking issue with the methodology is one thing. Coming up with your own ranking based on personal feelings is another. The methodology used by peak frame works is solid and per capita placements help smaller schools not bigger ones. Williams and Amherst were originally 47 and 52 respectively before adjusting for undergrad size meaning the per capita placement helps their ranking. At the end of the day the finance landscape is changing and LACs especially WASP arent what they used to be.
Why do you say this? Do you have data that support your statement?
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I would caution that the article you are arguing over doesn’t consider capital or financial markets, excludes major US players like Jefferies, Piper Sandler, all global banks, Canadian banks, commodity focused boutiques, some major US CIBs and fails to appropriately track former Credit Suisse bankers who have been hired in mass by banks such as TD and Santander.
In other words it’s a joke in terms of real insight.
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That’s exactly what that author did. No actual data drove that formula, he just felt like that formula got things the way he felt like they should be.
In any event, all that is irrelevant to the questions we were addressing here. The questions here were about percentages of students in different majors with different career interests.
Yes, and for the record, I was just using it as a rough but available proxy for what percentage of students at these colleges might be interested in highly selective business and finance placements directly out of college. Doing a serious placement-value-added study would be enormously complex, and I suspect with appropriate controls would show a much flatter landscape than many seem to believe.
But I do think it is true that, say, more people who go to CMC want this sort of career than people who go to Pomona, and similarly more people who go to Williams want this sort of career than people who go to Swarthmore. And that is important when evaluating things like PhD feeder rates (which itself would require the same very complex analysis to turn into a placement-value-added study).
Meaning at least as I see it, to the extent a higher percentage of Econ graduates from Swarthmore/Pomona go on to Econ PhDs than Williams/CMC, it is not necessarily because the former have “better” Econ departments. They all have excellent departments, and in fact each of these departments are doing a demonstrably good job supporting the ambitions of the students that they get. Which doesn’t mean they will get you where you want on their own, you still have to do that yourself.
Which finally brings me back to the main point–in my view there is no one right or wrong about the role an Econ department should be playing at a SLAC. Instead, I think it is a good thing different SLACs offer somewhat different departments for somewhat different students. To me that is the whole point of SLACs, to offer much more tailored options than even medium-sized private universities, let alone large publics.
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Its may not be comprehensive but a smart person like you should understand samples. One doesn’t need to do a data analysis on every bank to get an accurate picture of the recruitment landscape. Also for WAS schools, their network is limited to the New England. So to suggest they may have better placement outside America or even outside the NE is presumptuous. Theres no indication the rank would change significantly for them if more banks and financial institutions were included. In fact schools like Emory or Georgetown in large cities would have an even greater advantage as there are more Middle Market banks in Atlanta and DC, which are currently being counted in peakframeworks.
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Ranks such as peakframeworks and personal experience. Ypull see and Emory, Vandy, even BC grad before you see a Williams grad on Wallstreet nowadays. I dont think that was the case 20 years ago. Things change, even outsode of finance the drop in Amherst’s yeild rate is indicative of something amiss.
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Thanks and I do understand samples although I suspect you were being patronizing.
The article sighted does not provide a representative sample which is required for the results to be meaningful.
For example, it doesn’t consider that a significant portion of the CEOs and senior management at the very companies they are using as samples, have CEOs that entered their careers through sales and trading opportunities that aren’t considered by the authors in defining “targets” or “feeders”.
I can give numerous other examples of how their sample methods are distorting but I suspect it would fall on deaf ears.
Per you edit I am not going to debate you but by example.
Global banks employee tens of thousands of bankers in the US so you seem to have misunderstood my reference to their significance.
Perhaps you should get vetted and share your experience as an SME if that is the case. If memory serves you didn’t work for an investment bank (BNY Mellon) and you were on the buy side. Have things changed as it seems like you are pretty far removed from the subject you are opining upon?
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By the way, since I cannot help wanting to discuss highly imperfect data that I nonetheless find interesting despite the obvious risks of doing that on the Internet . . . here is a per capita study of T14 law school placement (the second list):
Obviously now we are talking about more than Econ graduates, but for sure this is one popular destination for Econ majors.
A few observations.
First, once again various highly selective SLACs are mixed into these rankings. Amherst is actually #2, Williams #7, Swarthmore #11, Haverford #12, Pomona #14, Sr. John’s #15, CMC #17, Wesleyan #18, Wellesley #19, Carleton #24, Vassar #26, Colgate #28, Washington and Lee #30, and I am sure there would be many more if we continued past 30.
Second, again this is not at all a carefully-controlled, reliable value-added study. I think it just supports the proposition these are among the colleges that do a good job supporting people with law school ambitions.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly–these numbers are large in comparison to the other ones we have been looking at. Like, in a 5 year window, Williams had 20 Econ Phds in the data set used, so an average of 5 per year. In a 15 year window, in an admittedly very incomplete IB study, it had 27 IB hires in the data set, so under 2 per year. The law school feeder study doesn’t have a clear date range, but Williams had 611 T14 placements in that data set. Whatever date range that might be, it is going to work out to a far higher annual number.
Again, that’s not just Econ majors, but still, that’s reflecting another reality, that many people from any of these colleges are not going to go into PhD programs, and not to the most selective few business and financial firms, but “normal” next steps like top law schools, still very desirable business jobs, and so on.
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Are you including New York City and Philadelphia in “New England”? Williams, for example, actually reported more students from New York (457) than Massachusetts (365). I didn’t easily find a per state list for Swarthmore, but it reported 33% from the Middle Atlantic to 7% for New England (I note that still leaves another 60%–and for that matter, California was #3 for Williams at 272).
Yes, I am often disappointed that a lot of the discussion of business and finance careers in college admissions circles seems to me overly focused on just one sort of path, direct placement after college in certainly highly selective positions at certain firms. Of course the world of business and finance is much, much bigger than that. And for many, college is very much not the last educational step anyway, and people strategically use MBAs, CFAs, CFPs, and so on to advance or change tracks. For that matter, even JDs often end up more business degrees than law degrees for some people.
All this may sound a little tangential, but I do think it is important context for understanding the role of Econ majors at SLACs and other prominent universities without undergrad business programs. The fact these people are not getting specialized business degrees or certificates in undergrad does not mean they never will get such degrees or certificates. But they will get them if and when that will help them advance their specific career ambitions, and there is a lot to be said for actually working for a while in business before deciding on exactly what makes sense for you.
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True, but applications for MBAs are down substantially, as employers and applicants question the ROI of that degree much more now. Although useful for a career pivot, it is no longer seen as an essential credential for career progress and comes at enormous cost, both in tuition and lost wages. So the fact that many followed that path 30 or 40 years ago may no longer be relevant.
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I think industry specific - but of course, now there are more “targeted” short term programs and alternative MBAs or alternative to MBAs, etc.
But in certain areas - like my industry - definitely valued still.
But graduate business education really has changed in many ways.
Selection Bias works in both directions. The dominant one is the incredible amount of self-selection that leads certain h/s seniors (those who want those sorts of IB/Consulting jobs) to select Williams as their destination college.
IOW, these matriculants are not exactly arriving as blank slates and some of the replies seem to support this. I think this thread began with the fear that all of this was somehow affecting the overall undergraduate experience at one of the nation’s stronger SLACs, and I have to confess, I’m kind of an agnostic on the subject at this point.
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I just find it funny, peakframeworks may not be perfect but no ranking is. If the ranking up held preconceived biases, then most of you wouldn’t be bothered maybe even celebratory for validating your assumptions. But now since that isnt the case we have this thread. The commenter comparing Emory to Binghamton is MIA however.
I think all @NiceUnparticularMan did was point to one data point tucked inside the ranking. It was a valid data point.
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Well right, but that is not because more people/employers are finding they needed an undergrad business degree instead. It is because more are finding they do not need such schooling at all. Instead, they are learning what they need through experience on the job, or sometimes through certificates and such.
And while rising costs may be emphasizing this point to more people, it is definitely not new. I’d actually say the large majority of business executives I know have always been deeply skeptical about the idea of learning about business in a classroom environment.
And for good or ill, this is basically what I always do. I am never particularly interested in the overall rankings, because almost inevitably that is going to be a function of how things are weighted and subject to all sorts of valid objections about the lack of proper controls. However, many rankings come along with interesting data sets and measures, and those I can find interesting.
And then the “right” answer in terms of college preference becomes very personal. What do you care about? How would you see various tradeoffs? This information can maybe help you better understand the tradeoffs you are facing and therefore the choices you would be making, but I have yet to see a source that can actually tell all people the choices that they SHOULD make.
And technology has made the “mini-MBA” courses that many companies offer MUCH better and MUCH cheaper.
Some of the online modules are fantastic, taught by some of the “master teachers” at leading universities. It doesn’t take two years to teach a history major how to write a business plan, and it doesn’t take two years to teach a geology major how to do a discounted cash flow analysis.
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Yeah, I have heard some people suggest this is just becoming an efficient outsourcing of technical training that many businesses used to have to do in-house in some way. And that is true across many fields, that at least for some purposes technology has led to large efficiencies of scale.
Anyway, all very interesting, and I definitely did NOT mean to suggest everyone should eventually get an MBA! My point was intended to be the exact opposite, that lots of people have success with getting started in business and then just getting whatever additional education and training they need as they need it to advance or modify their careers.
These programs aren’t outsourced. They are created by the company’s internal Learning and Development team (with input from division leaders, function leaders, etc.). And they are proprietary (you can’t decide “Hey, I’m going to take Citibanks course on credit scoring for retail lending” or “I’m going to log on to Goldman’s class on SEC regulations”. But they are much higher quality than what we all remember as “corporate training” and cheaper to produce then the videos of the “olden days”.