My kid can fit in anywhere, but we know the world of Inv Banking is a very elite kind of career and was thinking in order to be in best place for networking with already established kids whose parents or siblings may already be in IB, that he should go with Vassar over Berkeley, what do you think?
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Uh no. IB is incredibly competitive, getting a job there is not going to be due to “networking” with kids from rich families. It will stand you in much better stead to go to Berkeley and be an outstanding student from an immensely competitive college.
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These analyses may offer you insight into the economics departments of these schools:
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Cal is typically considered among the IB “target” colleges, which means it has historically sent a significant number of grads into investment banking, and various large banks recruit there. Note this does not mean everyone who attends Cal and wants one is guaranteed a competitive IB job. Instead, the competition at Cal for those jobs is still going to be very intense.
Vassar is not a traditional IB target, including because there are not so many kids choosing Vassar with an IB interest in mind, so it wouldn’t make much sense for banks to devote a lot of resources to recruiting there. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible to go into IB from Vassar. You might need to be more proactive in terms of things like hunting for relevant internships, and possibly might need better grades. But fortunately being so close to NYC is a practical convenience.
And of course some people get into IB not straight out of college, but after doing an MBA or MFA or such.
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Prospects in IB may be enhanced through networking with “teams” of alumni at various investment banks, however. This article discusses aspects of such a network at Deutsche Bank, for example: Class of ’21 Strikes Gold with Three Grads to Deutsche Bank - News - Hamilton College.
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Perhaps this thread will give you some insight.
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You are presenting a binary choice between two schools that are extremely different in many ways. I am a proud Vassar alum and also a career I banker. I would choose UCB as you narrowly define the options and desired outcomes.
In reality however you can probably find a number of schools that would have more of a VC feel or vibe but also offer comparable IB target opportunities to a UCB.
Is there a reason these two schools are the stand alone options you are offering?
Hamilton, Williams, NYU Stern and Brown all come to mind as “split the difference” with attributes of both schools and experiences that might work.
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That seems to be an endorsement of UCB, since it is #3 on the overall list, but Vassar is not in the top 138 there. Note that #1 on the LAC list is #48 on the overall list.
But is a research volume based ranking really the main criterion for an economics major who is not pre-PhD?
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Economics for Investment Banking? - #6 by triplectz is an old post that suggested that IB recruiting at UCB favored business and math-heavy majors. However, business at the time was a competitive secondary admission major (it is changing to direct admission).
Anyone familiar with IB recruiting able to comment on major preferences in such recruiting?
Note that economics at UCB offers regular (single variable calculus) and math-heavy (multivariable calculus and linear algebra) options for intermediate microeconomics and econometrics courses
Unless we are talking Wharton, Stern or Ross undergrad, being a business major was not a plus for me when recruiting for a BB (same time not a negative) for analysts. Having sufficient quant classes was more important, so a Philosophy or History major who had taken and done well in math/physics/CS/data driven courses would likely stand out for me vs the generic business major. Things may have changed since I left the industry, but I was very much a “best available athlete” person for entry level positions.
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I’m a big fan of LACs, but I’m an even bigger fan of fit. If all I know about a student is that they want to go into IB, feels they will “fit in” anywhere, and are probably looking at in-state pricing for UCs (assuming “OC” from your username means Orange County), I would recommend going with Berkeley. That might change if I knew more about your child and learned, for example, that they one or more of the usual LAC indicators applied (such as preferring small classes, getting to know their profs, living on campus all four years, possibly pursuing a grad program, possibly playing a sport at a less competitive level, etc.)
Even if it were the case that your child were a more obvious match with an LAC, Vassar wouldn’t be one of the first ones I think of, outstanding though it is. Williams or CMC would probably be the first two to come to mind, depending on whether they were more interested in making inroads with Wall St or Silicon Valley, but of course there are more than two.
I will detour briefly to say there is some data that would support LACs are great feeders into Econ PhD programs. The actual PhD program feeder rates for one, and studies like this one that claim LAC alumni are actually more likely to finish Econ PhD programs a year early. I wouldn’t personally put much weight into the IDEAS rankings, as they seem to contain a lot of dated and noisy data (for example, Vassar’s high rank seems to be computed based on research from a set of faculty members whose publications captured by that system are nearly 20 years in the past, and some of whom are now gone; it may well be as great today as the rank suggests because of other data not known to the site, but that would be sorta accidental, methodologically speaking.) But all this is somewhat tangential to a student interested in entering IB directly and not first earning a PhD, which of course would be most IB hopefuls.
I think I read Haas now has an undergrad business program. That might be worth researching, though it’s probably a more selective than standard Berkeley admit.
As I wrote all this, I was reminded of a news article from a while back on the finance scene in Silicon Valley. I wouldn’t put too much weight on it, but it might be of interest. I definitely think Berkeley’s location would be helpful to a student searching for certain types of finance internships.
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I would not attend any college for the sole purpose of getting an IB job. Those jobs are few and far between. Better to pick a college that is the right fit (many meaningful differences between the two schools you mentioned) and where the student is apt to thrive.
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Does the student prefer a business major or an economics major? Has the student reviewed the curriculum for both? There are important differences.
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Even 20+ years ago when I graduated, my ibanking classmates went through a corporate recruiting process- nobody’s parents were getting them into Goldman. (I won’t say that is impossible, but not typical).
(I went to a school with a top of 1%ers and kids going into banking/consulting).
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Neither school is really a feeder to I-Banks.
Even in schools (e.g., HYP, Columbia, Penn, etc.) that DO feed I-Banks…only a minority of students wind up as I-Bankers.
A better path…
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Pick the school that is the better fit for you.
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You can absolutely aspire to be an I-Banker, but you may need to take the intermediate steps of getting a couple of years of finance experience and then going to a B-School that IS a feeder to I-Banks. B-Schools will both have great respect for both Vassar and UCB.
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I am not sure this is the optimal path these days. I defer to @Catcherinthetoast, but my impression is that a much larger percentage of associates are coming from internal promotions of analysts than 10-20+ years ago. Further, if you choose to go the BSchool route, you would also need at least 2 years in the workforce, and where you work, what you did and the LoR’s from your supervisors will matter more than your undergrad school. So yes, there is great uncertainty whether or not you can get an IB job coming out of undergrad, but I am not sure any greater certainty is injected if you go the BSchool route, maybe less.
However, stepping back, I agree that finding the best school to set you up for future success should be the first order of business. Whether it is getting a job in finance or any other competitive sector, you need to do well undergrad, even if you go to HYPS or name any other T20 school.
I never said it was the optimal path. It is probably the best path for him in his situation.
Vassar and UCB are great schools, but they are simply not I-Bank feeders.
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I would disagree about UCB. https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools
Nobody can predict the hiring market five years out.
If anyone had told me in 2004 what the market for new grads would be in 2009 I would have told them they were nuts. In finance (not just I-banking- but PE, hedge funds, corporate financial roles, commercial banking) it was an all out “War for Talent”. The glory days of the aughts when CEO’s were haranguing their teams to meet their hiring targets whatever it took.
And in 2009- crickets. Targets were cut in early November of 2008 once Lehman exploded and did not recover for several years. Kids who were insisting on sign on bonuses in early 2008 were grateful to have a job and knew there would likely be no bonus at the end of 2009 (but they had health insurance).
Do NOT pick a college because a 17 year old thinks they want a job in investment banking in five years. The labor markets can shift quickly. And people get left behind. All those petroleum engineers who were told “you’ll never have to look for a job with that degree” who graduated into the oil and gas bust???
Pick a college where a kid can stretch, work hard, expand their analytical skills and knowledge base. Schools that are a target one year fall off the list the next. And if overall hiring is down…
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Yeah, it may sound a bit old-fashioned, but getting a good fundamental education you can comfortably afford should really be the priority. I also think it is important to try to find a college where you can reasonably expect to be happy, because happy people tend to do better.
If you can do all that and then layer on various special programs or labor markets or whatever you are currently interested in exploring–great.
But as soon as I see people thinking about sacrificing any of the basic stuff (good fundamental education, affordability, and reasonable bet to be happy) for that other stuff, I get nervous on their behalf, because that is the setup for a lot of avoidable problems people encounter.
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I have commits through athletics from both schools, but still can’t seem to decide. I love both equally and tuition is roughly the same too.