<p>I worked on a derivatives trading desk on Wall Street from 2004-2007 and have no direct affiliation to either Yale or Wharton/Penn so I think I can be unbiased.</p>
<p>For top hedge funds, private equity firms and elite desks like proprietary trading/AmSSG at Goldman Sachs, SAC Capital, AQR, Blackstone- going to Wharton will be a significant advantage over Yale. Billionaire alums in the industry include Dan Och, Stevie Cohen, Cliff Asness, Richard Perry, Raj Raj (MBA), Peter Briger (MBA) and possibly a few I can’t think of right now. Anil Ambani went to Penn and is worth about $40 billion. I believe his son is an undergrad. Interestingly, Aditya Mittal graduated from Wharton undergrad in 1996 and works for his dad who is currently worth $29 billion. </p>
<p>Yale is no slouch either, Eddie Lampert, Dinakar Singh, Steve Schwarzman, Sid Bass are all names that come to mind. Bob Rubin as well, before the Citi fiasco. I’m not counting dynastically rich people like Forest Mars (Yale). </p>
<p>For general investment banking/corporate finance/management consulting- I would suggest Yale over Wharton- Wharton is too competitve and too many people in the class apply to those jobs. Even though Wharton is a higher target than Yale for just about every bank (i.e. they take significantly more kids) an even higher ratio of kids apply to these jobs. If you add in smart students from CAS and SEAS that’s over 900-1000 resumes for 20-40 interview slots, which may result in 10 superdays and 5 offers. So slim odds. My guess at Yale College is probably around 400 resumes for 2-3 offers, so the odds are significantly better.</p>
<p>In terms of Nobel Prizes, yeah, Penn has had 10 in the past decade vs. about 8 at Yale, which is pretty even to most people. Interestingly, Penn has earned most of its Nobels in chemistry, physics and econ not medicine. But overall, Columbia destroys both schools, 94 Nobels at Columbia vs. 48 at Yale, 41 at Cornell, 32 at Princeton and 23 at Penn. Granted, you should look at recent Nobels because a prize in the 1920s is less relevant to the quality of research today.</p>