I'm a student at an HYPW school and have a lot of friends from my high school that are at other supposedly "lower targets" (think Umich, UVA, Georgetown, UT Austin) and are getting the same (if not better) SA offers than many kids at my university with similar profiles (GPA, ECs, and prior experience). Beyond my personal anecdotes, I see that my school isn't even on the WSO top ten list for IB placement and that some of these lower targets are seemingly placing much better. This is really frustrating to me since it seems like I could've worked WAY less hard in hs and attended one of these lower-tier schools (or go for almost free from merit scholarships) and then end up with the same result in terms of placement. I'm just confused why people on this forum encourage kids to go to HYPW type schools when it seems to make no difference in placement, probably costs more (since no merit aid), and is much harder to stand out even within the school due to high level of competition and volume of connected kids?
To be fair, Georgetown generally punches significantly above its school ranking in terms of IB recruitment. At the end of the day, everyone will tell you that while your school might be able to get your foot in the door, it is completely up to you at that point to perform in the interviews. Are the kids at your school a bit on the nerdier side? Less social? Etc. these are all factors that go into play when getting an offer, and it’s really up to you to perform. Plus, it’s not everyone’s goal to necessarily end up at the top BB m&a group either - personal preferences can play a big part.
Kind of hard to expand further without more information other than kid 1 went to Michigan and kid 2 went to Yale and kid 1 recruited better than kid 2 (not sure how you’re qualifying that either)
From my experience, I don't think it's that kids are less social as they were similar. I know for a fact that OCR at my school is worse than some of the others mentioned above which is very strange. We aren't even a core school for BofA or UBS anymore (got dropped recently), and virtually no EBs do OCR (basically only Lazard, Centerview, and kind of Guggenheim). It's just frustrating that my HYPW school essentially only has 7 or 8 banks that do OCR at all compared much more than that at the lower tier schools mentioned above...
Must be Princeton...
Lol how did you figure that haha
Bump
Because wall street isn’t the “brain drain” it used to be and the smartest kids don’t go into finance. They go to tech, consulting, etc...
Yeah but that doesn’t explain why there are many HYPSW kids who strike out of recruiting even when they try. I’m still a prospect so I don’t know much yet, but I’m guessing that recruiting is becoming so competitive nowadays that it’s difficult for everyone. Maybe there are more placements from other schools that OP noticed (UMich, UVA, UT Austin) simply because the undergrad population is much higher.
Because the ones who try recruiting for traditional finance aren't the smartest kids anymore. If anything, recruiting has gotten easier over the last 10-15 years.
They don't...
Did the smartest kids ever go to straight to finance? I thought Yale / Harvard law was considered the logical next step for those that could get in, though obviously JDs played a different role than they do now.
It was either Rubinstein or Schwarzman who says the smartest people used to go to medical school. Then the next step down was Yale Law School. Then the next step down was HLS. Then PhDs/grad school. And then finally MBAs.
I really hope you didn't pick your college based on WSO lol. HYP and the like are desirable for many reasons outside of recruiting, and you'll still have a leg up on Wall Street anyway.
OP, I also go to an HYP as well and it seems that there are more people going into quant finance, tech, consulting, law, startups, etc. instead of traditional Wall Street IB. I think our career services report a couple of years ago listed under 12 percent of the graduating class into financial services. Certainly not a huge volume there, and not sure if it's because of OCR getting weaker or kids pursuing more of the above roles......
Your life isn't finished after the first investment banking job you get post-college. Try on-cycle PE recruiting and you'll get a sense of how much HH prefer Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/Wharton even to a great school like Cornell. Try to raise funding for your startup idea 10 years down the line and you'll get a sense of how much VCs prestige whore over Stanford/Harvard/MIT. Run for Congress and you'll notice how Harvard/Stanford/Princeton (and GTown) have the most alumni.
You basically nailed it, but to add: I've talked to several extremely intelligent people who went to non-targets and were basically forced to go back to business school to get the credentials to raise money more easily. Their lacking network was another thing commonly noted.
This is... depressing.
At an EB but from a semi-target.
I’d go to a lower BB for a HWPYS degree in a heartbeat
Can you elaborate on why?
Yeah this seems a bit backwards to me...
Lol not sure why I got MS for my opinion but to answer your question.
If you want to go to top MF/HF then yes EB is the better choice but honestly when you’re at a BB/EB 90% of exit opps comes down to the individual. I know/seen people from DB/UBS place to UMM.
However at the end of the day as ppl above mention when you want to move up/start a business network becomes very beneficial and that alumni network becomes very useful down the road.
Ultimately also you can always lateral from a lower BB to EB but you can’t ever change your college degree
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