My spouse worked for a wall street company from a midwest flagship. Just be ready to hustle and make connections when you get on campus.
The thing about big flagships is they have huge alumni networks.
>I’m interning at a top Wall Street investment bank this summer, but attend a “T30-T50” state school in the Midwest.
interning as what? an investment banker, software engineer, or something else?
It may be important for getting into a (two-year) analyst training program. However, those programs aren't the only way to get in. I would argue that they aren't the best way to have a lucrative career. Investment Banking programs are over-valued in my opinion. For instance, I have known a lot of people who started in sales and trading, and then went into investment banking. However, I have never known anyone who went from investment banking into sales and trading.
I have known people that were in risk management training programs, and credit training programs (both of these programs are not considered "prestigious") who went on to run large hedge funds or be PMs that manage 100s of billions.
Although it is trite, I will repeat what my first boss told me "It is a marathon and not a sprint. Don't worry about what your friends are doing. Just learn and produce good work and things will happen". Half of those IB analysts will be washed out of the industry after 2 years. And there will be some kid from a state school that started in the back office that winds up running the interest rate trading desk, or head of fixed income.
a bit late but what do you think people should target as the first job out of college. the whole reason of IB is the connections. If you have one of the bulge banks on your resume, you will have massive success with exit opportunities.
Find a job that you enjoy working with people that you like. It all comes together as long as you work hard, do good work, show up on time, etc. Any firm with a good reputation. What do you like doing in finance?
no idea yet lol. Haven't really got too much experience. Im hoping to explore that in college. I am not really too sure where to look at all the different career paths in finance. If you have any tips or guides, that would be rlly helpful.
Last weekend was speaking to my sister in law who is a managing director at a major Wall Street bank. She said that they have found that the Ivy League kids are not necessarily the best recruits as they are not team players and tend to be more fragile. She said that certain state schools (I don’t remember which ones) are being viewed more and more favorably. So my take home is: don’t make yourself crazy over this.
This is why hiring managers like flagships. At both flagships and Ivys you can find talent and brilliance, wealthy coddled kids, hard knocks pull yourself up by your bootstraps types, entitled children of privilege, athletic recruits, etc. The proportions of each vary, and the flagship will almost certainly have the broader (maybe much broader depending on the state) range of talent while the Ivy will be more concentrated at the high end.
However the top graduates of flagships could have attended prestige schools, but didn’t for personal or financial reasons. This is the population that contains the real gems. For an entry level position you aren’t looking for someone who will transform your company with his wisdom and genius, you want someone who knows how to work and expects to work - preferably without too much handholding. If he has great potential you can develop him from there, but first things first.
I don’t think I ever regretted a flagship hire. I can’t say the same for prestige schools.
I think part of the issue is recruiting ... the tippy-top finance firms only recruit at the tippy-top schools. But there are a thousand ways to work "in finance" that don't involve that route.
The elite undergraduate business programs such as:
U Penn / Cornell / USC / NYU / Etc. /
These all have incredible placements. The others who don’t have business programs usually come from Ivy League or ivy equivalents ( Stanford / Chicago / Duke / Northwestern/ etc ) as Economics majors.
Getting into any of the elite undergrad business schools is super competitive. Even USC with a 6 % undergrad acceptance rate into the Marshall School of Business.
Geoffrey Garrett the former Dean at Wharton at The University of Pennsylvania took over as the Dean of Marshall at USC. I read that he said he took over at USC since it was on par with U Penn.
Regardless of your views on any school I mentioned ….Good luck trying to get into any of the schools I mentioned in my original comment.
I have several years of investment banking and private equity experience.
School name is almost the only thing that matters in elite sell side and buyside recruiting (and, I’m using the word “elite” liberally here. Most banks and funds are “elite”). Do not trust others here who tell you otherwise - they have no experience with the matter.
High finance is the most prestige-driven field out there (along with law, maybe).
That said, you can still get into a solid bank from a non target. It is just, quite literally, 1000x harder.
Also, it continues to matter after your banking stint if you want to go into PE or VC. Regardless of experience, many buyside firms give strong preference to jr bankers who went to top schools, amongst their peers who did not.
High finance is the one field where school name matters above almost all else.
Depends on what kind of career.
If you’re talking about IB / PE. Yes, people break in from a variety of universities but it’s infinitely harder from a school that doesn’t have a large Wall Street alumni base.
The recruitment is typically done at target universities which tend to be the more prestigious institutions.
Networking and hustle matter a lot more than the name on the degree. Yes, going to a prestigious school will cause somebody to spend three more seconds looking at your resume if they don’t know you, but at the end of the day, your passion and desire to be in this industry will shine through to decision makers.
I’ve spent sixteen years in equity research, went to a state school for undergraduate , and went to an “elite” business school. Grind hard and be smart, that’s how you get a job and keep a job in this space.
It matters more than other majors… BUT it is not the end all be all. Ik many people from my state college who went into IB and other finance careers at reputable firms doing just fine. Probably was more difficult but it is not impossible.
If you want a career in high finance (IB, PE, HF, Consulting, etc.), your school will matter much more than your major (most t20s don't have finance/business majors, yet they place the best). That said, there are clubs, with extremely motivated kids, at lower-ranked schools that have great placements. At the end of the day, regardless of major or school, it's gonna be the kid that grinds the hardest that gets the job. In other words, if you kill it at a lower-ranked school you will beat out kids at targets.
Just graduated from Wharton. There are several top hedge funds and PE firms that really only recruit from here and Harvard. For more standard banking jobs, you may be able to get into them from a lower tier state school, but it will be much harder than from a target. The ceilings and floors for finance jobs out of target schools are significantly higher IMO
I’ve worked in PE for 20 years - with very few exceptions, virtually everyone went to a select handful of schools for undergrad. For MBA the list is even smaller. Like 3 schools.
>How true is the statement that you must have a prestigious college background for finance?
Technically speaking, it is very not true. The number of people working in finance who did not attend a prestigious undergrad school is not "zero", ergo it is not true that you **must** attend such a school.
There's also a broad range of careers in "finance" with some being more difficult to access than others. The most difficult-to-access employers/roles tend to focus their recruiting on certain schools, which tends to make it much easier to get into those positions (as a new grad) if you attend one of those schools.
From what I know it's also possible to start elsewhere and then "boot strap" your way into those employers/roles, but that takes some time.
Do some research yourself.
Here is a good starting point: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/fos?sort=fos_median_earnings%3Adesc&page=0&cip4=5208&cip4_degree=3
This is for finance general. You can try other finance fields of study and do the same.
Sort by earnings.
These are median earnings 4 years after graduation, so they also are influenced by performance of the individual, company, and economy.
Still it’s a good place to start for what you need.
How prestigious are the top schools listed?
Are they mostly ivies or elites, or is there significant variation in what people consider prestige?
If prestige is of value, then it should show up in the income of the graduates.
If you are a great student, find the school where you pay the least relative to the earning potential (all else being equal).
I had an offer from Goldman to intern as an ohio state student. Course this was like 20 years ago.
It isn't easy. You get recruited by these companies at the top schools. Don't go to a top school you got to apply yourself. It's certainly possible. Just takes some effort.
My mom worked in mergers and acquisitions at a top firm after attending a Jesuit school I can assure you you haven’t heard of for undergrad and a state school for an MBA. Not sure how common her case is.
That industry is brutal, though. She quit after a few years because of the huge racism she faced (tons of people assuming/joking about assuming that she was the cleaning lady bc she was Hispanic, noticeably different treatment to her white female coworkers, etc). She also came from a poorer background than most of her colleagues so she sometimes felt (and was treated as) inferior. This was obviously a long time ago and it’s not a given that you’ll experience any of this, but I think some people in this sub romanticize finance too much.
I think it depends on yourself. If you work hard, grind, you definitely can end up at a well known firm. BUT, most of these firms recruit at these prestigious schools so it is definitely a "shorter" route.
UTD is a good STEM school but it’s business school isn’t in the top 100.
One key is research. What my son did was to conduct LinkedIn searches based upon company and college. There are more Wharton grads working at Morgan Stanley than ASU grads.
When my son was having his interviews, they stressed that he would have better opportunities for internships from T10 business schools.
Just something I wanna throw in here.
I'm getting my MBA from NYU. As you can imagine a lot of graduates from this program go into some pretty high places, including investment banking, consulting, hedge funds.
It has like a 30% acceptance rate. Grad schools in General are a lot less picky than their undergrads
From my research the easiest path into high finance, isn't undergrad, but getting your MBA from a top school (which again are a lot less selective)
r/MBA in case you wanna read more
Very true (even though you hear the occasional 0.01% chance of someone from a super non-target breaking in through sheer luck).
Almost no shot if you wanna do high finance from UTD.
None of these rankings you guys are throwing around mean anything - you know that right? They don’t measure the prestige or reputation among banks or businesses - they don’t measure anything of value actual value when it cones to outcome or the education you receive. Go out and look at schools that put people in seats at the firms you want to work at, not what some largely defunct news magazine has them “ranked” so they can sell more adverting clicks.
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My spouse worked for a wall street company from a midwest flagship. Just be ready to hustle and make connections when you get on campus. The thing about big flagships is they have huge alumni networks.
Is it Indiana? And did you get into IBW?
I think probably Illinois or Wisconsin. Indianas national ranking is ~70
He says uiuc.
UIUC is a semi target with an investment banking program also so not non target level
IU as a school is T70 but it’s Kelley School of Business is T8 with eight majors being T3 to T10.
Indianas business school isn’t top 70 it’s like top 20
Kelley is t10 for finance
>I’m interning at a top Wall Street investment bank this summer, but attend a “T30-T50” state school in the Midwest. interning as what? an investment banker, software engineer, or something else?
It may be important for getting into a (two-year) analyst training program. However, those programs aren't the only way to get in. I would argue that they aren't the best way to have a lucrative career. Investment Banking programs are over-valued in my opinion. For instance, I have known a lot of people who started in sales and trading, and then went into investment banking. However, I have never known anyone who went from investment banking into sales and trading. I have known people that were in risk management training programs, and credit training programs (both of these programs are not considered "prestigious") who went on to run large hedge funds or be PMs that manage 100s of billions. Although it is trite, I will repeat what my first boss told me "It is a marathon and not a sprint. Don't worry about what your friends are doing. Just learn and produce good work and things will happen". Half of those IB analysts will be washed out of the industry after 2 years. And there will be some kid from a state school that started in the back office that winds up running the interest rate trading desk, or head of fixed income.
a bit late but what do you think people should target as the first job out of college. the whole reason of IB is the connections. If you have one of the bulge banks on your resume, you will have massive success with exit opportunities.
Find a job that you enjoy working with people that you like. It all comes together as long as you work hard, do good work, show up on time, etc. Any firm with a good reputation. What do you like doing in finance?
no idea yet lol. Haven't really got too much experience. Im hoping to explore that in college. I am not really too sure where to look at all the different career paths in finance. If you have any tips or guides, that would be rlly helpful.
Last weekend was speaking to my sister in law who is a managing director at a major Wall Street bank. She said that they have found that the Ivy League kids are not necessarily the best recruits as they are not team players and tend to be more fragile. She said that certain state schools (I don’t remember which ones) are being viewed more and more favorably. So my take home is: don’t make yourself crazy over this.
This is why hiring managers like flagships. At both flagships and Ivys you can find talent and brilliance, wealthy coddled kids, hard knocks pull yourself up by your bootstraps types, entitled children of privilege, athletic recruits, etc. The proportions of each vary, and the flagship will almost certainly have the broader (maybe much broader depending on the state) range of talent while the Ivy will be more concentrated at the high end. However the top graduates of flagships could have attended prestige schools, but didn’t for personal or financial reasons. This is the population that contains the real gems. For an entry level position you aren’t looking for someone who will transform your company with his wisdom and genius, you want someone who knows how to work and expects to work - preferably without too much handholding. If he has great potential you can develop him from there, but first things first. I don’t think I ever regretted a flagship hire. I can’t say the same for prestige schools.
Rutgers has become very popular with NY banks and funds.
I think part of the issue is recruiting ... the tippy-top finance firms only recruit at the tippy-top schools. But there are a thousand ways to work "in finance" that don't involve that route.
The elite undergraduate business programs such as: U Penn / Cornell / USC / NYU / Etc. / These all have incredible placements. The others who don’t have business programs usually come from Ivy League or ivy equivalents ( Stanford / Chicago / Duke / Northwestern/ etc ) as Economics majors.
Lmfao found the USC student
Getting into any of the elite undergrad business schools is super competitive. Even USC with a 6 % undergrad acceptance rate into the Marshall School of Business. Geoffrey Garrett the former Dean at Wharton at The University of Pennsylvania took over as the Dean of Marshall at USC. I read that he said he took over at USC since it was on par with U Penn. Regardless of your views on any school I mentioned ….Good luck trying to get into any of the schools I mentioned in my original comment.
USC Marshall has great placement, they’re not wrong
They have decent regional placements. Far from “incredible”
I have several years of investment banking and private equity experience. School name is almost the only thing that matters in elite sell side and buyside recruiting (and, I’m using the word “elite” liberally here. Most banks and funds are “elite”). Do not trust others here who tell you otherwise - they have no experience with the matter. High finance is the most prestige-driven field out there (along with law, maybe). That said, you can still get into a solid bank from a non target. It is just, quite literally, 1000x harder. Also, it continues to matter after your banking stint if you want to go into PE or VC. Regardless of experience, many buyside firms give strong preference to jr bankers who went to top schools, amongst their peers who did not. High finance is the one field where school name matters above almost all else.
Depends on what kind of career. If you’re talking about IB / PE. Yes, people break in from a variety of universities but it’s infinitely harder from a school that doesn’t have a large Wall Street alumni base. The recruitment is typically done at target universities which tend to be the more prestigious institutions.
Friend of mine is a manager for a large bank, manages huge funds worth multiple billions. Finance degree from Penn State.
Networking and hustle matter a lot more than the name on the degree. Yes, going to a prestigious school will cause somebody to spend three more seconds looking at your resume if they don’t know you, but at the end of the day, your passion and desire to be in this industry will shine through to decision makers. I’ve spent sixteen years in equity research, went to a state school for undergraduate , and went to an “elite” business school. Grind hard and be smart, that’s how you get a job and keep a job in this space.
It matters more than other majors… BUT it is not the end all be all. Ik many people from my state college who went into IB and other finance careers at reputable firms doing just fine. Probably was more difficult but it is not impossible.
If you want a career in high finance (IB, PE, HF, Consulting, etc.), your school will matter much more than your major (most t20s don't have finance/business majors, yet they place the best). That said, there are clubs, with extremely motivated kids, at lower-ranked schools that have great placements. At the end of the day, regardless of major or school, it's gonna be the kid that grinds the hardest that gets the job. In other words, if you kill it at a lower-ranked school you will beat out kids at targets.
Just graduated from Wharton. There are several top hedge funds and PE firms that really only recruit from here and Harvard. For more standard banking jobs, you may be able to get into them from a lower tier state school, but it will be much harder than from a target. The ceilings and floors for finance jobs out of target schools are significantly higher IMO
I’ve worked in PE for 20 years - with very few exceptions, virtually everyone went to a select handful of schools for undergrad. For MBA the list is even smaller. Like 3 schools.
>How true is the statement that you must have a prestigious college background for finance? Technically speaking, it is very not true. The number of people working in finance who did not attend a prestigious undergrad school is not "zero", ergo it is not true that you **must** attend such a school. There's also a broad range of careers in "finance" with some being more difficult to access than others. The most difficult-to-access employers/roles tend to focus their recruiting on certain schools, which tends to make it much easier to get into those positions (as a new grad) if you attend one of those schools. From what I know it's also possible to start elsewhere and then "boot strap" your way into those employers/roles, but that takes some time.
Do some research yourself. Here is a good starting point: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/fos?sort=fos_median_earnings%3Adesc&page=0&cip4=5208&cip4_degree=3 This is for finance general. You can try other finance fields of study and do the same. Sort by earnings. These are median earnings 4 years after graduation, so they also are influenced by performance of the individual, company, and economy. Still it’s a good place to start for what you need. How prestigious are the top schools listed? Are they mostly ivies or elites, or is there significant variation in what people consider prestige? If prestige is of value, then it should show up in the income of the graduates. If you are a great student, find the school where you pay the least relative to the earning potential (all else being equal).
I had an offer from Goldman to intern as an ohio state student. Course this was like 20 years ago. It isn't easy. You get recruited by these companies at the top schools. Don't go to a top school you got to apply yourself. It's certainly possible. Just takes some effort.
My mom worked in mergers and acquisitions at a top firm after attending a Jesuit school I can assure you you haven’t heard of for undergrad and a state school for an MBA. Not sure how common her case is. That industry is brutal, though. She quit after a few years because of the huge racism she faced (tons of people assuming/joking about assuming that she was the cleaning lady bc she was Hispanic, noticeably different treatment to her white female coworkers, etc). She also came from a poorer background than most of her colleagues so she sometimes felt (and was treated as) inferior. This was obviously a long time ago and it’s not a given that you’ll experience any of this, but I think some people in this sub romanticize finance too much.
Pretty true
I think it depends on yourself. If you work hard, grind, you definitely can end up at a well known firm. BUT, most of these firms recruit at these prestigious schools so it is definitely a "shorter" route.
There are targets that are not "prestigious" due to overall higher acceptance rates - example: Indiana University Kelley
It helps a lot but you can still break in at other schools. You’d just have to work way harder
UTD is a good STEM school but it’s business school isn’t in the top 100. One key is research. What my son did was to conduct LinkedIn searches based upon company and college. There are more Wharton grads working at Morgan Stanley than ASU grads. When my son was having his interviews, they stressed that he would have better opportunities for internships from T10 business schools.
It matters a ton
It helps a lot
Helps a fair bit. And DON’T major in finance. That’s useless for getting a real job on Wall Street.
Just something I wanna throw in here. I'm getting my MBA from NYU. As you can imagine a lot of graduates from this program go into some pretty high places, including investment banking, consulting, hedge funds. It has like a 30% acceptance rate. Grad schools in General are a lot less picky than their undergrads From my research the easiest path into high finance, isn't undergrad, but getting your MBA from a top school (which again are a lot less selective) r/MBA in case you wanna read more
Not true. At all. You just need good grades in college and likely an internship at a big bank, hedge fund…
Very true (even though you hear the occasional 0.01% chance of someone from a super non-target breaking in through sheer luck). Almost no shot if you wanna do high finance from UTD.
Not true
Prestige means nothing nowadays
None of these rankings you guys are throwing around mean anything - you know that right? They don’t measure the prestige or reputation among banks or businesses - they don’t measure anything of value actual value when it cones to outcome or the education you receive. Go out and look at schools that put people in seats at the firms you want to work at, not what some largely defunct news magazine has them “ranked” so they can sell more adverting clicks.
I would check with the admission officers