Boston College Carroll Class of 2016 Calling all applicants

I graduated in 2012 from BC. The jobs to which you're referring (front office investments) are pretty uncommon for graduates. A lot of people want them and almost no one gets them. Remember, these jobs are limited and pay a lot of money generally, so they are prestigious and draw many applicants from the top b-schools in the country. I think two people in my class now work in a research/investment role out of maybe 20 or so who wanted them. And it took these two people months and months after graduation to get the jobs. Research jobs don't recruit on campus and many investment houses do not recruit/hire outside of a core group of schools ("target schools").

Most "finance" jobs for BC students tend to be corporate finance. That means forecasting, P&L, budgets, etc for business units and whatnot at a larger company (Staples, Ocean Spray, Exxon, etc). I'd say 80-90% of jobs listed as "finance" by career services on the placement sheet fall into this category. These aren't bad roles, per se, and the pay will be in that $90k range in and around Boston with a modest (5-10%) bonus.

The back office jobs tend to be things like operations, IT, etc at investment firms. Back office = roles that are not revenue generating. These roles can be had at BC at major investment houses (Fidelity hires from BC for these). The pay is similar to the corporate finance roles, though.

If you sincerely want a role where you're making strategic decisions in an investment atmosphere, BC is probably not the school for you. Those who land these sorts of roles are outliers.