Schools to apply for a career investment banking

I think business week had the following ranking for Finance...

1. Wharton
2. Chicago
3. Stern
4. Columbia
5. Stanford
6. MIT
7. UCLA
8. Harvard

I agree those rankings may make more "sense", but looking purely at IB placement ratios, the order seems to be shuffled a little bit.

The more I think about it, I believe there may be some bulge bracket dilution occurring - for e.g Wharton may have a 80% ratio of placement into BB, while Stern may only have 50%, even though the gross IB placement ratio for Stern is higher.

Also this was based on placement ratios 2 years back, last years numbers may not be that good given the IB massacre that happened post Bear Sterns.

Interesting statistics though..

Don't discount the factor that, at NYU, many of the incoming students are bankers who don't want to leave NYC to get their MBA. They came from IB and want to return to IB, sometimes perhaps even sponsored by their bank to get an MBA.

The only one that sticks out as slightly odd would be Yale. But they have a smaller class size as compared to the others, so it takes less placements to make up a high percentage. It is certainly a school garnering more prestige than in the past.

~Sam

i think very few people would choose nyu over wharton for finance. the placement ratio is deceptive because the truth is wharton is twice the size of nyu and is a much more well rounded program, providing more career options. Wharton also has more students who already worked in ib and are gunning for jobs a step above ib, such as vc/pe.

I agree with dabots about Wharton vs. Stern and about the ratios being deceiving. Also, why stop with the schools you listed? How about Duke (12%) or Kellogg (9%)? Darden (15%) and Anderson (11.5%) have pretty good IB placements too. The point is that you can get a solid job in IB from any of the top-16 schools. So my strategy would be to pick a couple reaches (probably from my top-4 listed below), targets, and a safety based on "fit".

Now, which programs have the best finance reputation? I would say Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, NYU are the undisputable top-4...everything else is going to be debatable. I bet the remaining top-16 schools, except for Harvard and Stanford, outside of your top-7 list place around 10-15% in IB.

Harvard and Stanford place a lower % of people in IB because they place a higher % in PE/VC. The same logic applies, albeit to a lesser extent to Wharton. If you want to go to a BB, I'd say the following schools should set you up fairly well:

Harvard
Wharton
Chicago
Columbia
Stern

Isn't IB the backbone of bschool? You'll have an opportunity at IB from any top bschool.

Harvard
Wharton
Chicago
Columbia
Stern

I agree in that these are your top 5 IB schools. And yeah a lot of other very qualified and reputable schools could be in this list but the students tend to focus in other areas ie general management, operations, management consulting, etc. Of all these classes, Stern has the smallest (410).

I would choose Stern over Wharton due to location and the smaller class. NYC > Philly...I don't think I am in the overwhelming minority on this either.

Depends on your definition of overwhelming. They're both great schools, especially for finance, but the vast majority of the people I know would go with Wharton...

If your questions is which school will give you the best chance of going into IB (or any other field), the overall percentage of students that end up in the field is a pretty worthless statistic. It's mostly a reflection of what areas students are most interested in pursuing. As others pointed out, NYU has a huge percentage going into IB because it draws a lot of former analysts, a lot of people who want to relocate to NY, as well as a lot of people who decided in advance that they want to pursue IB. I don't believe it indicates, necessarily, that it is the best school for someone interested in IB.

People always like to ignore their own particular situation when selecting a school for their goals. For example, Columbia sends a heck of a lot of people into IB every year, but it's also filled with people who have impressive backgrounds in IB, finance, PE, etc. We (I'm at Darden) had our sell-day for a BB bank on the same day as Columbia and Duke, and all the CBS people I met had impressive finance backgrounds, and many lived in NY prior to attending business school. As a career switcher myself, I think it would have been really tough to crack that group and land interviews and job offers. On the other hand, the people I met from Duke were more like myself; many career switchers, a guy with another advanced degree, and not an prior analyst in the bunch. As Rhyme pointed out in his MC recruiting guide, the first step in securing a job offer is getting on the closed list by beating out the other people at your school.

So, there's no doubt that Wharton, Columbia and NYU send loads of people to IBs every year. Still, I'm certain that I wouldn't have had nearly the successful during recruiting at one of those schools as I had this past year (20+ closed lists including every BB bank). It's no secret that IBs really like to hire prior analysts, and they have lots to choose from at Columbia, et al. If you have that type of background, then great, you're exactly who they are looking for and will get a lot of love. If you're a career switcher and have no background in finance, you might find it really tough to crack the industry, because scores of your classmates will be clogging the interview slots.

As discussed elsewhere, the most important thing to consider is whether your target employers recruit *on campus*. This is important, because lots of schools will list firms they have a recruiting relationship with, or that they get job postings from. Those are pretty much worthless because firm can post their job listings at 500 business schools - but if a firm has a regular recruiting schedule on campus, that means they are actively looking for people like you. For a mainstream industry like IB, pretty much all the top firms will recruit at all the top 15 or so business schools. Some schools have closer ties with certain firms, and some firms may only recruit at 8 or 10 of the top 15 (not necessarily the top 8 or 10, but some mix based on their alumni base and past success, etc.).

The final piece of the puzzle is how many students are interested in banking (or whatever field) each year, and how many people land jobs in the field. I don't have info on any of the other schools so I'll use Darden as an example. About 1/3 of the students each year (100 or so) are interested in finance, which includes banking, private equity, investment management, hedge funds and corporate finance. Each year, about 20-25 banks recruit on campus and hire about 50-60 people (these are very rough estimates); which means that of all people interested in banking (probably 60-70 of the 100 total interested in finance and it definitely varies with the economy) 80-90% land IB jobs. Sometimes it's obvious why certain people don't make it (there's always a few really obnoxious people, some who don't take recruiting seriously enough, etc.). So, when you look at a place like Darden, 50 or 60 out of 310 students (16-19%) land IB jobs; but the more relevant number is that 80-90% of those interested in IB land such jobs. When you look at the statistic for NYU, 44% landing IB jobs sounds impressive, but how many were interested overall? If 45% of the student population was interested in IB and 44% landed jobs, then that would be awesome, if 65% IB jobs and 44% of all students landed such jobs, then that's less impressive. I don't have any specific data, but as pointed out in the first paragraph, just looking at the overall percentage that enters in industry is worthless. How many were actually interested in this industry? What type of backgrounds do will in recruiting? Those are definitely more relevant questions.

Regarding Columbia - aren't a lot of the guys who want to stay in IB, doing well in IB, etc. in NYC getting direct promoted to associate nowadays and skipping Business School altogether? I would have assumed that similar to Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and just about every other top school - the pre-MBA sell siders want to move to the buy side. I think Columbia places at least 5% of its class into PE/VC and probably an even higher number into investment management. I would have predicted that Columbia may have a lot more people with exposure to the financial services industry, perhaps back office jobs and things like that, but not necessarily a whole lot of guys fresh out of their 2-3 year analyst stints at BB IBDs (if you don't screw up, you should have buyside opportunities knocking at your door after your analyst stint which are far more lucrative than business school).

I spent a year in Big 4 audit and I am currently in Corp Dev. I plan to switch to either a bulge bracket IB or to a small cap/middle market PE firm upon graduation and these are my target schools right now. I obviously have a West Coast preference, but I wouldn't mind spending a few years in NYC and then transitioning out here later:

1. Columbia
2. Chicago GSB
3. UCLA
4. Haas

Terp, I know several folks who were associates and VPs at BBBs who have gone for MBA's last year or are heading there this year. I think they saw the writing on the wall more than those outside the industry and figured now was the ideal time to take a break and get the MBA. A lot of folks are losing their jobs and bonuses for a lot of folks probably wont be what they were a few years ago.

Adding to what Pelihu said, if you go to some companies websites they actually have their recruiting schedules for schools. Its amazing to see the effort they put into recruiting students at the very top schools. Even schools that arent traditional finance schools but are top schools like MIT and Kellogg are heavily recruited by BBBs. With the increase in apps it may be an advantage to apply to schools that dont attract tons of finance folks. I would bet a banker has a better shot at Kellogg than GSB, while it probably is just the opposite for someone in CPG.
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This is a moot point for all schools, and in banking as a whole. Sure you can get to be an Associate without an MBA. But then, why would you drop the plan to get an MBA? Sooner or later you are going to be up for a promotion against a person with an MBA, and the bank may sway with the more "qualified" (whether this is justified or not at that point in time).

One of the reasons I did an MBA was to remove any potential ceilings I could identify in my future career, and to hopefully transition to a preferred part of the industry. The first one was what really swayed it though, as that was a certainty. If I got looked over in ten years time for not having an MBA I would have been mighty pissed.

I think this is more theory than reality. I don't think anyone gets looked over for promotion in the real world based on any sort of academic backgrounds or degrees they earned. It's all about performance and what you've done in the job, as well as to a certain extent, politics and how people feel about you. I would agree with an argument that said "bankers with MBAs tend to be more well-rounded and look at deals in a more holistic fashion than career bankers who didn't take the 2 years off", but to say that it will keep you from getting promoted is garbage. You will rarely, if ever, run into a promotion scenario where 2 peoples performance is so similar that looking at academic backgrounds would actually matter.

If you're actually looking at academic backgrounds for people 10-20 years out of school, you might as well also be looking at a number of completely irrelevant things (perhaps many of them protected classes), and it's a slippery slope downhill from there for your organization.

terp - I fully agree. It just always struck me as conveniently odd that within all the banks the MBAs & Masters in Finance from top schools seem to gravitate toward the top.

This is due to the past and history. In the past, all banks required their analysts to leave for an MBA before coming back into the associate role. This requirement has started to go away in recent years. I would predict that it has started to go away in order to encourage more super star bankers to stay on the sell-side rather than leave to buy-side jobs.

In private equity, it is still a requirement to have an MBA to make Vice President at 90% of the reputable funds out there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/busin ... &_r=1&dlbk

I think you've stumbled onto the point right there. Banks have been promoting more associates directly because of competition from PE/HF firms. People with BB experience and a top MBA degree are ripe candidates for PE/HF jobs. I think the reality is that it's still only the top 5 or maybe 10% that get promoted directly without an MBA.

The bottom line is that you'll have your chances to land an IB job from any of the top schools. It's a very traditional job path, and if you express your interest and commit yourself to the process, firms are looking for people like you. If your talking about private equity or hedge fund jobs, Wharton and Columbia (and of course Harvard and Stanford) will have advantages over most of the competition. If you're looking at investment banking, the pool of candidates at Wharton and Columbia (and certainly Harvard) will be hyper-qualified. Yes, firms love people from these schools, but you'll be swimming with the sharks when competing with your fellow students. Not an easy task unless you have the right background.

The quote I was disagreeing with stated very few which to me indicated overwhelming minority.