Berkeley Haas vs. Yale SOM for investment management

I'd say both probably will afford you equal opportunities. I have similar career goals and will be matriculating to SOM this year, but for investment management, much of the internship/fulltime will be through off campus opportunities and your own ability to network. I did visit Haas, and met with the IM student club, and it seemed they had decent representation at large asset managers out west, i.e. Franklin Templeton etc. but as you can see from their employment report, finance is not as popular a career choice, which has its pros and cons given you have less competition

I think SOM might afford you a bit better oppty set..given that as i said, much of recruiting is off campus, and you will be closer to proximity to NYC and Boston. Also, SOM has a fairly strong representation with endowments (class taught by Yale endowment staff, CEO of Harvard and Princeton endowments are SOM alum). While the campus is near hedge fund capital Greenwich, CT, I don't think many students have been able to tap into that network as of yet. And all else equal, there are a ton of hedge funds in the Bay area to network with as well.

I would guess that Haas perhaps has a bit better brand name than SOM, not sure how much that matters, but it seems more importantly, you prefer the bay area. I can't blame you, and in hindshight wish I'd applied out there. So i think you should go where you think you'd have the most fun, and worry about IM jobs when you get there...what marginal edge you may have in IM recruiting at SOM at the end, you'll be networking on your own, you just need to choose the location you feel most comfortable at.

I think that the previous post is dead on. I spoke to the person that manages the relationships with financial firms for Yale SOM and he told me some of the same things. There are definitely smaller west coast IM firms that recruit at Haas, in addition to larger players like Franklin Templeton, but I doubt many of them are well known outside of the region. The only recent alum I know from Haas that works in IM went to work for Goldman Sachs M&A in New York first, before returning to San Francisco to work at a credit fund (where he's now a partner). I can tell you that a Yale SOM student graduating this year received a full-time offer from PIMCO, so it's possible to recruit for the west coast at SOM. I think SOM used to have a program for getting students internships at some of the Yale endowment's underlying managers, but I'm not sure if that exists anymore. Last night I got a call from an SOM alum who used to be a senior partner at Warburg Pincus, so apparently it's possible to have success in the industry as an SOM grad!

To answer the last question, I was being sarcastic. Yale has some great people teaching finance, including Roger Ibbotson, Robert Shiller, and Jim Chanos (hedge fund manager, Kynikos Associates). I also know that the former head of JP Morgan's private equity business teaches a class on the subject.

Haha. way to call us out. I wanted to downplay some excitement and be objective from the perspective of OP.

Fact of the matter is Im really pumped to be at SOM and know it's a great fit for me. The faculty above is a big part of that, and the smaller town feel and close knit student culture. While I plan on staying East for now though, I could see myself heading to SF later on in life. GO CLASS OF 2014!!

I am going to Yale SOM class of 2014; I am also going the IB route, although as a career changer. I had a chance to meet Dean Snyder last week and I have a lot of trust in the fact that I will get a high amount of exposure to great companies while here. I turned down a full ride to USC, who we all know has an amazing network, because I think Yale has the potential to be as strong, if not stronger; when I was making my decision, the CEO of a Fortune 50 (fifty) company called me to help me make my decision, I thought that was AWESOME.

SOM 2014, can't wait to meet the rest of you, it is going to be an AWESOME 2 years.