How to get admission into an undergrad target school
There have been countless topics on how to break into iBanking and equally numerous debates on target vs non-target. Many have chimed in with their perspectives, successful stories or advice on how to break in from a non-target background. However, the fact is that the majority of Wall Street analysts come from targets. Such degrees bring hard-to-dispute advantages, be it networking, OCR, or just impressing chicks. If you are a new analyst or intern going to the first day of summer orientation / training at a bank, you will find clusters of fellow monkeys from HYPSW who have an easier time networking around because they have gone to the same school and known each other in advance.
I'm not into the debate whether one needs to attend a target to work on Wall Street. Plenty of successful ballers out there did not go to any target. But my question is, how to get admission into one of the Ivies or Ivy-like schools?
When I was in high school, I scored 2100 on the SAT and had an alright GPA coming from a developing country. Applied to top US colleges, didn't get in, and ended up in a top 50 liberal arts college. Not satisfied and knowing it wouldn't likely lead me anywhere close to the Street, I applied again to transfer to junior year, this time with a 3.9 cum college GPA in math & econ plus having been research assistant to a prof in the summer, a tutor, and involved in several campus activities. Failed in the admission game again and now after college, I ended up in the back office of a BB.
My young cousin is now in 11th grade studying A-level in a good UK school and has scored above 90-95 in almost every class, involved in several activities. He has also been charmed by the glamour or let's say, intellectual rigor of Wall Street and is dreaming of one day working here. Yet we are both pretty clueless on how to get the first step right. That is, getting into one of the targets.
Given that many on WSO here are the super achieving, A-type with consistent track records of success, how would you advise? Thanks (and please don't tell me to go check out collegeconfidential, I've been there).
Intellectual rigor? Of Wall Street?
Getting into a target isn't like getting into banking. If you network hard enough, you'll eventually get into banking. There's nothing you can do short of donating a couple million that ensures admission to a target. You need outstanding scores and grades, and should stand out somewhere - targets aren't looking for overall well-rounded kids. They're looking for the "spikes" in the curve, if that makes any sense.
Otherwise, the other answer is to go somewhere else for your first one or two years and kill it as you did, apply to transfer, and hope for the best.
I totally agree with the above post. I have a few friends who had all A's throughout their entire high school careers, scored above a 2300 on the SAT, had a huge list of extra-curriculars, and still got rejected from every top 10 school they applied to. To give yourself a good chance at HYPW these days, you need to have something really special and unique on your application, along with near-perfect grades and scores.
College admissions is a crapshoot. There's no way to guarantee admission to any top school, but there are certainly ways to differentiate yourself past the masses of kids that have great GPA's, test scores, and extra curric's.
A lot of college applicants think adcoms are looking for well-rounded students, since they put so much emphasis on having a well-rounded student body. This is a misconception; there are many kids in each applicant class that are really good at a lot of different things, but it stands out more to be really passionate about just a couple things and excel in these areas. For example, you'll often see athletes get recruited to come to a school; even if the school doesn't offer athletic scholarships, it gives you a huge boost to have a coach pulling for you in the admissions process (and this is ignoring the fact that playing varsity sports even without being recruited for the school's team is still a very beneficial part of an app). In other words, what I'm trying to argue is that Harvard (or Yale or Princeton or whatever other target) would, in general, rank a "jack of all trades, master of none" under someone who's a prodigy at one thing., all else being as equal as possible.
Don't plan on getting into Harvard or UPenn because you won't. Doesn't matter if you have perfect grades or test scores. If you aren't a half aboriginal half black 17 year old music prodigy that cured malaria with an empty Gogurt tube, then you don't have a shot.
Getting into a place like Michigan isn't hard at all. 30ish ACT/ 2000-2100 SAT and you're golden. Michigan isn't even top 20 and it's a target.
Thanks guy for the responses, I perfectly understand that other colleges also provide great education and my young cousin should have match/safety schools on his list. However I'm not feeling cool with the lack of transparency into the admission process (one never knows exactly for sure why he/she is admitted or denied). Seems like we're all like, "the secret of the secret sauce to success is .... secret".
I can make my question more specific. My cousin is having two options this summer: an internship at HSBC in the corporate banking sales / relationship department, or volunteer traveling to coastal areas to educate people there about guarding against storms, tsunamis, floods etc. For the admission game (especially into Wharton) which one you think is better?
To be fair, and I'm not trying to be harsh here, but it doesn't really matter that you (or I or anyone else) might have a problem with the lack of transparency with the admissions process. Admissions committees only have a duty to their institutions, and many of the decisions really might be largely arbitrary, just like the process for deciding who gets an interview in banking. IIRC, and I might not since it's been a while since I applied for college, each top school has a process for balancing out the student body, so that the entire class isn't just math geniuses from California. For example, if they notice that they've been admitting a lot of science-y types relative to others, say, humanities-types or athletes or whatever, then they may start to emphasize certain types of apps over others, and the issue then is that you have no control over when your application gets evaluated. So, yes, the process is somewhat arbitrary, but all you can do is try to put your best foot forward.
As for which route to take this summer, the HSBC internship would be better for Wharton in my (amateur) opinion. At the very least, it sets him up for recruiting for further roles in finance better than the other route. That being said, there are many other targets that could arguably view the second internship as preferable, especially the more liberal artsy type schools. Then again, I'd imagine that very few kids have held corporate banking internships prior to college, while many will have done some sort of volunteer work.
Unfortunately for your cousin all of the top ivy league schools get applications just as impressive as his by the thousands. They look for something especially unique that makes him stand out from everyone else with a perfect GPA, and outstanding SAT scores. Schools are so competitive in today's society that being just above average doesn't cut it anymore.
http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/03/26/how-to-get-into-stanford-with-bs-…
Basically it's more about depth than breadth.
2200+ sat 3.7+ gpa volunteer hours 3-6 AP's- 4's and 5's on all of them leadership position in a club or two a varsity sport national honor society or whatever job at McDonalds or whatever (shows good time management) couple awards a PASSION tutor inner city kids DONT be asian
Do this and you'll get into a few Stern, UVA, UMich if a urm then you'll probably sweep the IVY's and stanford.
You do not need that for umich...their average ACT is 30...I know many kids who go to umich and only 1 or 2 are like that.
That being said it is a good school and so is UVa and NYU. Don't even bother with HYPSM or Dartmouth, Caltech, Duke, etc. because you will get denied.
Take a look at the stats of the students who have been admitted or rejected at these target schools. These aren't all of the target schools just a few. You don't need to be on the USAMO team to get into Harvard.
Duke: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/1305455-official-du…
UMich: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-michigan-ann-arbor/
Columbia: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/1305028-officia…
Cornell:http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/1301182-official…
Dartmouth: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/1305026-official-…
Harvard Early Action: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1253171-official…
UPenn: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pennsylvania/1305031-off…
Brown: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1305022-official-b…
Yale: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1304717-official-ya…
Princeton: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1305032-offici…
I know in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he discussed how there are roughly 3 times the number of equally qualified applicants for Harvard than there are slots for them, and at that point there is no differentiation, it's just a crap shoot.
Only way to get into a target is to care enough to beat out (almost) everyone else in your HS.
My Harvard interviewer told me a couple years ago that Harvard breaks down by school district and puts a cap on the number of students it admits per district. Once they get the applications, they'll sort through em that way. If you're at Andover or something, or Alumni, or a minority, it probably doesn't affect you as much. But he basically told me that it doesn't matter how many superstar kids there were at great public schools. If you're not the super-super-duper-star, you're gonna get killed by the caps.
College admissions are getting ridiculously more competitive every year.
This year, Harvard and Stanford each accepted around 7%, Cornell accepted about 16.5%.
Cornell's acceptance rate today is the same as Yale's was in 2000.
Yeah it's terrible. Any other freshmen here? Glad to be done with the application process--my school is at 15% this year which is a large drop from a couple of years ago.
More importantly: do any of you see this trend reversing (due to the economy, outdated 4 year college model, etc.) or will all of the best schools have sub-10% acceptance rates a decade from now?
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