Why did YOU go to your shitty undergraduate nontarget school?

dude, are you high?

My parents and my college counselors basically ran the show and I was too much of a pussy to stand up and decide for myself where I was going to apply. In the end, there was only one place that sort of interested me, non-target nonetheless, and that's where I ended up. Fortunately, I got out of that hellhole, took control of my own life, and transferred. If your parents are like mine, stand up for your desires and fight the power. Everyone will be happy if the student enjoys where they go to school. The student will be pissed if mommy and daddy ran the college selection process for them.

Schools are only non target if you dream of being a banker since before college. I think many students pick a school and then once they are half way through, decide they want to be a bankers and realized they are screwed.

Because I never wanted to have any delusions of being anything other than mediocre. Thanks to my Ivy and Ivy-equivalent friends, I will never forget that my state-funded undergraduate education will forever trump my work ethic and I should give up trying to even sniff the air of the FO.

Location. Mine's a non-target for a lot of places, but it's good for this region.

Welcome to the regret club

cuz I wanted to be lazy...

I used to be in the Army, and just really wanted to move back to my home state. I was so busy fighting wars that I didn't think about what I wanted to do after college. I just wanted to slow things down a bit for a little while. I didn't even know what IB was a year ago. I'm not too worried about it though -- I figure if you excel at whatever you do, where ever you are, work really hard, network as much as possible, and learn everything you can from everyone you meet, you can succeed at whatever you decide you want to do.

Because my grades weren't good enough in high school, also I had no idea I'd want to be in ibanking. My 3.1/1400/32 couldn't get me into Northwestern/Michigan/Virginia type schools, much less any ivy. Thankfully, I ended up going to a top 50 state school that has lots of alumni around, and is a place where all the BB recruit (although unfortunately no elite boutiques comes here), so it worked out alright.

I love reading these threads. Don't forget you still need to put in your 100 hrs/week man. Isn't ego what fucks over half of the would be greats? I feel ya though, just remember a little humility aint a bad thing... but hey, only a few guys from GS told me that on what they look for.

sick_willy:

dude, are you high?

Because I wanted to be close to my family while my father was dying, I didn't want my siblings to feel inferior, and also because some ignorant shithead told me that the prestige of an Ivy was bullshit and I should save money, so I dropped out of the process. The girl I had competed with throughout high school with for class treasurer (and who had lower grades than me) got accepted to that same Ivy, and went to the same state school as me, but that's because she's lazy and didn't want to be the 'poor' girl on campus.

I still found a job, but for grad school, I'm pushing the envelope as far as possible and becoming a prestige whore - kiss my ass.

YO man i feel you on this...coming out of high school i was in the top 10 percent of my class with a 94.8 GPA, Honor Society, Captain of two sports teams. All that good stuff. Was accepted into Ohio State, James Madison, and St.Johns University.Nowhere necessarily great or Ivy, but better than where ive been and where im at. At the time I was fuckkin young and stupid. All I cared about was sports and wanted to be a gym teacher. So my whole freshman year I played two sports and taught annoying little kids how to throw footballs and play hop scotch. After a year of that I realized I could do much more than that and had the opportunity to stack the cake in the finance field and transferred to a school where I could do finance.

Unfortunately I was still naive to the fact that school name, quality of program and reputation matters. I recently became interested in IB and am beginning to see the climb uphill that I have in front of me. Luckily I have never met someone who worked harder than myself whether at work or on the field so I should fare well if I network my ass off and just do right and kill everything haha

Anyway, nice to see im not the only one taking the uphill route, with what seems like potholes, roadblocks, and snipers tryna shoot you down. GOODLUCK to anyone on this site, but especially those who are tryna' come up through the "non-target" struggle.

Free Tuition and Hot women

i was an above-average but not excellent student in high school. i got into a few top 10 undergraduate engineering programs, but chose to go to a school with a better overall reputation (top 50) and a decent engineering program. a few years into it, i desperately wanted out of engineering and wanted to work in some sort of business/finance role. this is when i learned about target schools and thought to myself "FML".

biggest regret is that there were less selective schools out there that had better opportunities for finance. my school had no undergraduate business program and the recruiting was very weak (Big 4 Advisory was about as good as it got, and they never hired anyone from my school). i probably wouldn't have gotten into any "targets" if i tried, but easily had the stats for most "semi-targets".

.

I was too busy being a fucking rock star in high school. Captain of three sport's teams and homecoming king meant my weekends were filled with pussy, booze, and ecstacy (the drug).

I was in all honors classes with all the top students and they hated me because I gave most of them swirlies at some point during their childhood. I didn't know what a fucking ivy was when I graduated so I went to a state school that was 60% female and played div 1 sports.

I realized towards the end of my junior year that given my field of study, in the real world I would no longer be superior so I changed my direction (because I'm a power whore). Landed an IB spot at a shitty regional, finished an MS at a top 15 school jumped into a corporate strategy role and will probably end up in a top 10 MBA program and jump back to IB.

To all those fucks from my high school classes that went off to the best schools in the nation: I will always be better than you.

Graduated top 10%, literally never studied in high school. Did homework before the tardy bell rang. Severe underachiever, could've been valedictorian.

Got denied at my dream school semi target, crushed. Got denied at my back up (my dumb blonde cheerleader friend who I let cheat off me got in), so I was like fuck it. Went to college with all my buddies. Transferred a year later to a non target. Not until recently did I learn about how much your school can make or break you

FML

because i didnt want to graduate with loads of debt. I got into 2 semis, but they didnt offer me enough fin aid. The only thing that saved me was networking and proving i actually know what the fuck im doing.

Because it is close to 100k cheaper than the semi-target I could have gone to.

Funny thing in life that it all comes down to THOSE people from HS. You will always compare yourself against them. True for almost anyone.

Because I just came to America the year before and did not know shit, plus the full tuition.

Got into 2 of the top 3 engineering programs, didn't apply to the 3rd, and chose to go to a school towards the back of the top 10 in engineering because of scholarships and athletics.

I had no idea that anyone in finance did anything but teller at the bank or broker stocks. I was also told I had to study engineering because I was good at math, and I would have been 4th generation in my family in that field. I had one family member go to a top Ivy, and he told me that I would hate it and that the people sucked (he did feel this way).

I ended up transferring schools to switch to finance after I decided that banking was what I wanted to do. I ended up at my home state public U because it had some on-campus recruiting and was the cheapest option. It seems to have carried me where I wanted to go.

thought i was going to the nba? :p

Basically because I had no idea how the system worked. I was a very good student in high school. But, everyone I knew was under the impression that all you had to do was work hard and find college that "fit you", and after that you could do whatever you wanted. Also, everyone insisted that the admissions process at top schools wasn't worth it. Everyone also told me that the top schools were just a bunch of boring snobs. In hindsight, a lot of that was probably jealousy.

I might also add that I had no idea just how awful an education you can get from a college if you aren't careful about where you go.

The high school I went to was ranked top 3 in Texas, it was a public school but had no sports and just had a bunch of fucking nerds. You had to apply to the school in 8th grade to get in. The school required us to be very independent and responsible when it came to doing our work. We didn't have traditional classrooms, instead we had big ass rooms with all grade levels who would sit there and do their work. We only got one seminar each week on the subject matter we were studying. It was a very unique school.

My friend and I would always compete to see who would have the higher calculus test scores, this same friend got into Princeton. I had the grades in high school to get into a pretty decent program but I never applied to any schools. I graduated a semester early and spent a year working at walmart as a cartpusher. I always knew I was going to go to college but decided to relax a bit before I started, my parents absolutely hated me for this.

I was A-, B+ type of a student who just didn't give a shit, I only took interest in shit that I was truly interested in. I remember taking the SAT without studying a single minute (just thinking about this makes me cringe with disbelief), I still managed to score relatively high (1810 out of 2400).

After my one year stint as a bum, I began school at a local community college then eventually transferred to a state school. Now I'm done with college and looking to break into the industry (eventually). No regrets. It's funny how ones mentality can change in just a few years.

Because at 17 years old I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to be in life. And I was recruited to play college basketball at a lot of the Div III schools, so I went to one and played varsity for 4 years. I wouldn't trade that experience or my friendships for HYP.

This shit can't be fucking serious. OP had to be making a joke, right?

TK: I think he was just wondering why people chose to go their schools (short went to a non-target, as well) when going to a target is hugely important for breaking into certain areas of finance. Just chose to present it in an inflammatory manner, because he's a douche.

There are no targets or non targets. All that matters is gettin the JOB done.

WINNING!!!1

yes i was trashed. i went out with some new guys starting at my firm and raided buy one get one sangria pitchers in the east village and hit on lesbian couples at the tapas bar we were at.

but yes i went to a non target and i was curious as to why people went to the schools they went to :>

My school had a pretty good political science program, and I went for free. After some really good political internships, my aspirations obviously switched to finance. At that moment, I found myself at a semi-target in a non-target major. That was a challenge to overcome.

Because I didn't want to go to college when I was in high school. I only wanted to finish school and start working for the family business, which is in commercial construction. Even though I did a lot office work, I figured out about a year or so into it that I couldn't do it forever. My dad makes great money, but I just can't see myself living in Cincinnati forever and doing what he does. I now plan on aiming for a management masters or a top accounting program, assuming noting really changes from now until I graduate.

Top career paths in consulting, banking, and other finance related fields are beyond what I'll be able to break into most likely, unless I can network like a maniac or meet just the right people.

coke was also a lot easier to get at nontarget

That's easy...

I never was interested in going to an Ivy League School. I'd go ahead and reread that line one more time. I wasn't interested in it. Plain and simple. I liked the schools I applied to and chose the one that I thought I would best like of the schools I got into and ended up spending 4 years at a non-target.

To second ANT, I didn't know I wanted to be in banking until it was too late.

Ended up graduating top of my class at a shit-tier, non-target university. Right after undergrad I attended a somewhat reputable MSF program and that definitely leveled the playing field.

I was a good student in HS and had a good GPA/ECs, but I didn't get good advice from hs counselors and coupled with bad SAT scores ended up at a non-target school, where I hated it there, applied myself, matured and got into my target school.

I honestly believe that if a person makes amends and you know changes than they should be given a second chance to transfer. I'd also add that unless you're miserable @ your school you shouldn't transfer b/c in my experience it is a difficult process and being the new kid/student in a school is even more difficult.

Frankly this board is WAY WAY WAY TOO CONCERNED abt this target/non-target/etc. crap. I've been on both sides of the fence, and can honestly say this. You should only go to a target if you are truly ready to excel (i.e be THE BIG FISH IN THE BIG POND), what people don't realize is that you need a certain GPA/be in a certain rank to take advantage of the many opportunities. You don't do that. You're honestly better of going to a less well-known school, doing well/learning the material/networking, then flunking at some target.

"good" schools are almost as shitty and useless as "bad" schools. Home of the gender studies student and the 4.0 automaton. What ever happened to the school of hard knocks.

i can definitely agree that the prestige is bS and youll find tons of smart kids at state schools and wookies at the ivies and whatnot, in the end the connections and whatnot matter

i am sure the majority of us, having experienced the 'pain' of trying to find a solid job out of undergrad doing what we want, would go ahead and ensure that our potential grad schools had these recruiting posts lined up already. if nothing else that is the one thing we can learn from our experiences

Planned on transferring to a semi-target, and still had no idea what I wanted to do (wasn't even considering finance)... Found a good group of friends, girlfriend, etc. Still don't really regret it too much... I guess...

Never cared about prestige or usnwr rankings. I chose my ug because of a specific program/major.

I applied to just one school. Never even contemplated going to a "better" school or the potential careers available to me. Luckily things ended up working out for me.

I had good test scores and got into a number of northeastern targets. Also had a recruiter from Cornell who kept begging me to apply, but I explained to him that unless Cornell could offer me a scholarship (it couldn't), I'd already been accepted at less-expensive UIUC which had a better CS program.

After the euphoria of getting into some of the "target" schools calmed down, my Dad sat me down and explained that he didn't get a dime from his parents and I was lucky- I was going to get in-state tuition from him. I could either go to the private schools I was accepted at and graduate $100K in debt, or I could go to UIUC.

At the time, the bottom of the tech bust, I was hearing stories about MIT and Stanford grads with CS degrees and good grades getting $10/hour jobs at McDonald's. To an 18 year-old kid against that backdrop, the #4 CS school in the country with no debt looked pretty appealing compared to the #1 CS school in the country with $100K in debt. And it turned out to be the right choice for me, too. I'm still trying to help most of the MIT and CMU grads who started the same year as me get out of analytics, although also trying to save some room for other non-target kids. While the MIT and CMU grads are paying off student loans, I am building up a huge portfolio of dividend stocks.

Bottom line, if you can't afford to go to a private school, study engineering at a state school and work your butt off.

ITT Justifications and self hatred from men with small penises

I went to a state school because I felt like it.

I got into two of my target schools: the University of Chicago and Columbia. My grades were pretty good, I took all the AP classes I could take, scored a 1420 on my SAT's, 2150 total. I was all set and then I screwed up one of my classes by forging a signature for science fair. The class was a joke and the teacher let up run rampant in another room for half the year up until science fair. So I got kicked out of both schools and didn't even get accepted into the other schools I applied to after early decision. I didn't know what investment banking was or even what finance was back then, but I still wanted to go into it so I did finance at Florida State University. The teachers sucked. I've learned more from Khan academy than any of my teachers at FSU. I graduated in 3 years and I've been working for a year now. I'm about to take the GMAT. I think I can score above 700, but I just don't know if I will be able to get into any good schools for a masters in finance or mgmt. After I take the GMAT and apply to schools, I plan on trying to find a banking internship. A lot of this is my fault, but sometimes I wish I had someone to guide me through this process like I do all the time with my siblings. My dad knows a lot about finance and didn't bother to explain anything to me. I'm really glad I found this website. So any advice on how I can get in?

I don't know about you guys, but I really didn't know what was out there as far as jobs go when I was a 16/17 year old looking at colleges. There were a few people that knew EXACTLY what they wanted to study in college already (journalism, computer science, medicine), but there wasn't anything I learned in school that really interested me that much to know in advance. There were some classes I liked (mostly history), but I didn't want to be a history major. I was born in 1982, so yes, we did have the internet (T-1 lines at school) in 1998, but I can't remember spending any time researching careers as a junior in high school, or having internet forums such as WSO available.

Heck, even if there were such things, I didn't think that were I went to college would really matter, as long as it was a school that people had actually heard of and was at least a certain size. Of my classmates that didn't shoot for ivy league or better quality schools, a handful of them all went to University of MD college park. I wanted to be further from home (no real logical reason though) and tried another school closer to Baltimore and picked geography as a major... I was very interested in city zoning for some reason (probably from playing many hours of SimCity).

After a year, it got pretty boring and I realized that I would be sitting in front of the computer looking at maps all day long, so I wanted to pick soccer up again, since I had played at a high level in HS, but didn't try and play in college. I transferred to a D3 school and played a few years, and had some great experiences with that, while changing over to exercise science, and starting a career in coaching. I ended up coaching travel soccer teams around northern virginia and maryland, and making a pretty decent living for someone 1-2 years out of school.

I hadn't even CONSIDERED the financial industry at that point (all i knew about it was that the people I knew that worked in it worked a LOT, and seemed to be depressed and have no life outside of work), but I injured my ACL after 2 years of coaching and training soccer players. I looked at some of my former high school classmates, and it was a rude awakening... I felt that they were really starting to pull ahead professionally and financially, and I realized that coaching would just lead to more coaching, and the cycle continues.

It took me a while to see what was out there, and then eventually I decided to go back to school. Looking back, I feel my involvement in athletics has shaped my personality and my desire/ability to succeed in work and in life, so I have no regrets. It was difficult starting over, but I think that everyone has to prove to themselves that they can make it.

We all have our own journey in life - in reality, you are only competing with yourself, and worry about what others do, since you determine your own happiness and level of success in life. Take it one step at a time and enjoy the journey to fulfill your potential as a person.

to follow up with my last comment, I know a few people that really pursued the financial industry very early on, went to target schools, made the right moves from the beginning, and have their careers made, pretty much. And... all of them are so tied to their work, that they have really lost any sense of work/life balance (their social skills are lagging, and their health is not exactly good, some of them are in deteriorating marriages and also have young children). They probably aren't aware of it, but after keeping that kind of routine up for 8+ years, i guess you just accept it as the norm. I'll probably be working this kind of schedule myself soon, but I am glad that I know what else is out there in life as an adult, rather than not have a lot of exposure to the world outside of work or school since 22.

If you're going to sacrifice a lot to earn the big bucks, you should take care of your health and have some social skills so you can enjoy what you've earned.

Being from a target school makes life a lot easier with on campus recruiting, alumni network, etc. but it all comes down to YOUR personal drive and networking.

My background: small SE top 50 liberal arts school>>top 30 MS Finance program>>analyst role on a trading desk>>analyst role in a top 10-15 international investment banking group.

Definitely possible to get to where you want to be but you are just set back on the time curve and it takes longer and more drastic moves to catch up to someone who went to a target school and got into banking right out of undergrad.

Then again, if you get a solid junior year internship at a major name bank where you went to school is less of an issue. It's all about getting your foot in the door and making yourself look "wanted"

I had an amazing background, until the end of high school. My parents didn't know shit about selecting colleges, and I didn't know/care enough to do any real research on career opportunities.

In the end, I went to a shitty liberal arts school with ~2500 kids. My teachers were uninspiring, and I pulled a whopping 2.3GPA by graduation.

4 years I wish I could take back every second of.