Yale SOM (with 30k scholarship) or Cornell Johnson (with 80% tuition) for IB?

An perspective is welcomed. I here that Johnson's IB immersion program is fantastic, but Yale seems to be on the serious upswing. I come from a humanities/social science background so I want a solid training in finance. Visited both schools and enjoyed Johnson more, but I am struggling with letting go of Yale because of the prestige, momentum, and proximity to NYC.

Any and all perspectives are welcomed.

 

I would go to Yale. Its rapid rise in the ranking, its pedigree and its reputation makes it the obvious choice in my opinion. In the long-run its a better investment - it will be a top 5 program. Cornell seems to be in decline.

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You'll get IB from either school so go with Yale-better name, proximity to NYC, not up in the middle of nowhere, very good banking placement, superstar finance professors. Trust me once you join the finance club you won't care too much abut missing out on the banking immersion program. And paying back the loans shouldn't be a problem if you can lockdown a IB offer; the difference is equivalent to roughly 2 years of pre-tax bonuses.

I'd only pick Cornell in this case if my financial situation were precarious.

 
MBAGrad10:

For IB, they're very similar and both place pretty well.

Ok. At this point I've been convinced by the posts to take yale out of the equation. I am still stuck with the following dilemma:

My goal for IB is public finance, i.e GS's Urban Investment Group. I will be targeting an associate summer internship that I can hopefully leverage to a full-time offer (At Goldman or at another BB). So alongside Yale and Cornell, I've been admitted to HKS (for the MPP) and Princeton Woodrow Wilson (for the MPA). Princeton is essentially the best public policy program in the country with a top-notch public finance program. It also comes with an automatic fellowship+stipend.

So the final decision now is between Cornell MBA with 80% tuition, and Princeton MPA with full tuition + stipend. From an intellectual standpoint, I think I would enjoy Princeton a lot more, and from my conversations, I think the student body is simply stronger. So which path would be more feasible for my goal of public finance IB? Would banks look at a Princeton MPA (with a public finance concentration) as too weird?

Again..thank you all for putting up with my questions. I am still learning up on the industry.

 
Best Response

As someone going through the process and who ended up deciding between two M7s for IB, I'll give you my view.

The claim that Yale is "top 5" is outlandish, it's not. It's up and coming because Dean Snyder is doing the same thing he did at Booth, which is fund raise better and trim the old way of doing things in favor of making the school more "corporate" like the Columbia/Wharton/etcs of the world. Traditionally Yale had been a more public interest focused MBA program, they are moving away from that rapidly. That said, this history means that they don't have the deep ties with recruiters that have developed over the last few decades that other schools have. At a place like Goldman/MS/JPM you have Wharton, HBS, and CBS people littered across the MD ranks, Yale doesn't have this. Because of that Yale still underperforms it's peer schools (Darden/Stern/Tuck/Fuqua) in recruiting for traditional banking and consulting jobs.

That said, It's still probably a better brand name than Johnson. I can tell you for a fact that the top BBs and EBs don't consider Johnson a "target" school. Yale does a really good job with their immersion program but the vast majority of looks you'll be getting are at the second tier BBs and MMs. You can definitely get IB from both, but this came into my decision making when trying to decide if going for a heavy scholarship at Johnson was worth it. Yale has some of the top banks starting to come on campus because Dean Snyder is focusing on getting them there. Also, take this FWIW, but i've never met students at Yale who didn't enjoy their time, but i've definitely met Johnson students who had bad things to say about the program.

I think this comes down to one thing for me. If you are happy with banking, wherever it may be, and wouldn't be upset if you ended up working at Deutsche/CS/UBS instead of GS/MS/Evercore then you can definitely do this at Johnson and the immersion program will do a great job preparing you for that career. Yale gives you more of a chance at GS/MS/Evercore but it doesn't have the breadth of relationships with the second tier BBs, which I think makes it a bit more of a higher risk but higher reward program.

That's, at least, how I would look at it if I were you. Good luck.

 

Ok. At this point I've been convinced by the posts to take yale out of the equation. I am still stuck with the following dilemma:

My goal for IB is public finance, i.e GS's Urban Investment Group. I will be targeting an associate summer internship that I can hopefully leverage to a full-time offer (At Goldman or at another BB). So alongside Yale and Cornell, I've been admitted to HKS (for the MPP) and Princeton Woodrow Wilson (for the MPA). Princeton is essentially the best public policy program in the country with a top-notch public finance program. It also comes with an automatic fellowship+stipend.

So the final decision now is between Cornell MBA with 80% tuition, and Princeton MPA with full tuition + stipend. From an intellectual standpoint, I think I would enjoy Princeton a lot more, and from my conversations, I think the student body is simply stronger. So which path would be more feasible for my goal of public finance IB? Would banks look at a Princeton MPA (with a public finance concentration) as too weird?

Again..thank you all for putting up with my questions. I am still learning up on the industry.

 

Quick glance at employment reports had Cornell at 18% IB and Yale at 12%. Is it really worth approximately 65k extra for an "up and coming" program (I mean who cares if they are top 5 20 years after you're done with your MBA, at that point your career speaks for itself). Top banking recruiters at Johnson, according to the report, were JPM, Citi, BAML, and CS. It seems to me like while you may not get the MS/GS/EB crowd there are more than enough BBs to choose from.

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BobTheBaker:

Quick glance at employment reports had Cornell at 18% IB and Yale at 12%. Is it really worth approximately 65k extra for an "up and coming" program (I mean who cares if they are top 5 20 years after you're done with your MBA, at that point your career speaks for itself). Top banking recruiters at Johnson, according to the report, were JPM, Citi, BAML, and CS. It seems to me like while you may not get the MS/GS/EB crowd there are more than enough BBs to choose from.

Ok. At this point I've been convinced by the posts to take yale out of the equation. I am still stuck with the following dilemma:

My goal for IB is public finance, i.e GS's Urban Investment Group. I will be targeting an associate summer internship that I can hopefully leverage to a full-time offer (At Goldman or at another BB). So alongside Yale and Cornell, I've been admitted to HKS (for the MPP) and Princeton Woodrow Wilson (for the MPA). Princeton is essentially the best public policy program in the country with a top-notch public finance program. It also comes with an automatic fellowship+stipend.

So the final decision now is between Cornell MBA with 80% tuition, and Princeton MPA with full tuition + stipend. From an intellectual standpoint, I think I would enjoy Princeton a lot more, and from my conversations, I think the student body is simply stronger. So which path would be more feasible for my goal of public finance IB? Would banks look at a Princeton MPA (with a public finance concentration) as too weird?

Again..thank you all for putting up with my questions. I am still learning up on the industry.

 

UIG at GS is basically socially conscious investing. They are regularly involved in low income housing projects, some green bonds/education bonds, etc. Which is very different from the public finance coverage group in banking. Johnson is unlikely to get you into UIG as it's extremely tough to get into (Lloyd's daughter worked there). Banking hiring is generalist at Goldman and, again, Johnson is unlikely to get you to a top BB.

But if you want to do public finance at a lower tier BB you can definitely do that.

 
AllDay_028:

UIG at GS is basically socially conscious investing. They are regularly involved in low income housing projects, some green bonds/education bonds, etc. Which is very different from the public finance coverage group in banking. Johnson is unlikely to get you into UIG as it's extremely tough to get into (Lloyd's daughter worked there). Banking hiring is generalist at Goldman and, again, Johnson is unlikely to get you to a top BB.

But if you want to do public finance at a lower tier BB you can definitely do that.

Got it. So for impact investing at BBs (such as UIG or JP Morgan's Social Finance), do you think that a princeton MPA makes sense?

 

i know a Cornell MBA currently working in Public Finance at BAML doing work underwriting bond offerings and the like. And Public Finance is one of their top groups. He said he had a pretty easy time getting the role because everyone who recruited there was gunning for Lev Fin and or other more traditional IB groups, even though PF slots were limited.

No idea about Princeton but I know that GS, Citi, and a couple of other banks have recruited in the past at HKS. I'd check with Princeton's career center and ask for references to any alumni who've gone that route. Given what they're offering you they'll likely bend over backwards to accommodate any requests.

 

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