PE/Asset Management Out of undergrad

Yes, both private equity firms and traditional long-only asset management firms recruit straight from undergrad. However, these are two distinctly differently kinds of firms, and their recruiting processes are subsequently quite different as well.

Among PE firms, generally only the largest megafunds (e.g. Blackstone, Bain Capital) maintain undergraduate recruiting tracks, and they're usually reserved for students at top targets. Unless you go to Wharton, etc. I doubt this path will be feasible for most people.

Undergraduate recruiting at long-only Asset Management firms is a bit more open. Almost all of the major asset managers now have junior internship programs, including Fidelity, Wellington, T. Rowe, MFS, AllianceBernstein, the asset management division of JP Morgan, etc. You can also enter as a rising senior in some places. This is probably your best shot at directly entering the space-- unlike in PE, these AM firms prefer to recruit most of their first year associates straight from college, so their internship programs have public job postings.

However, I always advise people pursuing asset management as an undergraduate to be realistic about their odds. These AM firms don't have a lot of spots-- regarding undergraduates, these big firms now hire most of their full-times from their intern class. This year, I don't think Wellington even took applications from rising seniors, because too many of their interns accepted full-time offers. Fidelity, aka the largest traditional asset manager around, probably hires 10-20 junior interns. I interviewed for T. Rowe's fixed income associate program, and they told me upfront that they were hiring 3 seniors in the country this year (admittedly, T. Rowe's fixed income associate program is a relatively new compared to others - they only hired MBAs previously). Compare these numbers to the 200+ class sizes of bulge-bracket investment banks.