Are Arabs considered URMs in MBB recruiting?

My family is from Syria. I have a solid GPA (3.8) at a top public school (Virginia/Berkeley/Michigan). For the purposes of MBB recruiting, am I considered a URM?

7 Comments
 

URMs are individuals who are under represented a business or university in terms of a %, when compared to that ethnic group's % in the American continent's diaspora. According to wikipedia, there are about 1.5 million Arabs living in USA, which means they count for about 0.5~ % of the population. My best guess is that MBB is somewhere around 5-8% arab (within the USA)

so, in a word, no

.
 
NoName

I'm involved in recruiting at an MBB office and as far as I know, we don't give special consideration to minority groups (at least at the office level). Maybe there's something I don't know, though...

Often times affinity groups work with the school recruiting teams to identify and promote high potential candidates. They also help candidates with interview prep. That doesn't mean the bar is lower for them, but they just get extra resources from these groups.

 
Best Response
NoName

That could be true. I know that my firm does have "specialists" for minority groups -- I've just never heard/seen exactly what they do. Their recruiting process must run parallel to the normal process because I haven't interacted with them at all.

It is true (I'm involved in it). While there are special HR/recruiting staff dedicated to affinity group recruiting, that's not what I'm talking about here. Similar to how school teams are run, consulting staff in each affinity group (e.g., BA/A/AC in the African-American group) organize a process to help identify top candidates and prep them. They communicate back and forth with school teams (usually only the leads) to make sure both sides know about the high potential candidates and coordinate outreach. There also are on- and off-campus events hosted by affinity groups.

Based on what I know from my counterparts at other MBB, this exists in one form or another at all MBB--the level of investment (in terms of money and resources) depends on the affinity group, firm, and perhaps even office,

 

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