northwestern vs cornell for a hs senior who wants to work in a hedge fund one day

First off, I’m across the pond, so take this with a pinch of salt. To your question, if you work hard and genuinely love what you’re doing, you can make it from either university. So I don’t think this is really an argument about whether one school opens dramatically more doors than the other, although Cornell does have an edge in name recognition. I think the question is how the name carries 10, 20, or 30 years down the line. The world can be shallow, and first impressions go farther than we like to admit. I studied at Warwick and UCL. Imagine a fund full of LSE/Imperial/UCL/Warwick graduates, that’s obviously a very strong group (academically). But it still doesn’t quite have the same effect as being able to say to an LP “we only hire Oxbridge graduates". Oxbridge has a kind of instant recognition and “wow” factor that very few institutions have. I think there’s a similar dynamic with Cornell vs Northwestern. Cornell is an Ivy League university, Northwestern isn’t. This will mean something to a lot of people, particularly outside the US, and the Cornell name will probably carry greater immediate weight. But more than that, this is actually about signalling. Fairly or unfairly, certain institutions have the power to say “This person has already been selected and vetted by an institution that everyone recognises and respects". If that person later falls short, nobody is going to look at the Cornell name and think you were unreasonable for taking the chance on them. Institutional stamps like these can carry a lot of weight, particularly as you get further into your career and first impressions become increasingly compressed.

That said, I definitely wouldn’t frame Northwestern as a materially worse outcome. If NU is the much more likely option, I’d be very happy with it. And that aside, the greatest equaliser will always be what you ultimately achieve and not the branding of where you studied or worked.