Sup guys, where should I go to school?

I don’t understand why Ridgemont never gets mentioned. Places well into IB. Exit opps are phenomenal.

So ill give my 2 cents, I posted briefly in the other thread. I think UVA is the best choice for going HF out of undergrad. UVA probably is not the best option for PE/IB but UVA has an incredible network at hedge funds due to John Griffin and Julian Robertson. Griffin donated a ton of money and started an investment class where he taught it himself, he ran one of the largest tiger cubs of the last decade, Blue Ridge (equivalent to a Lone Pine in its time) before shutting down. Julian also went out of his way to hire guys from UVA cause he loved the state so particularly in the tiger cub space you will find at least 1 person that went to UVA at virtually all the funds. I would say its the most common school except for wharton and harvard.

There are also a lot of UVA guys at Soroban, Dragoneer, Darsana, etc. so it isnt only the tiger cubs.

Dont wanna comment on any other dynamics but UVA is great for SM HFs specifically.

Can't go wrong with any of those schools that you mentioned, but as a current student at UVA/McIntire, I can vouch for the placement here. As another commenter mentioned, Julian Robertson and John Griffin indeed had/have strong connections with McIntire (UVA's undergrad business school to which you apply during your second year). McIntire consistently places kids into BX/KKR/Apollo for MF PE and has sent several into a few of those funds (Melvin, D1, & Light Street off the top of my head) as well as Point72. Definitely going to be tough to break into those places since competition for those spots is understandably competitive, but hopefully this insight can serve as a data point in your decision process. 

As everyone has said, UVA does a great job training and placing folks into HFs. Alumni network is also strong.

There's 2 paths for you: IB/PE --> HF or straight to HF. Still don't see many people successfully go straight to HF b/c they'd rather you just get trained for 1 year in IB. I'd narrow it down to UVA and Cornell, since I think Cornell seems to be a bit better at placement into IB.

Rule out Berkeley, the investing network is weak. Had friends struggle to break into the good HFs b/c of poor network.

Notre Dame has a good alumni network, but it's just tough to compare against UVA.

Lol this is the kid from the Dyson recruiting thread

SM HF out of any of these schools may be difficult (current junior at one of the schools who interviewed for a summer program with one of the funds you listed but ultimately ended up at a MM HF summer program (P72/Citadel)). If you’d like more info about the specifics of what school, what single manager, and what MM I can PM you without being anonymous. But I ultimately think that there are so few seats at the funds that you listed that, as long as you’re a top performer at any of the schools, you’d have a great shot of landing a seat later on in your career following top banking/PE/even MM HF undergrad programs. Just my two cents.

Please go to the school that you feel like you will be the most happy in. Please, take this advice. Stop thinking about HFs/ IBs watever, just enjoy your life in college. It's not worth it. 

Cornell. It’s not even close 

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By the time you're done with school, the desirability of working at these funds will probably be much lower than they are now. Don't underestimate performance chasing by not only the media and investors, but perspective employees. When I went to school the hot funds were Greenlight, Paulson, Pershing, Saba etc. No one had even heard of Tiger Global.

Echoing the above, just choose a school that you like, use it as a time to explore your interests and yourself, and don't be overly fixated on career. No one likes that kid that spends his entire life doing career clubs and networking events. Making friends and connections in school will be much more valuable than a HF job out of college.

All good schools from brand name perspective. If you are looking to have a good time notre dame and uva got nice looking gals while berkeley is... granola. Idk where you’re  from but the top kids in my high school either went to VTech, uva, or william & mary. The running joke was the smart kids went to tech and w&m while uva is where the kids who cheated off them went and honestly having worked with uva people out of school this seems to hold true more and more. The fact remains it sounds like you are super driven (hopefully for the right reasons) and will do well no matter where you go so just go to a school where you will feel comfortable and have a good tome.

I think Berkeley is underrated given its proximity to the technology industry and technology investing in general.  I know people from Berkeley at Matrix Capital Management (Tiger Cub), Light Street, Kingsford, Bridgewater etc. and many in venture (Battery Ventures, Accel) /growth equity (G Squared ,Stripes) / MM AND MF pe (Audax, Ares, Leonard Green, Alpine), so I wouldn't say the investor network is weak. I think at Berkeley, just like UVA, it is important to get involved in the right activities (Berkeley Investment Group) and be around peers that are focused on similar goals as you.

I know you're set on going straight into HF, but you could get a great IB analyst position from any of these schools and then go hard recruiting for HF. Don't stress too hard about this, man. Try to tour (even virtually), talk to students, get a feel for the type of people you'll spend the next four years with. Like others above said, these schools have incredibly different cultures. Just between UVA and Cal you have a massive difference in cultural conservatism and liberalism. Notre Dame and Cornell have their own cultures, too. You'll be best positioned for finance from the school where you fit the best. Look into each school's finance club. What do they center the club on? Are interested in Greek life? Look into the courses you'll have to take, do you think you could get a good GPA? Etc. There are a lot of intangibles at play and you'll thank yourself later if you go somewhere you can succeed and be happy.

I'd go with Cornell, 2 reasons. First, name brand actually matters a decent amount and I think Cornell beats out everyone else here. Look at some of the funds who have historically taken undergrad interns (Whale Rock, Matrix, Abdiel, etc) and if you LinkedIn stalk all their profiles, it seems they all went to schools with very strong brand names– often some mix of HYPSM. Don't get discouraged by that though. Know that it is doable via a ton of networking and some luck, and I hope you use this as inspiration to work harder instead.

Second, in the situation where you don't get an offer at one of these top HF's or a megafund PE (and let's be real here, both of these routes are ridiculously hard and sometimes takes sheer random luck so there's a decent chance this happens), you want to be at the school that would serve you best for IB recruiting. I assume – given your drive and passion – that you'd target mainly the top IB's (GS MS JPM). For these banks in particular, I believe Dyson has the slight edge. Hope this helps and best of luck!

So what did you go with?

shaquille_oatmeal_official

HS senior trying to decide between Cornell Dyson, UVA, Berkeley, and Notre Dame. On another discussion titled "Any info on Elliott", the thread basically turned into advice for where I should go to school, and I felt bad for kind of hijacking his thread. So a little context: dead set on a career in finance, and I'm looking to get to the buyside as quick as possible, ideally out of undergrad. Completely understand that MF PE or SM HF out of school is difficult, but doable from any of the schools I'm deciding between (right?). Fortunate enough to have strong connections to several BBs/EBs via family, and the reason I want to break into the buyside is that I'm really passionate about investing; not sure if I find banking intellectually stimulating. In the thread I accidentally hijacked, I made a list of HFs that I would give my left arm to work at, and I think that these funds will outperform in the next decade:

Holocene, Melvin, D1, Anomaly, Abdiel, Whale Rock, Altimeter, Alua, (former Viking CIO + senior Lone Pine PM recently launched this fund -- $2bn I think), XN (Former Soroban CIO), Eminence, Light Street, Dragoneer, and of course the 4-5 big Tiger cubs.

Going to do my best to get a high GPA, get into all the top clubs, network like crazy, and continue learning/building my investing acumen. Even if I do all of those, it's gonna be hard to break into one of those shops. My ultimate dream would be to break into one of those funds out of school (meaning try to get an internship at one of them, and then trying to impress my boss for a FT offer), or to break into MF PE, do that for 2 years, then go to one of those funds. Do you guys think either of those would be possible from the schools I mentioned? Some of the guys on the previous thread I mentioned were really surprised about how much I know: I am really interested in investing, I try to keep up with the industry to the best of my ability, and I'm surrounded by this stuff from my family. 

I see myself in NYC out of school (ideally). Berkeley has sick weather but is really far, Cornell is an ivy + I'm already in the business school, and UVA and Notre Dame are also really good. I'm sure the social life is great at all 4, and I'm sure I'd have fun at any of them. So, which school do you guys think would give me the best chance of landing a gig at one of those shops?

I’m also around your age and also have interest in the alternative investments space. I want to ask you what your favorite way of gathering info about the busyide is ? Do you use HFOBSERVER ?

East Great Falls

First off, congrats on the opportunity

I’d narrow it down to Cornell or UVA.

Pedigree of an Ivy might help with HF recruiting but either barely/not enough to justify > UVA. UVA much more fun but Cornell will give you Ivy League prestige, albeit less than the rest.