2025 Investment Banking Target Schools Ranking
Now that 2026SA investment banking recruiting is over, its time to discuss about the target schools in terms of per-capita placement, general prestige, in-house competition, etc.
Tier 1: HYPS+W (High Per-Capita Placement, School Prestige)
Tier 2: Columbia, MIT, non-Wharton UPenn, and UChicago (either lacking presence on Wall Street or having much more competition than Tier 1 schools).
Tier 3: Duke, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern
Tier 4: NYU, UMich, UCB, Georgetown, Notre Dame (Have undergrad business schools that lead to heightened competition a strong Wall Street Presence in term of Volume )
Tier 5: Top ranked LACs (Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, etc), washu, vanderbilt, Rice, UCLA, emory, USC, UVA, JHU
Tier 6: IU Kelley, PSU, UNC, Boston College, Northeastern, University of Texas
Open to altering the list depening on the comments. Note that there is no ranking within each tier
Does it make you feel good when you see your alma kids place well?
Northwestern tier 4
northwestern does not have undergrad business school, meaning that its econ/math/stat or finance interested kids are not competing against 400-500 hardos who major business. Plus the school ranks decent and has been sending many to wall street in the past few years, so its in tier 3 not tier 4
UVA and USC should most definitely be tier 4, as they have a ton of placement and many land top firms from what I've seen and heard.
UT Austin and Rice should switch spots imo. UT has a lot more placement and a much more solid pipeline in comparison.
Otherwise, solid ranking.
Where would you rank the top Canadian schools?
Ross and Georgetown with Cornell, Brown, and Northwestern. I’d order it Brown/Northwestern, Cornell/UMich Ross/Georgetown. Bump Dartmouth and Duke up a tier they’re way too low here.
uva and usc are def tier 3. uva places more than ucb with half the student population.
jhu is semi lol. they barely even have an econ program.
ut should be tier 5 minimum. crazy disrespect
rest is okay. dart maybe higher, northwestern maybe lower, duke maybe lower. all also fine there
GTown higher, USC higher, UVA higher - all by 1 tier.
Would swap Rice and UT. UCLA is weaker than everyone in Tier 5 with the exception of JHU, which has its own merits because basically everyone who recruits out of Hopkins gets something (so few kids are tying to).
I'd also probably bump Dartmouth to Tier 2 but prob a bit subjective.
the disrespect to uva...
I've mainly seen Rice place diversity candidates in NYC, let alone Houston. No way Rice > UT. It's the other way around (UT > Rice)
I don't think USC, Vanderbilt, Rice, and UCLA are the same tier as the others mentioned.
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