Are the elite boutiques more selective?

On this site people tend to say that places like Greenhill/Evercore are way harder to get into than bulge brackets. Is this true, though? While they do have much smaller classes a MUCH smaller number of kids (albeit of higher quality) apply there outside the hardcore finance places like Wharton/NYU Stern.

I'd wager that most of the kids at Harvard/Yale haven't heard of those firms, and kids from non-targeted firms don't bother to send in online apps unlike say Morgan Stanley, which gets thousands of applications for IB from every school

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From my experience kids at most non-Wharton targets, especially the smart kids with high GPAs without finance experience who got offers after applying for the hell of it, knew about the BB, but had never heard of any of the boutiques or never bothered to apply. Kids with offers at Merrill, etc. haven't heard of or don't know much about Lazard, example.

 

Anyone who would be your real competition for a top bb group (ie people with a strong interest in banking) would certainly have heard of the elite boutiques and would probably be applying to them as well. So, while there might be fewer total applicants to the boutiques, they are effectively just as competitive as top bb groups since you'll still need to beat out the very top candidates.

 
machinegunfunkI'd wager that most of the kids at Harvard/Yale haven't heard of those firms

I can't answer the rest of this question, but I'd like to take the other side of this wager. The kids at HYP who want to do finance are every bit as plugged in as the kids at Wharton and Stern, except they're smarter than the kids at Stern.

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machinegunfunkI'd wager that most of the kids at Harvard/Yale haven't heard of those firms

I can't answer the rest of this question, but I'd like to take the other side of this wager. The kids at HYP who want to do finance are every bit as plugged in as the kids at Wharton and Stern, except they're smarter than the kids at Stern.

To be fair, OP said "most of the kids at HYP," not "most of the kids at HYP interested in finance," so given that those interested in finance are a minority and that if you weren't interested in finance you wouldn't have heard of most boutiques, I think you'd lose your bet.

Back when I was recruiting (Non-HYP Ivy), nobody was interested in boutiques. I guess the crisis might have changed that but I think that boutiques are given an inordinate amount of attention on this forum relative to the outside world.

 
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Trust me, everyone applying and competing for IBD positions has heard of Evercore, Greenhill, and Lazard.

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If you're at a B-school getting an MBA and going to or returning to banking, you'll know about the elite boutiques. If you're an undergrad trying out a SA position or FT position in IB somewhere, you may or may not have heard of the boutiques. As hard as it is to believe, many undergrads I've spoken to just apply broadly to BBs and don't really know much of anything about the industry.

 

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