Are there more kids from non-target schools in IB now?

Sounds like nowadays many IB groups are taking people from a variety of colleges which is helps diversify the quality of the hiring pool. 

What type of college did you attend prior to IB? 

What type of college did you attend?

Ivy League
15% (28 votes)
Target School
23% (41 votes)
Semi Target School
25% (45 votes)
Non Target School
37% (68 votes)
Total votes: 182
24 Comments
 

Everyone in my team went to a target except one principal and he’s been working for 20 years. This is in the UK so it might be different in the US.

 

Since when were there more non target schools in IB? My group has 5 analysts from such places and they were all basically valedictorians or close at their college, so they likely would have done well at any ivy or top tier school 

 

This is a tough question to answer because the definition of a target school has expanded so much. For example, is UT a target school now? What about Indiana? For some banks, the answer is yes, but for others it’s not.

Based on your description, which category would that most logically fit into.. 

 

Don’t most the ivy grads want to do SWE or something more challenging than IB?

 

Yeah looks like it - haven't met many ivy league grads aside from penn and columbia

 

the definition of target has expanded, but relative to what was a target 10 years ago, yes, there are way way more kids coming from schools not in the target classification 10-20 years ago

 
Most Helpful

Cmon guys we gotta look out for fellow non target grads

If you see an applicant from even a school you didn’t go to but know the struggle of people coming from that program applying to IB, why not give the applicant an interview if they have a strong resume?? Kids who went to HYP get interviewed at every place they apply, even when none of the people picking resumes went there 

 

can assure you that hyp kids do not get first rounds everywhere even with high gpas and networking, sans diversity. Maybe it was different pre-covid, but firms now have caps on how many of us they can give first rounds to, and when 1/3 of your class is applying to these things, most of whom have family connections, it’s hard to get one of those spots. I’m sure if you took out nepo kids, hyp placements would at best look like a UVA, UNC type school.

source: many friends with 3.8+ at HYP that barely got any first rounds and ended up doing consulting

 

People at ivies are working smarter. Tech pays the same and you can work 40-50 hours / week, WFH every other day or even every day. 

 

In 1978, Harvard admitted 2,200 students, while in 2023, it admitted 1,942. I’d guess that this trend is mostly consistent across target schools. Meanwhile, the American population has grown by 50% in that same time, with GDP tracking accordingly.

While the number of target kids has pretty much stayed the same, I would imagine the number of seats in IB over time has definitely grown with the scale of the economy and industry. Someone’s gotta fill those seats.

 

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