Berkeley vs UW Seattle
Hey, I was wondering if there is a big difference in career opportunities from UW Seattle and Berkeley for the West coast. (I live in Seattle) I know in past forums UW has been called a non target, but I also know Seattle’s business community is growing as UW is up to 19th in US News undergrad business rankings. How is UW compared to Berkeley now? Will there be any on campus recruiting for finance (mc, ib, hf, am, etc)? Again, I want to stay west coast. Thanks
I dont care if UW Seattle is ranked Top 10 or Top 100. Pick Berkeley.
I dont know which business community you are referring too but AMZN and MSFT will def prefer a berkeley kid over UW. I am aware of UW’s alum presence in SEA tech scene but its nowhere close
UW is tremendously worse. No OCR. These schools are not comparable.
I hope you have a reliable source for making statements like this. This kid is trying to make a college decision.
UW has an undergrad business school?
Foster’s School of Imaginary Business
Berkeley is #2 on the West Coast for finance recruiting after Stanford (a very distant #2) and UW Seattle isn't even on the radar for most firms. Pretty intuitive what to do here.
I’m a current student at UW Foster. Here are my thoughts:
Foster is a solid program if you want to recruit for the local tech firms (AMZN, MSFT, EXPE, etc). We have a solid alumni base at most of these and plenty of campus recruiting/networking events (for example, I was a part of a program where we would meet with alumni at MSFT’s HQ once a week; we have a similar program with AMZN as well). I was able to interview with both AMZN and MSFT and have plenty of buddies (who did Foster or CS) who work/interned at these firms. If you do well in your classes and network, I’m sure you would be fine at UW for recruiting with the local tech firms.
As for consulting, we do have MBB OCR but most opportunities will come from the Big 4, who recruit heavily at UW (particularly Foster). Again, if you have good grades, it’s not too hard to get first rounds with Bain/BCG. Have a few friends who got offers this year.
Most of my recruiting efforts were focused on banking, particularly for SF and NY. There are a few of us at Foster who did break into banking, but very few placed in SF compared to Berkeley grads (when I went on a UW-hosted networking trip to SF, not surprisingly, many of the Analysts and Associates we met came from Berkeley/UCLA). The only reason I was able to get an SA offer at a BB in NY was because I had a ton of internships, including IB at a relatively well known boutique in Seattle (basically got lucky and leveraged past experiences).
It’s definitely possible to break in from Foster but I guarantee you Berkeley’s brand and alumni would take you farther, particularly if you wan to do banking. If you want to end up at a boutique in Seattle, Foster would be a great choice. But if you have aspirations to end up at a BB in SF, go for Berkeley (there are barely any BB’s with IB groups in Seattle; most are commercial banking/PWM).
This decision really should come down to how scrappy you are and whether tuition is a huge factor (in state vs out of state). I’m going to be graduating loan free but if I had the chance to attend Berkeley, even with loans, I probably would have. Best of luck and feel free to PM.