Is this true? Have heard from both my undergrad / MBA and others, including on-campus recruiting. Less and less students are joining info sessions, joining IB clubs... there aren't many interested. Feeling that more are going for AI startups, direct buyside, or something completely niche / unorthodox finance. What gives?
Ignore title, I'm an associate at a BB/EB
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No. I go to a public target school whose main industry is not Investment Banking, and our interest meetings are still drawing hundreds of students. If anything, I'd say there is far more interest in IB now more than ever. If I had to guess, I think the reason it feels like that is because of how crazily competitive the recruiting process has become. Even "mid/low tier" IB clubs at my school have low single digit acceptance rates (3-5%), so only so many students can actually be a part of these organizations. While there is a large number of people going directly into buy side work, or into tech or start ups, it's not making any real meaningful change in the number of students recruiting for IB. This is probably a school specific issue.
grats on berk
This could not be further from the truth — IB club memberships & IB recruiting classes across both undergrad and MBA programs are at all-time highs.
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