Cornell Hotel vs Notre Dame Econ vs Vanderbilt HOD/Econ – IB Placement Help?
High school senior trying to evaluate them specifically for investment banking placement and finance prestige. IB (likely NYC BB/EB) is my intended path, so recruiting strength is a key factor.
My options:
- Vanderbilt – Admitted for Human & Organizational Development (HOD); plan to double major in Econ or switch entirely to Econ.
- Notre Dame – Admitted as an Econ major in Arts & Letters; hoping to internally transfer into Mendoza.
- Cornell – In the Hotel School, with the option to transfer to A&S Econ if that improves recruiting outcomes.
I’m leaning toward Vandy because I think I’d enjoy the experience the most. But I’m trying to gauge whether I'd be giving up significantly better IB access at ND or Cornell. I don’t know many people at ND and don’t quite fit the typical student vibe, and I’m unsure how being in Hotel at Cornell affects generalist finance recruiting.
Would love insight on:
- How realistic is breaking into IB (especially NYC BB/EB) from each of these schools?
- Does being in Hotel at Cornell help or hurt compared to Dyson or Econ for finance recruiting?
- How structured is recruiting (OCR, pipelines, bank presence) at each school?
- How important are finance/investment clubs, and how competitive are they?
- Is Mendoza a big edge over Econ at ND?
- How strong/helpful is the alumni network for IB and post-IB exits (PE/HF)?
Any overall advice or school recommendations would be hugely appreciated.
Take Cornell Hotel, it's still a feeder program for high finance.
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Thanks! I got that sense.
I was wondering just how big is the disparity between the schools. Are they neck and neck or am I losing out on significant opportunity by choosing Vandy?
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Congrats on getting into these schools. Cornell is still an ivy... you'll get a tremendous amount of opportunity regardless of which school at Cornell you'll attend. Have a good gpa, have good extracurriculars and you'll be fine.
Cornell hotel gets you directly to top tier REPE or RE related special situation funds. Seems way better than others imo.
Current Cornell student (not a Hotelie) and I'm gonna have to disagree with the alum who said Dyson > Hotel. There's no real difference between Dyson, Hotel, CAS, and ILR. All of them will set you up the same. Dyson doesn't get any special treatment from recruiters and there's no distinct alumni network like with Wharton. In fact, Hotel is probably the school with the tightest alumni network, and you can still tap into alums from any school just like anyone else. The larger share of students going into IB from Dyson is pure selection bias.
Networking, clubs, frats, sports teams, etc are a MUCH bigger deal than school. School is negligable differnce at most.
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