Cracked non-target schools this year
Any semi/non-target schools have ridiculously good placement this year? Any targets have ridiculously bad placement?
Trending Content - Investment Banking Forum
| +231 | Coverage Banking is Paradise | 29 | 6d |
| +119 | UBS preparing for a October Layoff Massacre | 98 | 2m |
| +116 | London Recruiting is Paradise | 46 | 2h |
| +77 | My Motivation Is At An All Time High | 13 | 3d |
| +56 | Work and Suicide | 23 | 3h |
| +49 | Is 7 years in banking enough to retire, or am I delusional? | 27 | 1h |
| +43 | Do actual investment bankers despise IB TikTokers as much as I think they do? | 26 | 22m |
| +33 | MM IB --> NYC IB? | 17 | 22h |
| +27 | Should I escape the matrix | 5 | 6h |
| +24 | Negotiating VP Sign-On Bonus (NOT Tied to Deferred Comp)? | 22 | 12h |
Career Resources
Texas
Not sure if Texas is a semi/non target lol. McCombs is a pretty damn good school
it's good but comes in waves. Better and better placements in the last couple years but okay-ish placements prior
Texas is a target lmao
For Houston not NYC
What are placements looking like?
Boston University been placing crazy well last couple years
congrats on BU!!!!!!!
Indiana has been fucking murdering it no clue how lmao
The IU kids know how to grind, are extremely prepared, and also very normal / down-to-earth. Especially in the banking club, those kids are good enough to be at Ivies but often had a good reason to go to IU (think: no trust fund & got a great scholarship, family roots, wanted to go to Big 10, playing a D1 sport, etc.). Make great analysts and we think of them as “known commodity” vs. other programs that may have stars but also less consistency
Couldn't disagree more, place is filled with insufferable bots
good enough to be at ivies gotta be a joke. some kids from my hs were in the workshop at iu and were nowhere near the level of even t20 school
Congrats on IU
Indiana has massively overhauled how the internal recruitment works + the guy in charge allegedly has done overtime to make this year a success. Will be interesting to see how it translates going forward
Yeah but still not impressed with the outcome. Mostly mid to low bucket quality.
I've been seeing a lot of kids from SMU Cox land great offers. But some are specific to Houston and Dallas.
pays to go to a nepo oil money connected school haha
Vandy
T20 btw
Still a non-target in terms of finance recruiting
West Coast Talent is so back
heard rutgers has been killing it, solid M&A eb placements this cycle
Rutgers is paradise
rutgers here - i know of 2 Evr, 1 Laz, 1 Cview, 1 moe, 1 PJT, multiple JPM's, multiple GS's and 1 MS this year alone. very surprised, didnt expect us to have heavy hitters like this
+ Citi, BofA, RBC, DB, WF, A&M, HL, BNP, Mizuho
rutgers really did kill it with ebs this year. have heard a little bit more in numbers than what’s been listed above. It is very impressive. also would just note that most of the jpm/gs/ms placements aren’t ib but am/wm/im, which rutgers has built a strong alumni base in over the years. the school is definitely trending up and doesn’t really feel like a non target anymore, especially at banks like db/mizuho/hl/rbc, good pipelines there
A lot of these schools are very good schools, like upper semi targets.
I know, it’s like WSO has no idea what a non target is and thinks Boston U is an average school for average students
unironically listing vandy, bu, and unc. lets be fr
This is one of my main grips with this site tbh.
People think if you don't go to a semi/target school that you're fucked from any non target. I transferred from an non target to another non target(at least on this site) and the difference between the two is huge despite both being non-targets.
baruch had a couple crazy placements
Florida State has done incredible this yr in willow partners (IB club). I don’t go there.
.
.
Penn State is for sure building off the success of last year, amazing to see. Mostly down to Leveraged Lion Capital.
Nittany Lion Fund sent someone to PJT, Moe, BDT, GS, MS IBD this cycle. MS, BofA, Citi ST as well. PSU placement is really coming down to the NLF again, as seen historically over the past 20-ish years.
My school had a UBS placement!
🥀🥀🥀
fries bag bro
Pouring one out 😭
BU had one guy go to EVR RX
we hired 2
Tulane
Yeah. Tulane seems to have a pipeline into Moelis’ Capital Markets group. If I had to guess it’s because the co-head of capital markets at Moelis (Halperin) went to Tulane for undergrad
Ohio state - insane placement this year.
Agreed
Why? What were top offers?
In terms of true non targets- FSU
Texas
Indiana
Rutgers
Baruch, Fordham, Rutgers, middlebury
Agreed. But most miss that these schools have placed well for years due to proximity to Manhattan.
UTD
lol what
FSUs Noles on Wall Street / Willow Partners club has been crushing it this year with several top EB placements.
UNC had 16 people place in JPM this cycle
I’ve seen several decent FSU & ASU placements on LinkedIn
Del
Wonder where the frat leader placed
UGA placement this year is crazy 5x CITI 5x JPM a couple other BB's and some EB action as well. Also placed someone into Blackstone. Including MM about 40 ppl have placed so far.
UMiami
GS MS LAZ MOE etc
WF UBS Barclays as well
UC Irvine absolutely crushing it this year with a few people landing Big 4 tax internships
Unironically, they placed a kid at centerview tech, Barclays tech, and JPM tech this cycle. 2 other guys placed IB as well. Obviously not impressive but for UC Irvine that's unreal given the demographic lol.
Binghamton
It never made any sense to restrict your own labor pool to only a select few schools to begin with. Working Class kids usually work much harder anyway and some of them land in non-targets for reasons other than intelligence.
Tulane
WSP at Arizona has been doing fine over the last few years. Plenty of strong BB/EB placements over the last few years; does yearly trips to NYC & Chicago; 2025-26 program director did industrials at GS and is now headed to Davidson Kempner. A couple of them ended at Blackstone immediately after graduation.
Tufts
UVA has been unreal this year. Basically every other post I see on linkedin.
Yeah but UVA is a public ivy
BYU
Bowdoin's been going crazy. Might as well be considered a target after last years and this years performance
Nyu has been placing great over 80 kids this year
Michigan State - PJT placement
Prob the single greatest placement in their history
Virginia Tech has been placing well at a consistent rate now, unsure how this year is going for them.
Rice
Rice outside of Houston had an insane year. Citadel/CVP/GS/JPM NY + MOE/LAZ/GS SF are the highlights. Houston placements still killed it too. As someone that recruited out of there 2yrs ago, it’s a night and day difference with the # of kids recruiting staying around the same too.
Citadel energy marketing ?
South Carolina has probably had the best year they have ever had. Between their Finance Scholars program and their Freshman Finance Academy they have had placements into IB at Evercore, Lazard, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, BofA, Wells Fargo, William Blair, Truist, Piper, and RJ.
The Freshman Finance Academy is new but killed it in their first year of placements. Close to 100% of their sophomores (first cohort) that pursued IB have already gotten offers.
Howard
UF had 5 evercore for summer 2027 this year. also have had 50+ placements for summer 27
(all targets and semis in one list btw): wharton, harvard, yale, unc, iu, cornell, upenn, idk if middleburry is a low semi but ive seen kids place from there, stern, umich, georgetown, uva (idk), duke, uchicago, northwestern, notre dame, bc, etc.
Fordham, BC, Villanova, Holy Cross, Syracuse, and Binghamton
BC is an incredibly strong semi not non target like others here
Congrats on BC!
Dartmouth has been tough for non-nepo and non-diversity.
There was even a WSO thread made about it.
Source: My brother goes there and the TPG President's son was in the class before him. Non-nepo and non-diversity placement was tough indeed.
I don’t buy this if kids from…South Carolina are racking up >15 offers
nowadays nearly every top ~75 school has kids place
It’s not the same as it used to be and it’s only going more in that direction
What is going on if schools like South Carolina (one of the weakest academically in the SEC) are placing a double digit number of kids?
Headcount at banks has to have grown tremendously??
As banks start to relocate/expand in the south it makes sense that schools with close geographical proximity do better with recruiting. South Carolina has a strong pipeline into Charlotte and Atlanta.
uga tbh
Omnis quidem hic est necessitatibus dolor. Repellat explicabo tempore ut labore aut. Sed ut quos debitis molestiae et non illo. Doloremque ut molestias doloribus tempora et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Quibusdam sint dignissimos dolores reprehenderit ea fugiat asperiores. Vel sed assumenda maxime ipsa dolor est tempora voluptas.
Et cupiditate architecto et rerum qui est. Optio quaerat occaecati et atque sunt sint et. Minus excepturi nihil dolores in voluptatem. Sint aliquam ad consequatur quibusdam. Doloribus et quo dignissimos quis et rerum debitis qui. Placeat id iste soluta soluta rerum culpa.
Ut ipsa voluptas ipsum qui rem ut. Magnam reiciendis in consectetur ut quo hic iste mollitia. Sint veritatis et corrupti est quam blanditiis. Eum quidem ea occaecati. Est id aut officiis qui voluptatem iure expedita dignissimos.
Hic nostrum officiis aut culpa suscipit molestiae et. Est omnis nulla autem veritatis voluptate minus eligendi. Est at voluptatibus ullam.
Sit blanditiis et facilis veniam et dolores. Nisi reprehenderit deleniti est ut alias eligendi quia rem.
Hic aperiam dolores deserunt nam. Quibusdam dolorem nostrum esse sunt numquam. Ratione enim cupiditate est. Assumenda consequatur excepturi quisquam necessitatibus eos et saepe. Amet debitis voluptatibus consequuntur autem. Commodi eaque rerum delectus qui optio qui reiciendis aut. Asperiores sapiente qui nihil sit eum consequatur.
Sit ipsum labore maxime nemo dicta. Labore beatae reiciendis consequatur libero vel enim. Quibusdam saepe earum quam.
Sapiente mollitia nulla quia minus. Omnis molestiae nesciunt exercitationem nesciunt. Blanditiis aut culpa accusantium repellat ut facilis doloribus. Id ratione voluptatem ut earum perspiciatis qui fuga quaerat. Et vel sed blanditiis nostrum repudiandae.