Good school, poor placement

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Oh dear. Allow me to fill you in. Nobody in the bulge bracket wants to hire you. Why? Because you come from a Tier 2, possibly Tier 3, school. This might be a little out of your league, but think of it like this. The bank is investing in human capital (assets). Graduating Ivy means the College Board and our Venerable Institutions have given us Triple A ratings, so to speak. We are safe to hire, and look good on the balance sheet to investors.

However, if our banks were to put somebody like yourself on payroll, we would just be bleeding prestige. Kind of like buying BBB-, not only is it not recommended, it just simply should not be done.

As my Managing Director likes to say, "If it is not Ivy, do not hire it."

Try commercial banking. I hear they're hiring tellers in Nebraska.

The above post is ridiculous.

But to answer your question, even at top schools (e.g. ivy league) it is PRETTY DAMN HARD to get a BB offer. Even if you do manage the semi-firm 3.5 cutoff, you're still only have about a 1 in 20 chance of getting any particular FO BB offer. Of course you will apply to them all- after which I would say you have maybe a 25% chance of getting any FO BB offer.

I went to Penn, which has huge OCR BB presence- but even there there are plenty of good kids that dont get BB offers. Just too many people want it and everybody's major (in theory) qualifies.

The average student at Penn however has a GPA around 3.2. And if you take all the people at Penn who are interested in BB offers- I would say less than 10% actually have one by the time they graduate.

if you're good enough, you can make it any where. those kids at ivy's who didn't manage a bb gig weren't good enough in comparison to their peers.

people who have bb gigs and have low self esteem may wanna think like buysideforlife...

it's really all about how you perform in comparison to your peers. i've seen kids from random colleges in wyoming at gs ibd.

in all honesty, don't see alotta wash u kids on the street. but it doesn't mean you can't make it. fuck what they say, and just shoot for the sky

what's with all the wash u hate. i think it's a good school. very small, selective undergrad. shouldn't be a problem getting a good gig if you put in the work, even if you don't see many people on the street from this school.

WUnderful:

does anyone know how to open up an OCR relationship with these companies?

very interested in this as well. i'm assuming OP meant establishing the OCR relationship with these companies on the school's behalf...

I'm not gonna lie I hate it when people say you have a "1 in 20" or "1 in 100" or whatever chance. You don't have a 1 in whatever chance. You most likely are going to be 1 of 10 people accepted out of 200 or 1,000 or whatever applicants, so you have to be out a couple hundred, or in some cases 990 other people.

Sorry, just had to throw in my .02 bout that.

Just get some solid internships and network. This thread is full of freshmen and pussies. Shows the level of maturity some of people on this board have.

As the graduate of a completely regional private school nowhere near as good as WashU, I can say that I knew about 10 kids my year that got BB offers, which proportionate to its size is very strong. Then again, it is located in a much more economically prominent city (v. St Louis.)...and state.

Oh, and buysideforlife, just a tip junior, what with all this "my MD" and "our banks" talk... IB is the sell side. Just thought you should know. Have a super summer buddy!

• buysideforlife, get with it. IF you have an MD and IF he's an ivy league grad, there's a) no way he'd ever utter such garbage ('it'?) and b) he'd hate on every school that wasn't his IVY, not just the non-Ivies. So GFY jerkoff.

• There are plenty of WUSL grads around. There are more IVY grads, for sure, but that WUSL guys get there from time to time. As you said, the distance doesn't help and the fact there there are fewer alums at BBs means fewer people willing to make the trip.

wash u is a great school but it is not ivy level/duke level/stanford level, yes US news inflates its rankings so people think its as good as cornell/columbia but it is more on the level of emory, vanderbilt. still a great school with fun kids

As you will hear EVERYONE else on hear tell you, the key to getting an internship or FT offer (if you weren't an SA) is NETWORKING. Whether you are from an ivy or WUSTL, networking will play a huge role. Yes, WashU is in St. Louis, and yes, it is not a "target", but networking and perseverance will more than make up for this, especially with a good GPA and genuine interest. You cannot solely count on WUSTL's career center, especially with its relatively poor track record of placement into IB. You most definitely can break into whatever you want from the school, it is just going to take a lot of hard work and networking. When it all comes down to it, what YOU need to do isn't that much different from what you'd need to do were you to graduate from the Ivies or Stanford etc..., work your ass off and network. The difference is that for you, it all comes down to and starts with TAKING INITIATIVE, since OCR is pretty much a joke.

WUSL is not seen as particularly good outside of the insular world of college guides, but that doesn't mean you can't get a decent job out of there. You'll definitely have alumni on the street; use them. Crank out a 4.0 every semester, get some relevant work experience, learn to smile, and you'll be fine.

No offense, but I don't consider WashU to be a target school for banking. I remember interviewing for a summer associate position with an accounting firm, and the guy who sat next to me was a WashU MBA interviewing for the same internship. I'm an undergrad btw...

Also, WashU is too far from major U.S. financial cities. Chicago hires out of NU, UC, Notre Dame, Michigan, Illinois, and IU. Network hard, man

WashU is a good school, but is not a target. Like everyone has said, it's all about networking. Find out names of alumni (either through OCR or LinkedIn, etc.) who currently work in investment banking (there might be more than you think) and start developing a relationship with them.

"Kind of like buying BBB-, not only is it not recommended, it just simply should not be done."

Clearly a troll. Enjoy the 3% returns that A rated debt will give you.

LMAO that was great. I could grow to like this troll.

WashU is a pretty good school, especially for medicine as someone mentioned earlier. There has been some strong research coming out of there as well. However, I have never seen anyone from there on the street, so placements must be pretty weak. My thoughts would be that someone at that school would have to do a lot of hustling themselves (especially considering that there isn't much of an alumni base to draw upon) but they would still have a leg up on other non-target kids.

" In the long run, if you're smart enough to get into Wash U, you're smart enough to get into most of the Ivies."

I like Wash U. A lot of my friends go there and they're smart but they did not get into Ivy league schools. It is overranked by US News (it should be 20-30) but it is still a good school, but to compare it to Ivies, Williams/Amherst or UChicago is unfair

Ok, so Wash U is the classic non-target with a few smart alumni on the street to network with. But how do non-targets become targets? Assuming that Wash U is smart enough (maybe not valid, but I'm making it), is the location enough of a deterrent that BBs won't ever recruit here? Certainly there is some point where the students become smart enough to justify the travel costs. Anyway, thanks for all of your advice. Sadly, though the trolls take it too far, their points are semi-valid. I believe that top students at Wash U can compete with the top students from any school, but sadly Wash U lacks the prestige, as well as the high-caliber general population of other schools.