Is CS the most pedigree-seeking BB?

Recently chatted with a few friends heading to PE about our IB recruiting processes. I was able to get interviews at all BBs besides DB & CS and my buddy at the same non-target got all first-rounds besides CS. During the discussion, we (with similar non-target background) all felt more or less the same about Credit Suisse.

Nothing wrong with focusing on pedigree but was wondering what's your experience and thoughts on this? No salty pls (as I admitted I didn't even get an interview with them.)

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My experience coming from a semi/non-target was that CS and Barclays were the hardest to get an interview at (even moreso than the EBs). Those two banks had well-established school teams that they relied heavily on, and if you didn't go in through a diversity program or didn't have a school team then you were widely overlooked in my experience.

Most people have the opposite happen and they find that EBs are the hardest to get interviews at without a pedigree, but I just wanted to add a data point. 

 

I think this is especially true for their SF office. 2 years ago I had about 25-30 informational interviews/coffee chats with their tech group and M&A group guys. More than half of the analyst/associates were from Berkeley and the others from H/W/S. I'm sure NYC office is more diversified in terms of schools represented. But my guess is that even so, they'll stick mostly to the targets. 

 

This. Even CS’s associate class is heavily relied on certain MBA schools versus A2A or people outside the system. To be fair, their analysts do get consistent PE exit opportunities especially MM

 
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It kind of varies by school. I don't think CS has quite as robust a recruiting program as some of the other BBs so they rely on alumni / school recruiting teams for the bulk of their hiring. This translates to less consideration for non-targets versus say, GS or JPM which have very built out recruiting programs that can afford to spend more time on non-targets. EBs are the same way--it's not that Evercore or Greenhill or PJT are necessarily more elitist than other banks, but that they're a lot smaller and can't dedicate the same resources to recruiting. You'll see that each EB has its own "preferred" semi-target schools that they disproportionately favor because of their alumni base (look at PJT and UVA or Evercore and UT). 

Of all the BBs, the only one where I get a notably elitist vibe is MS, but even then they'll recruit semi/non-target students all the time.  

 

Was about to comment the same thing about MS. Went through recruiting and not sure what it was but just got an overwhelming elitism presence from MS. Just seemed preppy and stuck up even though they have a pretty broad range of analysts. Ironically, I thought CS / Barclays seemed the chillest by far coming from a semi/non core, but yet again its a bank and you cant generalize an entire bank of the handful of people you talk to through recruiting. 

 

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