Does anyone have any insight on current recruiting at Penn State? I know the Nittany Lion Fund and Leveraged Lion Capital place students well as well as Wall Street Bootcamp. How well do Penn State students place and what is their placement beyond IB into exit opps. Does one have to be in the NLF to get a good shot at recruiting?
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Why is this question being asked now? College recruiting is done... I'm so confused as to why these threads always pop up especially when Penn State has been talked about a million times on this site. Its frustrating.
It's a bunch of insecure freshman who want people to tell them everything will be great and they'll land an offer at GS.
By now, you know where you're going to school, so people telling you about its placement doesn't mean much. If you're worried about IB placement go learn technicals or start networking, don't post on here and get a bunch of meaningless opinions from people who have no clue what they're talking about.
https://www.leveragedlioncapital.com/placement sourced this in under ~10 seconds PSU / leveraged lion capital - 2020 full time placement and 2020 summer internship placement
Contrary to all the claims made on this site, the NLF, AMG, and LLC are considered to be equal from a recruiter’s perspective. If you don’t believe me, check out each of their full-time placements.
Yes the NLF is the only SEC-registered hedge fund in the country run by undergrads (managing real money from limited partners) but it doesn’t instantly make you more qualified than someone who was a part of Yale’s or Georgetown’s student-run fake paper portfolio fund for instance.
What matters more than anything is your own personal skill set and understanding of technical concepts/how to invest. Student-run funds are essentially commoditized across college campuses nowadays so being a part of one is no longer a competitive advantage anymore by itself (of course it still helps).The reason kids in the NLF place well on Wall Street is not because of their $14 million AUM size or whether it’s real money, it’s because everyone in the fund is an extremely hard worker who knows more technicals and how to network better than the typical pampered Ivy League target school kid. Same is true with LLC/AMG.
As a former member of one of the PSU finance funds, thought I’d provide some color into the culture of each:
Nittany Lion Fund (NLF): receives the most attention because it has the largest feeder program, PSIA, which typically brings in 300-400 kids each semester. Also the oldest club (est. 2005) and has the largest alumni base. This is mainly due to the fact that the NLF is focused on stocks which is the sexiest asset class in finance (and also most familiar to a bunch of 18-20 year olds). At NLF, the culture is definitely the most intense out of the three. Ceteris paribus, Fund Managers tend to be hardos who are very serious about their work and being perceived as intelligent. Majority are focused into breaking into Investment Banking — so much to the point that it’s become a groupthink herd mentality phenomenon. Very few go into different roles than IB. NLF has traditionally been the hardest to get into because of the rigorous interview structure and required stock pitch. Requires extensive preparation.
Leveraged Lion Capital (LLC): relativity new program (est. 2017) and is primarily focused on fixed income valuation (high yield bonds and leveraged loans). Their feeder, PSFIA has less than 100 people in it and interviews for LLC are less intense than the NLF but still require sufficient study of fixed income and financial concepts. Interviews have also been known to more personable and less robotic than NLF. The culture in LLC is definitely more laidback than the NLF, as many people have a life outside of finance and aren’t as focused on “prestige”. Job placement is ironically similar to the NLF except more from LLC go into S&T (likely due to their interest in fixed income). You also see more people in LLC pursue other careers than just IB/S&T such as credit research, asset management, and wealth management.
Asset Management Group (AMG): definitely the most niche/esoteric group out of three as most of the work is focused on derivatives/currencies. Historically has been the path of least resistance to break in and is home to the most diverse candidate pool (not just finance majors). However, recently there’s been an uptick in comp-sci majors joining probably due to the interest in algorithm-trading on things like options and futures. Culture has been known to be the most chill out of three groups. However, unlike the NLF/LLC, AMG does not count as a class (meaning you don’t receive 3 credits each semester for the time that you’re in it). Interviews are similar in difficulty to the LLC.