People In The Midwest

Look at UChicago, UMich, Northwestern, UIUC, Indiana, Wisconsin, ND, WashU...and others

I've never heard of St. Thomas...And I don't know many people from UMinnesota, so I can't say.

Neither. Try Michigan or Northwestern. Or UChicago.

One of my MD's this summer was a St. Thomas grad, not that that means anything other than that it's been done before. Obviously go to the most target school you can get into. Probably important to distinguish "target" from "best." Macalester and Carleton are of course great schools up there, and I've only heard good things about St. Thomas, but I doubt they get any attention from banks. So if you can't get into NW, UChicago, ND, UMich, Wash,etc, I say go after one of those other state schools that are likely to at least get some attention...or at least that people have heard of.

For a Big Ten School that's not NW, Mich, or Wisconsin, Minnesota actually has a fair amount of people on the street. If you find out that NY isn't right for your there are 5 MM firms in town plus Baird that recruit from there. Probably better than a sub-par private school that no one outside of Minnesota has heard of.

I'd go with Minnesota for the sole reason that there are bound to be more alumni, and therefore you actually have a shot. From the other one, you're in a really tough spot. If you go to Minnesota and get a killer GPA and an internship or two, you can be a reasonable candidate. I assume you'll be fine if you want to recruit for Lazard MM in Minneapolis or others in the area, or even for Chicago.

But yes, in a perfect world go to one of the better Midwest schools.

I'd go with Harvard

Just went through FT recruiting at one of the schools in the Midwest. Here's my thoughts:

UIUC/Indiana: solid Midwest recruiting for both SA and FT. Stronger representation/recruiting at Chicago IB offices than NW or UChicago (esp in the MM). More difficult to get into NYC from here.

NW/UChicago: pretty good SA recruitment, FT recruiting quite difficult (if you didn't receive an offer, or wanted to go to a different bank). With these schools, it's much easier to place into NYC if you want to live in the financial center of the world

UMich seems to have solid recruiting as well, with ND slightly below those guys. Wisconsin is somewhere below UIUC/Indiana, and WUSTL somewhere below NW/UChicago.

I'm in Chicago and I think everyone above pretty much covered all the bases (UChicago, Michigan, Madison, Northwestern). I would also add in Notre Dame just because those guys love themselves so much that its like networking gold.

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If you're looking at Big Ten schools, not a lot of BBs recruit directly from UW-Madison but the Econ department is top 20 and there are tons of networking opportunities - this panel meets with students every semester/at least once a year:

http://econ.wisc.edu/Alumni/advisory.html

Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia was on campus this past fall... in addition to a few Fed presidents