Queens Commerce or Western Ivey what is better for IB ?

Unlike the US, in Canada the statement "target school" is very broad and not necessarily defined. Curious your opinions on what places in BB or on Bay Street better Ivey or Commerce. What would hold more prestige on an IB application?

39 Comments
 

Take your Ivey offer and don't look back. Arguments can be made for Queens (amazing school), but if you have an ivey option available to you, definitely take ivey.

 

Western Ivey is bar none, the best recruiting school for IB in Canada. It's really not even close. Places like Evercore NY and Moelis LA actually have Ivey as a semi-target. No other school in Canada has that sort of clout in the States.

And in Toronto - if you take a look at the Analyst classes of 17/18 for the BBs/EBs - they're actually 80-90% Ivey.

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Just to add on my last comment - I didn't go to Ivey, and I wish I did. I still landed but it took insane amounts of effort and networking. Don't let price or anything hold you back.

Consider this:

Kids in the US are easily shelling out $40k a year min in tuition for out-of-state target programs. USD. That's $200k Canadian total over 4 years, and we haven't even considered living/food/recreation expenses yet.

Western Ivey breakdown is $6.7k each for the 1st 2 years, then $28k each for the last 2 years. That's literally 1/3 of what US kids pay to go to target schools. Don't cheap out and go to your in-province university because it's "cheaper." (Queen's btw is a flat $13k/year so overall it's only $17k cheaper over the 4 years). If you get an IB job anywhere - that $17k difference is somewhere close to ~1/10th of your all-in salary in just your first year.

Ivey is legit a North American cheat code in terms of IB placement efficiency relative to opportunity cost. Western as a whole is also a pretty awesome party school (they have a greek system there too) so you can get a pretty holistic college experience overall (unlike going somewhere like Waterloo, for example).

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Ivey>Queens>McGill>>>Any other canadian school for IB. Just take a look on linkedin to see how well Ivey places relative to other Canadian schools.

 
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Ivey grad here.

I really do think people are exaggerating the differences. If your goal is to be in Canada then you really can't go wrong with either school, both place extremely well at any bank in Canada.

Ivey does have better placement in the United States if that is what you are interested in. Both schools will send kids down south each year, but the reality is that there are just more firms that recruit at Ivey. Evercore, Ares, LGP, Qatalyst, Union Square, Credit Suisse SF, and Silver Lake are just some of the American firms that only come to Ivey. Ivey has a really strong presence in the west coast as you may have noticed from that list. These jobs typically go to the top kids so chances are you are still likely to end up in Canada.

 

Well if less American firms are coming to Ivey that means that Ivey is losing the competitive advantage it has over the other Canadian schools. This is also bad news for the rest of Canadian schools as it means that the tops kids from Ivey and Queens might now be recruiting in Canada instead of the United States. It is already extremely difficult to land a job in Canada, this will surely make things worse.

Perhaps some kids might start looking at the U.K. I know that people who had their Visas rejected in the U.S. went to work there instead.

 

Ivey by far and away the best Canadian alum network working in the US. However recent visa changes have really cut down on US IB/PE hiring for Canadians and has hurt the most recent few years of Ivey candidates.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 
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Doesn't really matter if you want to full send, both are college towns though kingston is full of old fucks whilst london has crackheads however hoco and foco are the BB's of parties and arguably better than St patricks at waterloo. I would say this , Queens kids are rich Toronto kids who party hard but still keep it moderate enough to study at 8am the next morning similar to the East coast kids but Ivey kids are typically from Oakville and other rich suburbs of Ontario so naturally they are the kids who will rail coke, black out and act more "fratty" , very similar to the South.

 

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