Hi all,
T15 student weighing offers between a top EB (Evercore, Centerview, PJT) and a top BB group (MS/JP/BoA Tech, HC, Sponsors).
Putting aside my own experiences with the people for now, what are your thoughts on the differences between the two options for quality of work, prestige, culture, exits, etc?
Most relevant threads I’d found were all a bit dated. Thanks in advance.
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Side note: does Centerview recruit on your campus for Associates? Didn't think they did OCR at all for post-MBA. Could be misinformed tho...
Not sure if they do OCR for the summer, but they have taken some post-MBA associates. Not sure the pipeline or process.
In my experience they didn’t OCR formally, but reached out to people they were interested in directly who generally had previous transaction experience.
take the EB, comp difference is huge for MBAs
One of those BBs is not like the other.
Most of those factors you mentioned (i.e. quality of work, prestige, culture) are going to be better at EVR/CVP/PJT. The pay is another big difference vs the top BBs. Exits are hard to compare at the Associate or higher level because EBs tend to have better retention so you see few people leaving overall. The only reason you would go to a top BB is for the brand name so if it's worth that much to you then you should go to GS/MS M&A. But you don't even have those options so I don't see why this is such a hard decision for you
Well he has MS listed as an option.
I could be wrong, but I don't think MS has any direct placement for summer associates into their M&A group. Outside of select coverage groups like RE, FIG, the Menlo Park office, etc. every summer associate gets placed into the Generalist Pool.
The pay differences between these groups is very big. What is the value of a brand name to you for people outside of finance? You will be looking at pay differences of at least $40k/year for comparable buckets and groups and it could be much more than that. Keep in mind that within finance, the brand names are quite comparable and people will care more about the group you were in. Nobody that is in finance is going to think a random coverage group at JP is better than PJT SSG or Evercore M&A.
After 3.5 years as an associate, you are looking at potentially a total pre-tax comp difference of >$150k (and could be much greater) and that doesn't factor in cash vs stock splits. That is a very large gap that is hard to justify if the groups are comparable.
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