The most underrated business school

What is the most underrated college (undergrad or masters) to attend to get into IB? The college may be insulted, not well regarded, or may not be known, but is actually a great school for Wall Street or other business placement.

 

Why did I get so much MS lol? A lot of people I talked to don't know UVA is a good school for finance.

 

I go to UNC. Recruiting here is solid. It's not UVA or UMich, but still very solid. I don't really come on this site much so I'm not sure how much attention it gets here.

I don't know much about the difference in recruiting at Ross vs UMich LSA, but from what I've read from here and the people I met during superdays, at UVA almost all of the recruiting is in the comm school. Correct me if I am wrong.

So while UVA gets better recruiting at most banks than UNC's B School, I think UNC A&S may beat UVA A&S. Most banks here don't care much about being in the B School anymore. I wrote a long comment on a post asking about UNC a while ago. I went in detail about all the banks and claimed that you really had to be in the B School, but after looking into it a lot more since then, I don't think being in it matters that much anymore. The resume drops here aren't exclusive to it and they don't separate into piles based off of it.

Edit: If you're going to shit, I'd appreciate a response. Like I said, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

"at UVA almost all of the recruiting is in the comm school" source?

 

you're right but be careful, lots of salty uva kids on this site who were too dumb to get into mcintire.

 

Please stop spreading false information. I am a current Comm student. Yes, maybe there is a difference if you're applying as a 4th year for full-time, but the majority of internship recruiting is for that summer going into 4th year, and all of that primarily takes place in 2nd year spring/summer.

No one has taken a single Comm class at that point because it starts in the Fall of 3rd year.

When I was networking/interviewing for 15+ firms that 2nd year Spring, I was only asked if I was accepted to McIntire once (and it was on a networking call). I know multiple Comm rejects that were able to get BB/EB internships.

The real reason it seems like Comm students have an advantage is the self-selection bias. Generally, the kids that aren't Comm, but are interested in IB, didn't have the GPA/Extracurriculars to get into Comm-- therefore they generally don't have the GPA/Extracurriculars get the top jobs either (which makes sense).

Old UVA heads would disagree with my comment, but they are wrong. As long as the recruiting timeline stays this early, it will continue to devalue the Commerce distinction. When they were in school, it might have been the case, but in the last ~5 years it has changed.

 

Sophomore dies in kiln explosion? I just talked to her last week...she was going to make a pot for me!

Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.
 
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Indiana is also one of the most underrated schools because of its overall rep and the stigma associated with its low rank - obviously its not your top state school (compared to the likes of UT, UMich, UVA, UNC, etc..) but the Kelley School Workshops place very well and if you're a driven and competitive student, you can land IB roles at respectable firms

 

I agree. The sucky thing is though getting into Indiana does not mean you get into Kelley, they have their own little admissions process. Furthermore, even this is not enough. You then have to get into the Investment Banking Workshop which I hear is very competitive.

 

As a Kelley and IB Workshop grad (who actually transferred there from another school 3rd year), I can reassure you that getting into Kelley shouldn't be overwhelmingly difficult as long as you are a driven person and can do well academically. Getting a top grade in the introductory accounting course should be enough to help you nail the Kelley admission.

It's tough to get into the IB Workshop at IU without political connections. Some of the people in there are sons, daughters, or relatives of prominent business leaders or politicians. Being a female or other underrepresented demographic group could probably increase your odds as well.

But... the IB Workshop doesn't really mean anything other than you get access to a special class that sort of gives you training on the interview process for getting an IB job. It also gets you some visibility among the school staff, which might get you a few leads. However, nothing will preclude you from interviewing at all the banks and doing the necessary networking to get your foot in the door. You can acquire all the knowledge through other means. At the end of the day the job search comes down to who you get to know in the real world, and personality fit.

 

This is false. Bottom 1/3 of alts always places poorly (F500, boutique IB, random jobs) but at least 35 of alt and a handful every year outside of the program have also gone to to BB/EB IB in last 3 years. And alts is not hard to get into if you have IB grades, unlike Kelley. Not bad for a pretty small finance graduating class.

Source: SMU grad on a BB recruiting team

 

WSO should have a rule against quoting career office numbers for IB. Always the most bogus shit ever. You could be a teller at Chase and they'd bucket it under IB.

Nothing against Southern Millionaires University which in my experience, does place well in Texas. But (i) as said I don't trust official stats and (ii) I wonder how many of those kids leveraged daddy's rolodex.

 

Rutgers places at many banks. Some of my dipshit friends there do well. Baruch in NYC places too but I’m not sure how much of that is nepotism.

"Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry."
 

I might get shit on, but hear me out - Dartmouth (all majors), Cornell (non-business majors, their business program isn’t underrated), and Stern (a little underrated because placement is just that solid).

The three above place as well as any other school and have a fat alumni base across all of Wall Street. If you can get into a school like Mich, UVA, etc., I think you’d be better off throwing an early decision app to the above three. It’s much easier to get into Dartmouth, Cornell, or Stern than the upper/middle Ivies, but the recruitment is almost the same.

This doesn’t apply if you’re a rockstar and can get into a Harvard/Wharton level school with ease.

 

I very much agree with what he's saying. If you apply ED, I'm pretty sure both schools have high teens to low twenty percent acceptance rates. Those are significantly better odds than getting into a school like say Yale, Columbia, or UChicago, but the recruiting is essentially all but equal.

 

Solid answer, not much talk about it on here but nearly 2% of 2017 IB placements are from UT (#7 out of all schools) McCombs has extremely helpful programs to place kids.

The best way to network is dealing addy
 

Can confirm. I’m a current BYU student in Utah and we send 30-40 people to IB each year, with only 50ish students trying to recruit; a majority of the students who place go to great shops like Goldman, BofA, CS, Lazard, and Evercore. I’d argue that anyone who wants to get into banking at BYU will as long as they get decent grades, go to the IB club, and recruit systematically. I’d also argue that we’re slowly becoming a target, especially for the west coast.

I met a guy at NYU Stern when networking a few months back and he mentioned that because of the sheer number of people trying to get into IB that they don’t always get great networking opportunities; every OCR event has 30+ people swarming a single banker. We typically have 4-5 people talking to each banker at events. They definitely had way more banks visiting than us though, so it’s all a trade-off.

 

This is an interesting read. UIUC and USC surprised me. The rest did not.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

While the rich kid cliche is definitely true, there are still many many people that are not rich by any means. USC wasn't my first choice because of the lack of high finance placements. However, I was surprised to find out that there's an insane amount of students getting offers (albeit on the west coast mostly) for Consulting, IB, PE, ER and so on.

 

They have the top quant program (MFE). It’s also one of the cheapest too. Very tough to get into

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

+1 Overall Rye high has some smart kids in the eng and cs programs but the a&f kids lack polish and have a massive chip on their shoulder. Banking in Canada is literally Queens commerce, Ivey, Mcgill HIT or bust due to the limited amount of firms and a large amount of inequality between the main 2 and the rest with very little care for non targets although some do break in. With that said fuck Queens our hoco is better, London>>Jane and Finch >>> Kingston and we can place into the states while you guys have to take "networking" trips to nyc to get some credibility.

 

I agree with you for the most part but the credibility among the Accounting and Finance program has been growing, especially in recent years. Definitely no where near Ivey, Queens, or other top programs, but the co-op option I think opened up a lot of employer's eyes to the quality of students that come from the school.

Also, I don't think there is anything wrong with the "chip on your shoulder" mentality. It pushes the students to network more, focus in class, and overall just balance themselves out because they know they have to compete with student from top programs and are starting behind the eight ball.

NYC is literally impossible from Ryerson. Even U of T struggles to get kids there.

All that said, I'm not even in SAF, so personally I don't take any offense.

 

They're alright, seem to be sending more kids into IB each year. They have a couple of co-ops at BBs and regional MM's. Usually send about 5 to BB/EB per year and then another 5-10 throughout regional MM's and local banks.

Definitely a solid spot for AM though.

 

Baylor has a solid finance program and business school. Probably the best school in Texas for accounting too. Only a few do investment banking but becuase Baylor makes it possible to double major and still graduate on time you'll learn a lot more than just finance majors. From Baylor, a lot of people get into consulting, corporate banking, big 4 (accounting and finance), and asset managment.

 

For MBA I think Tuck is definitely underrated for getting into IB. I didn't go there but know many who did, and they all had unusually strong results from IB recruiting. Maybe even better than my friends at Booth/Wharton/Columbia . . certainly comparable if not better.

It's a target school in the general sense, but when people split hairs they tend to view it as the lower end of target. That's why I say its underrated.

I think the reason Tuck does unusually well is the alumni have a ton of allegiance so they make sure it remains a core school at the bank, and then the school gets a target school's shareof attention/space even though its a small class with a small % pursuing banking.

 

Slightly off topic but UW has one of the strongest and most respected CompSci programs, despite not being very well known for business. I find it interesting when schools have different strengths in different fields. Harvard is Harvard, regardless of industry. Other schools are known for other niches.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

Not true. Was part of the Houston recruiting team of an EB. Their NYC office actively targets UT Austin, had them listed in an internal recruiting presentation and everything. Was something we in Houston had to manage with them so we didn't cannibalize each other. We were a little bitter NYC didn't leave them to us, but NYC wanted them.

Also, SMU is def underrated. Know a lot of very sharp analysts, associates and senior bankers from there. Barely knew what SMU was before starting banking, but those SMU grads are all over the Houston scene, and not at all in a second-tier way

 

Yes. I go there. Not sure what lists you're looking at but the ones on WSO are pretty inaccurate when it comes to OSU at least. Fisher Futures alone sends 25 kids a year and then honors cohort will send another couple kids plus the kids that will go do equity research at boutiques and banking at LMM in Cleveland/Columbus. I'm pasting this from** another** post:

"Not sure what you decided but I go to Ohio State and definitely would choose it given your situation regarding costs. In my fisher futures class alone we got 95% placement (one kid in honors accounting went to Deloitte) including 2 GS offers, 1 CS, 3 citi offers, JPM, UBS is now a target starting next year for Chicago office, multiple Cain bros offers, key is a target, 2 Evercore offers, 1 Lazard offer, 2 RBC offers, 1 Piper offer, William Blair has two reserved spots a year although the ones that got interviews in my class went to other banks this year, 2 Houlihan offers + 1 in RX, a Jefferies offer, and there is a lot more that I'm forgetting and again this just from my class alone.."

also.. US News recently ranked fisher at #10 undergraduate finance program so that's kinda cool https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/business-finance

To be transparent, it is a fantastic program right now but there is some room for improvement. I imagine it will be much stronger in the next few years or so as OSU as a whole has gotten very selective over a short period of time. The average ACT is a just under a 30 now I think it might be a bit higher for Fisher specifically (not sure) which is kind of insane given it's the 3rd largest school in the country with 62k undergrads.. Alumni network is insane for consulting more so than banking although like I mentioned that is being improved with time.

 

1) If it is an ivy league it is not underrated 2) UVA, Umich, UT, USC and Indiana are not underrated 3)BYU, SMU, and Rutgers are good underrated calls I have been seeing Do not overlook the valley of the sun......Arizona State baby. Investment Banking program consistently feeding kids to top banks with this years placements including Evr, PJT, WB, JPM, BAML, UBS, DB, Citi, PWP, Laz, MS, and many more. Cant wait for all the ms from you hardos that want to cry because you think that your school (talking to those named in 1 and 2) is underrated. Change my mind.

 

ASU also has an underrated PhD In Finance for the academic monkeys here

Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.
 

Rutgers this year and last year has had super solid fo placement. So in regards to underrated the school is spot on for this thread. Acceptance to the business school has also gotten more competitive and is getting more competitive. Just took a look at the numbers for the junior class, 30+ kids landed fo roles.

Is Rutgers considered a good business school in the street? Of course not, that's why its underrated. Last junior class also had around 20+ fo office roles. This is mostly due to the new Road to Wall Street program at the school, pretty new (5 years) but it has significantly improved the last 2 years. The program is getting more alumni money as of late and has a lot of impressive stuff in the works. Expect to see similar placement data for the sophomore class and future classes.

Yes I go to Rutgers, and yes I have a top ib role that took a lot of work and networking so I do understand the school's reputation on the street. Not many business schools with such negative reputation pumping those numbers.

Also yes I hate my school as most of the people are fucking retarded, but its cheap and got the job done.

 

Berkeley Haas. It’s been doing pretty well for finance recruiting, but not really talked about much.

 

I would say it's comparable. Especially with rise in top group placements.

 

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