UC Berkeley
Hi,
What is the consensus on UC Berkeley? I am hearing mixed views on this school, and I wanted to end my doubts in this post.
I have a few questions:
1. How is Cal viewed in terms of prestige?
2. Does the name carry over just to the West or could you get a good number of looks from the East?
3. Would it be better to choose Berkeley over any other Ivy (except H/W/S) if it is in-state?
4. How is the alumni network?
5. I heard Berkeley is also very big & cutthroat, to what extent is this true?
6. Does not getting into Haas decrease your chances of getting a good job?
Thanks for reading.
Cal Econ grad @ a EB so I can give some color on this. We are a top West coast target meaning we get OCR from pretty much all west coast EB/BB and reserved slots at a few banks. NY placement is 100% not good but is obtainable. A few banks with some Cal alumni have noticed this and actually I think starting this cycle and the upcoming cycles you will see more Cal grads on Wall Street (Thank you Rich Lyons).
Edit: One thing I will add here is that Rich Lyons (the new chancellor) and David Solomon have a really good relationship. Solomon came to campus for a closed fireside chat with select Sophomores and Juniors this fall. Lyons is known on Wall Street and has very good relationships, and because of this I see Cal emerging as a Target for East coast during Lyons tenure as chancellor.
We place well at all good west coast shops: MOE / Q / GS TMT / JPM / CVP / PWP / EVR / BoFA / GUGG / MS Menlo / FTP pretty much every cycle.
I remember being a sophomore here and clubs are toxic and filled with "who you know, not what you know" culture. I personally didn't do any club recruiting because the personalities of some club leaders/members is outright worse than being at an actual investment bank. You do not need to be at Haas for IB. I was econ and landed an EB in TMT.
Culture is cutthroat due to the size but you can easily cut thru the noise by just not being a fucking bot - a lot of them are bots ( its okay you can MS me for this comment idc). I personally found networking with UCLA alum much more helpful than Cal alum. Berkeley is a great school and as long as you have a good GPA and decent networking abilities you will land an IB role.
Go Bears
Thank you for your detailed response.
I had a few follow-on questions:
1. Is it hard to get good grades in Berkeley compared to other schools? (talking about grade deflation)
2. This is from my original post, but do you think Berkeley is worth taking over other East coast targets? I am in California and the in-state cost would be much lower than out of state.
Have a great new year.
1. Yes. however since recruiting is extremely early now, this gives you more wiggle room to take bs classes to gpa pad for recruiting szn. I did CC classes to boost GPA.
2. See my new edit in my previous comment. Would I take Cal over Wharton/Harvard? No. Not even if I got a full ride to Cal. I would however not ignore the impact that Lyons will have in the next few years.
Happy New years
Thank you. Also, I don't want to make a new post on this, but how is UCLA viewed? I know it is definitely lower in prestige than Berkeley, but I have seen people both sh**ting on it and loving it. How well does it place in banking and other jobs?
Sorry again for all the questions.
.
Went to cal for undergrad and now a 2nd year ASO at a BB in NYC.
Pretty poor NYC presence for Cal but if you’re interested in west coast, it’s the place to be (agree with the cal guy at an EB’s point above)
I was in business clubs but wasn’t too involved - they were helpful from a preparation perspective but it didn’t mean anything for recruiting (at least for NYC, it does for SF recruiting)
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