UC Berkeley (Non-haas), Vanderbilt, or Columbia

Hey everyone. I was just admitted to UC Berkeley as a stats major, Vanderbilt econ, and Columbia econ. My goal is to get a BB/EB job after graduation and dont care about location. Berkeley is 150k cheaper than the others over the course of 4 years so Im leaning Berkeley but Im posting here just to make sure Im making the right decision.

I know for Berkeley, haas status doesnt matter too too much. Its mainly the finance clubs that would make the biggest difference for me. But I also know that vandy and especially columbia are easier to recruit from. Can someone give me insight on whether this would be the right decision to choose Berkeley over Columbia? And how difficult would Berkeley be for recruiting with non-haas status

4 Comments
 

I probably won’t consider Vandy with having the other two options because it’s not even a semi-target for many banks and offices and their placements are not as good as UCB & Columbia. In terms of UCB and Columbia, both schools are great and will definitely not shut doors for you in ib recruiting. But Columbia will definitely give you a lot more advantages. Not only because it’s a target school(I believe UCB is semi/non-target for East Coast) for most banks but also because there’s fewer people so it’s easier to get resources and network for IB recruiting. I’m personally from another similar tier public school, and mostly all the resources are allocated to people in finance clubs or programs. This is specifically true when you are not in their business school. But the finance clubs themselves are hard to break into; there’s always more than three rounds of interviews and 2% acceptance rate. It also depends on where you want to work (East/west coast). More alums from UCB are in west coast so while it’s easy to do networking in west coast offices, it could be a bit more difficult for east coast recruiting. But again, both are great schools with great placements and won’t shut any doors for you as long as you put efforts.

 

Adding on to this I would suggest: if you want to work in NYC specifically, do Columbia. If you have no preference over locations as you mentioned, you can also consider Berkeley since the tuition seems a lot more attractive.

 

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