UCLA IB Placement

Hey, not sure if you've made your decision yet but I thought I would provide some insight here. I'm a current student at UCLA who landed an IB offer at a top investment bank in New York.

1. We don't have much of a pipeline to NY in the sense that UCLA does not have designated recruiting captains/teams in most New York offices. However, that doesn't mean that we don't send a bunch of kids to great banks in NY every year, so I'd say the pipeline has gotten much stronger in recent years. We used to send almost everyone to LA banks a few years ago, but more recently, our placements have been split pretty evenly between NY and West coast banks. The pipeline to LA and SF has been and still is very strong.
2. The key clubs that help with recruiting are Bruin Asset Management (BAM), Bruin Hedge Fund (BHF), Bruin Value Investing (BVI), and Bruin Investment and Trading Group (BIT). All of the clubs I mentioned have long and difficult recruitment processes meant to mimic actual IB interviews. The acceptance rate is around 5% across the board for all of them, and the process is not merit-based whatsoever. You'll find that a majority of people accepted into these clubs are already friends with the people making the decisions on who to accept, often because they are in the same frat or something similar. I have seen incredibly qualified people get rejected by these clubs, and incredibly stupid people get accepted. The clubs are not a measure of your capability to land an incredible offer in investment banking. And let me say as well, YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE IN ONE OF THESE CLUBS TO GET AN IB OFFER. They will try and scare you into thinking that if you aren't in one of the clubs, your chances of landing an offer are zero, but that is not the case at all. Every year, kids who aren't in the clubs get amazing offers, often much better than many of the students who are in these clubs. So if you don't get in, don't think that your chances in IB are shot.
3. It varies based on the geography. For LA and SF, we are definitely a target, especially LA where UCLA students fill the majority of the summer analyst classes. In NY, we have moved into the semi-target territory and are definitely on their radar, which is a much better position than we were in a few years ago.
4. It is hard, but not much harder than any other school outside of the supertargets (Wharton, Harvard, etc.). What I've found is that every single person who is genuinely committed to breaking into IB from the moment they set foot on campus freshman year, and who are willing to grind and put in the work and the hours, does break into IB. UCLA is a great school that has solid recognition in the IB community, and if you're willing to put in the work, you will absolutely land a great offer.