Unofficial 2020 Public School Tiers for IB Placement
Tier 1: 80+ to IB with 60%+ going to BB/EB - Michigan, Virginia, UC Berkeley
Tier 2a: 65+ to IB with 40%+ going to BB/EB – Texas, UNC, Indiana
Tier 2b: 40+ to IB with 40%+ going to BB/EB – UCLA
Tier 3: 40+ to IB with 25%+ going to BB/EB – Wisconsin, Illinois, Penn State, Ohio State
Tier 4: 25+ to IB with 15%+ going to BB/EB – Florida, Georgia, Rutgers, South Carolina
Tier 5: 15+ to IB with 10%+ going to BB/EB – Iowa, Minnesota, Maryland, UCSB, Washington, Alabama, Michigan State, Arizona St, Arizona, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Miami (OH), Baruch
There’s a lot of posts from high school seniors asking whether individual schools send kids to IB. I was bored and thought a post that compiles all the top public schools would be cool to show how cheap in-state options place for IB if one can’t make it or afford to go to a top private school. This is NOT a ranking because obviously there’s other things to consider including school size, interest in IB, level of competition, specific programs, existence of a business school, and prestige. For example, Georgia Tech is in the same tier as Alabama because similar numbers to IB but is a much better school than Alabama – no offense. I’m a numbers guy so I thought this was the most objective way to put them into tiers and show presence on the Street, while avoiding pointless squabbling.
Rules: A school has to meet both the quantity and quality of placement thresholds because Goldman IB is clearly better than a no-name boutique. Also, quantity is important because a school that sends 100% to BBs isn’t that great if only 5/700 people make it to IB. I put some work into this and did my best but let me know your thoughts and I can change it if I got a school’s numbers wrong or need to add a school.
(IB ONLY. Not including S&T, ER, Corporate Banking, or Middle/Back Office)
This is false - UCLA sends only about 30 kids into IB a year.
UCLA has strong placement, just not a ton of kids are gunning for banking. Off the top of my head kids have went to GS/MS/JPM/Evercore/PJT/etc. It's a strong West Coast target.
Yeah majority of the 30ish kids that do get offers are BB/EB and top MMs, but the amount of kids that do end up going into IB/S&T/other high finance roles is surprisingly low considering how high they rank. I think it's their location that really limits them and a lack of kids interested in heading to NYC where majority of spots are at.
I know UCLA sends majority of their business-interested kids to Big 4 back office stuff like audit and risk - kinda sucks that out of 1500 business-interested students in each class, only 30ish make it to high finance roles...
As someone who goes to UCLA, this is the truth lol. There's a lot of MMs out there but kids just don't place because they don't get into any of the finance/consulting clubs so they usually get wrecked in terms of resume or not knowing any of their technicals because they have no guidance usually. Most kids don't even know what investment banking or other high finance jobs are until their 3rd year in college when it's too late, that's why they all go to audit lmao. UCLA itself doesn't do too hot of a job itself educating its students with a sh*t career center. The local boutiques' analysts in the area generally do not have UCLA analysts, and the number is insignificant. So plenty of students are interested in making six figures, but they're just mainly not cut out for it because their resumes can't compare to the top 30ish kids at LA with stacked af resumes.
I've always disliked how exclusive some clubs are.
UBS has an IB workshop that takes only 20 kids (out of 100+ that apply), and sends p much everyone in the workshop into top firms (mainly West Coast, unless they're a girl or diversity candidate, then they can head to NYC). UCLA also has another program called Sharpe Fellows for IB that takes about 20 kids (there's like ~90% crossover with the Workshop), and there's a few other kids that break into IB or other high finance roles without being in Workshop or Sharpe Fellows, but generally, those other kids are also those that were in one of the finance/consulting clubs and just didn't happen to get into IB Workshop. Kids who are shooting for S&T or CorpFin at like, say Microsoft, have no benefit from the Workshop or the Sharpe Fellow program.
Michigan places 100+, towards 120 per year