same at Harvard. Lots of firms giving <72 hours to accept so a lot of top-notch candidates accepted subpar offers.

non-diverse recruiting is pretty ridiculous

 
Controversial

Lmao as someone who has been an ORM at hard non-target and transferred to a target and got EB/BB offers at both schools ... if u go to Stanford and can't figure it out and are blaming diversity you just did not hustle very hard.

Plenty alums to pull for you without much competition for their time compared to some other schools and teaching yourself technicals is very doable and should be easy if you are at a HPYSM. The amount of finger pointing from top some of these top schools is wild. 

 
Most Helpful

not OP but I got MF, EB, and BB offers from a super target and am ORM with no connections. I preface my answer with this so it doesn't seem like I'm some kid who didn't get an offer and am complaining.

It's not as easy as you think from a target. 1/2 of the seats at targets are allocated to women + diversity. Most of these firms have hard caps on the # of kids they take from our school. Plus, you have the athletes + frat kids who know several people in the firm who are pulling for them. So the # of seats that you're targeting is smaller than you think. Additionally, lots of banks don't recruit at my school anymore due to low offer yield (i.e. CS, UBS, DB, HL, MOE, etc.) Additionally, going to the same school is not enough for super targets. There are just too many undergrads reaching out to alums to the point where they only respond to kids they have a lot of overlap with (i.e. same sport, same fraternity, same NYC/Boston prep school, etc.)

Yes, you got an offer, but the truth is the difference between you and someone who did not get an offer / got an offer from a low-tier BB is minuscule. A hard truth to stomach but it's the truth.

Additionally, many firms have decreased the # of slots for targets. i.e. most years no one from my school lands a seat at Moelis or Lazard. The issue is so many kids spend a summer at a top group at a BB/EB, and then they leave for a FT PE analyst role or some growth role (i.e. Insight/GA/Accel/etc.) that EB/BBs have deliberately reduced the # of seats for kids from my super target. 

Also, lots of kids from my target have insane connections to senior people at EB/top IB firms. i.e. I know several kids whose parents are Senior MDs, management committee, PE/HF firm founders, etc. who have an automatic shoo-in to recruiting. Do you remember the IB applications where they ask you to disclose conflicts of interest (i.e. is a family member a major client of the firm, a senior at a rival firm, a senior at the existing firm, etc.)? Those questions are irrelevant to 99% of candidates, but these kids all list yes. 

Yes, you got an offer, but I know several very sharp kids who did not get an offer. This is partially on them, but it's also partially bad luck + half of the seats are allocated to diverse candidates who, objectively, have much easier interview questions and the acceptance rate per capita is much higher. Not trying to start a debate on whether diversity programs should exist. Just wanted to share some hard facts.

Also, I'm an Asian dude and have the following qualitative observation. I advanced in 100% of the phone interviews I had (i.e. all first rounds and a few superday/later interviews which happened over the phone). Conversely, I would only advance ~50% of the time when I would have a first-round video interview. Maybe, I'm a bad video interviewer, but I really doubt it given the # of offers I got. I think it's a Kennedy vs. Nixon situation where I am super sharp over the phone (aka content being measured), but when people see me, they can't help but think "wow, another Asian guy". Some people are fine with that, but others are not. I have several friends who have observed the same thing. The sample size is small but thought I'd share.

 

From your last point, wouldn't the phone screeners know you are Asian because of your last name? I don't think that being Asian is why you don't pass video interviews at the same rate as phone interviews. Phone interviews IMO are easier (more of a check the box thing)

 

If you can get multiple offers from MF, EB, BB then it proves that if you’re a solid candidate you can definitely still land an offer. Yes diversity recruiting is a thing and so is luck. But the chances that a really solid and likeabke candidate from a top school gets unlucky at every single bank / firm is highly unlikely

 

You said your school has a low offer yield for Moe but then you said that no one can even land a seat at Moe? How would Moe have a low offer yield if no one can even get an offer? Isn’t offer yield the percentage of admitted students accepting their offer? I go to a target and know people who chose Moe over GS/MS so I’m a bit confused

Also +1 SB. Agreed with everything you said to the tee. Its crazy to think about how many seats are left over for "normal" target kids after all of the diversity/well-connected kids (athletes, parents, etc) are taken cared of

 

There are places I can confirm that don’t recruit Stanford unless you really really really network hard but those are more on the boutique side. Stanford places well in a few BB and the top EBs but it is a smaller amount than you’d expect. Anyone can land one of these gigs with the right amount of networking. You don’t have to only speak to school alumni (in fact non targets speak to pretty much only non alum). Other than that, Stanford does well in GE/PE/VC/MBB, pretty much anything other than banking. Top school for consulting and there’s always a few MF kids including usually 2-3 KKRs. Don’t bitch just grind

 

Not sure if you are UK -based like me but agreed lol. All this fraternity shit is baffling to me. I prefer the randomness of UK where you don't have to fake like someone in a fraternity to get an offer where it's a bit more random and you can find candidates from top schools everywhere really.

 

Would have went straight to entrepreneurship out of undergrad if I had to do it again (or work on a business while in undergrad). Went through too many hoops to get my gig. Lot of finance can be self taught if your intention is entrepreneurship down the line. 

 

do you mind sharing as much as you can regarding the items that are on the scoring rubric that your firm uses?

 

Work at an EB here on the West Coast not too far from Stanford. While their candidates make up a large portion of our pool, they are quite awful. I don't know if it is the plethora of options within tech or the fact that most of these kids tend to come from pretty well of backgrounds but they tend to not prep for their interviews and underperform from a lack of work ethic.

I think the worst part is this idea that we have to "convince" kids from Stanford to come and work in banking. They seem so unsure of what they want and tend to sit on offers longer than other candidates. We have wasted a colossal amount of resources trying to convert Stanford candidates who will reject an offer to go into consulting or a BB for the brand name. 

We have tried to move away from even considering Stanford students since kids from Berkely and other powerhouse east coast schools work harder, do better on the technicals, and don't need to be convinced that they should work in banking.

 

Interesting to hear, and not surprising considering something needs to be wrong with Stanford candidates if they truly are not landing roles. Big ten schools are now creating a pipeline to top banks without the typical “prestige” of a Stanford. Common trend though, they work their asses off and come prepared time after time.

 

I'm honestly perplexed by these comments of targets struggling. I go to Emory which according to people here is a semi-target and people are doing pretty well in recruiting including ORM. Current Emory sophomores(these are the people I know so pretty limited sample) have already placed at Moelis, Centerview, Lazard, Evercore, Perella Weinberg, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citi, Bank of America, UBS, Barclays, William Blair, Houlihan, Jefferies, Rothschild,  Brookfield, Ares, Blackstone,Vista. I could be wrong but probably Roark, Point 72, and Greenhill too. This is despite Emory not having too many people who want to go into banking like some other schools since it is primarily a medical powerhouse. I honestly see kids from targets complaining and I find it hard to believe that its true. The process is hard in general but if someone goes to a target and they say that its super hard because they go to a target then that's straight up not true. 

   
 

i think stanford is kind of different from the other “target” in that very few people here are interested in finance, which means no banks send recruiters here. essentially no resume drops, everything is through the portal. we only really have alum at GS/MS/JPM, and having alum at JPM doesn’t really help since they don’t care about networking. We have like a couple of analysts at just a few boutiques, but literally 0 at the majority of EB’s. If you just do a simple LinkedIn search, you’ll see that the majority of Stanford grads that place just decently (not even talking about top groups) are diversity.

People sometimes say that having less kids gunning for IB is helpful, but when you have 0 alum at a lot of banks no one really wants to pull for you for the same stereotype that everyone has thought of. I’ve gotten emails from analysts saying that they can’t take every coffee chat and that I should try to leverage my “Stanford network” which is not really as strong as most people expect it to be. Additionally, for whatever reason interviewers tend to expect a lot from HYPS students, which makes sense for HYP, but we have literally 0 classes in undergrad that teach the slightest bit about corporate finance.

 

I’m also at Emory and I think the last few years have shown how easy it is to recruit from Emory. Know multiple people this cycle and last cycle who have gotten BB offers without any finance internships. Pretty much everyone from the south loves Emory so recruiting for banks in the south or talking to analysts who are just from the south is easy. Additionally, everyone on campus is supportive of one another and there isn’t much competition between students so everyone helps each other out. 

 

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