Ignore title, I am a second year analyst. Our MBA associates are coming schools like Wharton, Booth, CBS, etc but 90% of them went to Podunk State U for undergrad. Is business school that much of a joke?
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so true man - ppl who go to bad undergrad schools always suck at working
Tell me you are an arrogant Ivy league grad without telling me.
OP goes to Cornell
Congrats on William Blair OP
this the type of person to jack off to their “prestigious” school cause you know he ain’t got no personality to get laid.
I sort of agree with this. There are a lot of really talented and hardworking non-targets in banking as ANALYSTS and I think as a whole these kids are probably cases of the cream rising to the top at less reputable schools.
I was talking about this with other guys in my analyst class, and MBA associates are just a totally different situation. There seem to be a lot of MBAs who went to no name undergrads and worked irrelevant back office jobs for like 8 years but because they went to Cornell or NYU or Columbia they think they are hot shit for some reason. I try not to pass judgement because I get the whole point of an MBA is to pivot and rebrand, but its really hard to take orders from some dipshit 33 year old MBA associate who doesn't know how to use excel and tries to act like they are the ones holding a whole deal together. Idk what they teach in these "prestigious" MBA programs but I am beginning to think there is a whole class on inflated ego and over-confidence because all of them seem to exhibit the same qualities.
For example, last week my MD comes to the bullpen and asks me an another analyst to put together some preliminary pages on a company we are going to pitch. The MBA associate weasels his way into the project and tells us "I'm happy to take the lead here". MBA associate comes back an hour later and shows us a list of tasks for me and the other analyst to complete - why thank you genius, this is exactly what the MD asked us to do in the first place, you just decided to feel good about yourself by delegating the same work a SECOND time. Me and the other analyst proceed build the model and create a working pitch draft to show to MD. MBA associate takes a quick look and comes back immediately with "looks good, no comments". BRUH. Red flag number one, there are always comments. MD takes goes through the materials and starts asking MBA associate questions about the debt service model and the assumptions driving cash flow. MBA associate has not opened the model, so in true MBA associate fashion, tries to bullshit his way through an answer and falls on his face. MD proceeds to chew us ALL out. FKN A, another day in paradise.
MBA associate slander never fails
Just MBA Associate things
out of interest what sort of questions? amortisation amounts, interest, covenants for debt & things like capex, WC drivers etc for cash flow? presume it wouldnt have looked good if you stood up and answered all those questions in front of MD?
MBA associates are basically like med students, they go on a shit ton of debt only to be clueless once on the job. I also agree with your first point, it would make much more sense to place someone as an associate from a lateral role where they do relatable IB work than some MBA associate who worked for a random saas company but got an offer bc he has a target mba school. System is really broken.
Seems like a loser MD tbh
I wouldn’t question the no-name grads, they’re probably smarter than you
Why would there be lots of people from prestigious undergrads doing post mba ib? Beyond teachers, military and those who didn’t get grades and had stalled careers of course it’s going to be non targets making career step ups
Instead of blaming on MBA or b-school or anyone’s undergraduate school, maybe your bank should reinvent your interviewing process..
instead of asking rounds and rounds of bullshit questions like”do you want to stay in IB in a long time “, ask the candidates to build models and send offers to those who actually can link three statements instead of “someone who fits our culture.”
You get what you selected.
Issue is that all the ones who can model are not the ones gunning for banking jobs. The ones who are gunning for IB are the ones who did an MBA to pivot their career from marketing, sales, audit, etc.
In addition, after the ASO years, it becomes more and more a sales-type job. Within a few years, the questions about whether or not you want to stay in IB or if you're a peoples person suddenly become very relevant.
Less so at EBs like Evercore, Centerview, and PJT. Def more so at BBs.
I was looking at admissions data and the most common UG schools for M7 MBAs are all T20 UG. Feel like IB is just not considered an attractive post B-school job.
Probably ~50% of the class wants MBB or T2 consulting, then another good portion (20-30%) wants Tech PM or Biz Ops jobs. Plus lots of the students that want finance careers would prefer buy side. So IB gets the left overs.
Makes sense in a way because MBA associate exits are pretty limited (mainly be a career banker or go do Corp dev) compared to analysts out of UG. MBB exits are arguably better at the post MBA stage (not talking about pre MBA)
Also lifestyle is probably a big factor. Most are in late 20s and would rather do MBB with slightly less hours and protected weekends than be grinding 80 hrs a week especially if they have kids.
How are MBA MBB exits better? Don't most still just end up in corporate?
For the record, out of UG, I agree that IB has way better exits especially for PE and Hedge Funds but very hard to get those as a post MBA associate. Not impossible tho.
MBAs are for those that screwed up/were late starters.
do you need an mba to get higher up in PE? i’ve heard people like to do the 2+2+2
why do people at prestigious undergrads who come from public schools suck at school?why do people at prestigious boarding schools who come from public middle schools suck at school?why are people from poor parents poor? It’s never too late to push for a better life. stfu about prestige and get to work :)
Let me explain as someone who did exactly that (ignore title). I went to a terrible undergrad and always wanted to get into ‘high finance’ but we just obviously have essentially zero opportunity to do that.
So, instead of complaining like a lot of people here, I worked my way through less sexy jobs, so I could get into an M7. Then, I finally had a real opportunity to do IB, and I took it.
Why didn’t I go into the ‘better’ post-MBA jobs? Several reasons: 1) when you come from nothing, you value the money more than someone who is already from a wealthy family. Sure consulting pays well, but it really doesn’t compare, and poor people want to be rich. 2) a lot of the good exits (PE especially) are really hard without the impressive work history that you can only get from a good undergrad. 3) call me a hardo, but I do kinda like the work more than consulting/etc (mostly the culture but you get the point). 4) least importantly (because I obviously am willing to change my goals), I wanted to do IB for a long time.
I will not refute that we kinda suck at the job. Fair point, but I’m trying to answer the rest of the question.
Why do you like banking culture more than consulting culture?
Speaking for myself I went to an UG school ranked in the 50s. I had the grades to get into a better school but I was offered an athletic scholarship to the school I attended. The program was a feeder to the national team & Olympic team and as an 18 year old bought in to the pitch that I could become an Olympian (got a career ending injury my SR year so that didn't pan out). I realized that for what I want to do in my career It would make my life a lot easier to have the pedigree and network of a top MBA.
Not to be a bleeding heart or anything, but to take a different perspective than the others in this thread, consider the endemic socioeconomic issues in the US and the barriers these can provide to getting into a target school. Before you say “oh but scholarships and aid” or whatever, consider the impacts that such a background can have on academic performance in high school and so on.
Some very intelligent and capable people have a false start in life and as a result, take some time before they’re able to reach their potential - maybe the earliest opportunity they had to break in was as an MBA associate.
Empathize with the shitty mba associate slander and there are plenty of pricks.
On the other hand, people go to undergrads for a lot of reasons and many mba programs are a reset that (most but not all the time) re-sort people accordingly at that point in time.
I’m one of the people the OP references. If you looked at my resume you’d see a borderline top 75 school not a name brand. Here’s what you don’t know.
-I was valedictorian of my competitive high school class
-I received multiple admittances to top 15 schools
-I followed a girl to that no name school
-I received almost a full academic scholarship
-I started a varsity sport all 4 years
-I graduated with high honors, was president of multiple clubs
-I crushed the GMAT (similar percentile to my ACT/SAT) which revalidated the mismatch between my undergrad’s reputation and my academic capabilities
Would I do undergrad differently if I had all the insight I have now? Probably…but maybe not. I married that girl, got to a top 10 mba program and reset my career into banking. Am I materially a different person because of the name of my undergrad? I doubt it
Sounds like you made the right decision if you found your life partner.
People can rag on MBA Associates all they want, but they ended up in IB even if it was a few years later.
So much coping in here
Harvey Schwartz, CEO of Carlyle - Rutgers University
Warren Buffet, Absolute Legend - University of Nebraska
Bob O’Shea, Cofounder of Silverpoint Capital - Fordham University
Donald T. Valentine, Founder of Sequoia Capital - Fordham University
Now most of these are mostly considered Non-targets by the uppity elitist, but are considered great schools to people in the general public.
Op is a clown, who will probably quit, switch to Corp Dev at some Shitco, and cry about how overpaid the Sales team made up primarily of Arizona State kids are.
I have noticed that it is much harder to get into Ivy League undergrad, than an Ivy League grad program. I think it’s because there are less people in total gunning for grad school / degrees like mba can be cash grabs for schools so the bar is generally lower.
There were literal geniuses in my undergrad. Some of them now work in ai, elite hedge funds and a few have even started successful businesses.
In my grad class, there were people from colleges id never heard of, couldn’t understand basic assignments and did not even have impressive work backgrounds. It felt at times that they got in because they could pay the school the full sticker price of tuition.
If I was hiring, I would be more impressed with undergrad degree and work experience versus grad degree prestige.
In fact when I interview kids, I’d rather take the kid from the crappy undergrad and some actually work experience in banking versus the freshly minted Darden mba who never worked in a touch field before.
Darden sounds like a restaurant conglomerate. No prestige points awarded.
Why are there less good school undergrads as MD vs lot of random school w MBA (including bunch of internationals)? Truly don’t get it
I think changes in market structure over time may account for some of that perception. Business degrees are a relatively new concept compared to the relative maturity of various areas of modern finance.
A lot of haters in this thread. The prestigious analysts are just as bad and can easily be replaced by AI, literally have no social skills it’s sad sometimes, resulting in ZERO potential to make it past analyst years (probably not wanted anyway and reflected in attitude after year 1)
Lots of fair comments in here - definitely seems like the norm are MBA associates who are pretty bad. I would agree with people's qualifications - there are some of us who are appalled at some of the "talent" in our "best in class" M7 schools. There are people who get in based on parents' wealth, connections and other reasons.
That being said, I think equating undergrad with intelligence is an easy trap to fall into. A top undergrad can indicate intelligence, but a more direct correlation can be made between how hard that individual worked during their high-school years. There are plenty of smart folks headed into banking post-MBA who for one reason or another couldn't / didn't work as hard during their HS years.
I for one had an eating disorder throughout high-school. Made it very tough to focus on things that had brought me joy / satisfaction before. Instead of taking 5 APs, I dropped to 2-3 because I was generally depressed. This impacted my college applications and undergrad choice, but I knew I would push for an Ivy MBA as a redemption mechanism and to switch career paths.
All that to say, there's a lot of variation here and "prestigious undergrad" and "intelligence" are not nearly a 1:1 correlation.
Here’s the thing: the qualities that banking needs (intelligence, drive, talent) are distributed at random. Opportunity and the support needed to seize opportunity, however, are not randomly distributed.
So … most of my extended family didn’t go to college. Maybe few months here or there at a junior college / trade school / bible college. They’re as clever as anyone I’ve met at my fancy schools or in banking. They just have a completely different set of expectations and norms, for-example:
Take grades … good grades are for smarmy *ss-kissers. That’s not us. We have street smarts.
Take networking … poor folks don’t network. Why be friends with someone just because you want something? We’re not fake like that, and don’t trust people who are.
I mean, I don’t agree with them but that’s the general outlook. It has its own internal logic that has nothing to do with intelligence. Fwiw I have some cousins delivering for DoorDash who could give some of the best juniors I’ve worked with a run for their money.
Buddy take your platitudes to reddit. Nobody cares about your cousins
So true, similar story with my dad.
I hope one day we can ensure the most competent talent get the top roles.
Not sure why so much MS, it’s true. Yes B school is a joke and as a grad of a top school and b school I have not prob saying it. How else is some UT Austin or A&M grad supposed to claim prestige?
Wharton has a completely online MBA program now. Yes you read that correctly. It’s all meaningless at this point.
To the topic starter: your MBA colleagues at least were smart enough to avoid being an IB analyst (you know why it's bad to be an analyst). So give them some respect at least for this.
I'm a lateral, out-of-industry associate who went to a bad undergraduate school without an MBA. Either I'm a genius or everybody else is an imbecile. Probably a little of both.
Or maybe your shop is just desperate for bodies lol
.
Late to the party here but the WSO insta account always refreshes these threads… Food for thought for OP here, I was top of my class going into undergrad when my life basically fell apart due to some really tough events. I have been rebuilding my life since then because I just couldn’t put in the work at 19/20 that I otherwise would have been able to. Not everyone’s life is as “perfect” as yours but you are doing yourself a disservice with the generalizations. I will say that there are plenty of bad MBA associates out there, but there are also plenty of stellar ones.
On the flip side, there are plenty of stellar analysts from top undergrads, but also plenty of bad ones.
Are MBA associates dumb? Many get into banking only 5-7 years later than they would've as an undergrad (still pretty early career) and make over twice as much
Make over twice as much as who? Fresh grads 5-7 years under them? That’s not really a flex man.
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