Williams Top-Target??
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You guys are not rivaling us 💀
Our placements are roughly the same, and we're like a third of your size
A quick LinkedIn search disproves this.
Nepo heaven
This is true but like no way the whole school is nepo?
del
LAC's are the place for MD or clinet nepo babies given small class sizes + locations + historical pipeline into IB from these places. These schools like Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Bowdoin, etc. have loyal alum that send their kids to their same school, as well as encourage others they work with to send their kids to similar schools. Given small class sizes, this ends up being a sizeable chunk of the school and a very significant portion of finance placements. These schools have their biggest feeders being the top prep schools (not dissimilar to the ivies, but unlike the ivies this makes up larger % of total student body), which means more people who even if not directly nepo have some kind of connection into the finance world.
This is not to say these are not great schools if you don't have those connections due to the very loyal alum bases. However, it is important to note that placements are heavily inflated when loooking at percentages or per-capita numbers due to relatively more distortion of nepo hires. These schools are probably still target or very high semi-target level without nepo hires per capita again due to just how loyal alums are. I attended one of W/A, and every single alum across every bank responded to my emails and many helped me throughout the process, which is something that would not happen at larger schools from what I have heard.
Del
I was friends with people from Williams. Their job searches didn’t require anything more than an alumni directory. Or they asked a classmate.
You want to work in private equity? Call the alums working at firms you’re interested in. That you majored in religion and hadn’t studied math since junior high wasn’t a drawback. Never ran into people who were so casual about finding jobs.
Amherst is a bit more pre-professional in the sense that you actually have to network and there is some sembalnce of competiton. However, everyone helps each other and most people who actually bother to learn techs and make basic efforts at networking end up where they want whether that be on the buy-side or sell-side.
The most pre-professional LAC from what I've seen from talking to LAC kids is probably Middlebury or CMC, but they also place very strongly (would think they are 3/4 respectively among LAC's for finance recrutiing despite them being in the broad 2nd tier of LAC's like Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, Wesylan, and also Tufts given NESCAC but they aren't really a pure play LAC). The best placing 3rd tier LAC's are Washington and Lee + Davidson probably if you cannot get into one of the W/A or tier 2 schools I mentioned above.
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