Elite Firms Fishing in a Very Small Hiring Pool

Hmm are you sure the author didn't just use this website as a reference XD

True to a large extent but not the rule and more applicable to college/mba hires and not to experienced hires. This is why networking when you have an existing job is so important.

It's kind of funny. At the institution where I work, we've got a ton of Wharton hires, but then also people that studied at podunk university working shoulder to shoulder.

lol, I go to Columbia, and we're constantly beaten by Georgetown and Duke when it comes to PE placement. This idiot probably barely knows anyone outside his own firm. Lol, even Yale has fewer guys at BX than either of those two 'less prestigious' schools. Princeton has the same amount.

Also, the distinction between non-Wharton and Wharton Penn is simple. At Wharton, you learn business skills that allow you to hit the ground running from day one.

In sum: If you want insane prestige, the sort that can make all the difference in the job search process, get into Harvard and go there; if you want competitive job skills with high prestige, apply to the business program at Penn; if you just want prestige that may occasionally help in finding a job, just go to an Ivy or a decent top-15 school

In terms of general prestige, there is a difference between HYP and the other ivies. With regards to finance recruiting though, it's basically harvard and wharton at the top and then the others. Non-wharton penn kids with good grades did just fine with banking and consulting recruiting; the type of jobs where they were virtually excluded from were the PE firms and hedge funds (blackstone, silver lake, bain capital, citadel, AQR, apollo, fortress, etc.). Those jobs almost exclusively went to wharton students.

This article may be true in that people overrate HYS, but I think it is stupid for people to make the assumption that the quality of education at HYS is somehow better than well-recognized universities. Obviously HYS kids are extremely bright (minus the random Senator's kid) but academia has become so competitive nowadays that it is very likely students at University of Maryland are receiving instruction from professors that have attended top graduate programs or been exposed to top-level research. Think of schools like Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, etc. EXCELLENT INSTRUCTION AT THESE SCHOOLS. It doesn't make much sense to arbitrarily count these schools out just based on name. I go to a non-target and I will be the first to admit students at my school are often mediocre at best, but many other students are on full-scholarship and so chose to enroll over Stanford or the like.

JamesHetfield:

Just makes me wish I worked harder in HS and got into a elite college and then wouldn't have to worry about much after that.

oh yeah, if you go to Harvard your life automatically rules afterwards

I don't think not classifying U of M or Berkeley not prestigious isn't necessarily pejorative, as ton's of kids from those schools work for well-known houses.

The study also goes to show the importance of networking and marketing yourself appropriately to the FO guy's handling recruiting and being proactive instead of being a passive applicant. If you can do little things to help them (i.e. ask to connect via a cold email post resume drop) it: a) shows enthusiasm for the position / an indication that your serious about pursuing to job with the shop; b) if your qualified, helps them out in setting up phone screen. Worst can happen is they're not interested.

It's true. The best is when you turned down the Ivy as a teenager and wind up with the same job (and excelling more in it) the Ivy kids got.

^^^I've been a casual observer of your posts Brady. I hope that you get into HBS someday. I know you want it bad.

My dream school is INSEAD. Maybe it is because I am not American, or that I am doing my UG in the US and I want to go for my MBA in Asia/Europe, but INSEAD is the B-School for me.

Check out this article on how the admissions process at top schools developed over the years. Some of you might have read it as it was published a while back: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentP…

In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for admission, which meant that virtually any academically gifted high-school senior who could afford a private college had a straightforward shot at attending. By 1908, the freshman class was seven per cent Jewish, nine per cent Catholic, and forty-five per cent from public schools, an astonishing transformation for a school that historically had been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.

As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in “The Chosen” (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically.By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.”

The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell’s first idea—a quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student body—was roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.

The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicant’s personal life. Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the “character” of candidates from “persons who know the applicants well,” and so the letter of reference became mandatory. Harvard started asking applicants to provide a photograph. Candidates had to write personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities. “Starting in the fall of 1922,” Karabel writes, “applicants were required to answer questions on ‘Race and Color,’ ‘Religious Preference,’ ‘Maiden Name of Mother,’ ‘Birthplace of Father,’ and ‘What change, if any, has been made since birth in your own name or that of your father? (Explain fully).’ ”

When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.” One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears.”

I agree with being too hung up on pedigree being unamerican...

or at least I think of it as ignorant and would hope that that's not what being American is about

I disagree, with the picture.

Bait caster or bust, no one NO ONE uses spin caster.

I seen one person in my whole life use spin caster and it was a zebco, but he had it customized to all hell.

Sorry, but using a 90 dollar at MAX rod is not expensive enough nor high quality to catch those monsterous blue gill obvisously in that lake.