Ib at Penn state

I worked with tons of Penn State grads in my day. Over a bakers dozen. It was usually called the elite Pen15 alumni group at my bank (fintech EB).

You can certainly recruit into investment banking from Penn State. I recommend transferring to University Park after 2 years, as there are many more/higher quality high finance resources to help you recruit into the industry. Unfortunately, however, the majority of the "high finance" clubs refuse to recruit anyone who transfers from a commonwealth campus because they want to keep Wall St. placements high. 

I'm not sure if you recruited for a sophomore summer analyst position, but regardless, your current focus should be on securing ANY finance internship for your sophomore spring/summer. Check with career services, as they usually have something that you can add to your resume. Also, if you haven't done so already, start trying to network with investment bankers. 2025 summer analyst recruiting has already started, but won't wrap-up until July-ish. There will still be some recruiting between July and November, but it will be limited from the top banks. If you plan to transfer to UP next year or need any help navigating recruiting, lmk and I'll pm you.

I went to Penn State and broke into a boutique, first in Philly and then I lateraled to a bigger one in New York. 
 

I’ll be honest with you. If you were at UP, I would say that Penn State is either the worst semi-target or the best non-target. But if you’re at a satellite campus, you’re decidedly at a non-target. What makes Penn State decent at all is all the stuff around UP like the NLF, PSIA, Smeal, and all the big organizations you can use to distinguish yourself. If you’re at a satellite, you get none of that. So given that you’re a freshman, or I guess a sophomore at this point, I would really encourage you to do 2 things this winter: try to strategize a way to get into Smeal or Liberal Arts for Econ (preferably the BS). Smeal is better but Econ can be okay. The BS is better than the BA and the BS with even more math and stats than prescribed would be even better. I say all this because that quantitative Econ base could give you a second chance option as a quant if you strike out for recruiting and MBA admissions but can get into an MS or MFE. Smeal is best though. And then you have to try hard to get a decent internship, get into PSIA and the NLF, get some really solid sport and/or extracurricular experience. That’s the game at Penn State. It’s a very extracurricular focused place. Actually, I would very much encourage you to explore the quant side of things if you have any mathematical inclination at all. The business school has always served a niche on Wall Street and is well known among BBs but nowhere else and more and more it fails to compete with the competition. Meanwhile, Engineering and Science (which people would associate you with if you had an MA or MS in Econ, for example) are really top notch these days and what campus you started at matters a whole lot less. I did the BS in Econ with more math and that’s exactly what I wish I had went for. The other thing you have to do is find a list of targets and semi-targets and send out transfer apps immediately. If you want IB M&A, you’ll be infinitely better off any other target or semi-target than from Penn State even if you did start at a satellite. I would also consider Villanova, Lehigh, and Bucknell even though they’re not either targets or semi-targets. They do place people in IB as well. Pittsburgh and Temple wouldn’t be so good. I hope you see this. Good luck to you.