Non-targets/State schools: where are you now?

You know the answers you get will be skewed af. It's only the people who still do finance after non-target. Survivorship bias

I just hangout on this site cause it's cool I barely have ever had any finance jobs. I graduated from a state school 1.5 years early with a 3.90 GPA but I have sucked in the working world, I don't have that much work experience relative to how many years I've been out of school and I don't have a job right now and it's been tough trying to find one, my last job was a seasonal job at a warehouse cause I couldn't find anything else for a while. I'm trying to make my music project successful and pretty much go all in on that although it is not successful at all yet I think that it will be at some point in the future if I don't stop working on it.

Survivorship bias is obvious, but I don’t think OP was trying to use this as a poll to say, “what is the exact probability of becoming an investment banker provided that someone wants to become one and attends a non-target university?”

In any case, I went to a non-target and am in my second year working for an M&A boutique.

IB -> PE, enjoying life

the people responding on WSO will be biased towards working in finance - suggest you do a better study with random sampling. 

My first job after college was in management consulting doing corporate finance. 

REPE ~> REIT

Worked my way up at an auto parts distributor for 8 years. Got a part-time MBA at a nontarget during the end of my time there and now at a MM bank in M&A.

Did some random stuff, now in the infrastructure space.

Bump

Posting asanine replies to inane questions on a random forum online and watching the ivy grads falling over each other to validate their position and choices in life when after a decade in I know no one gives a crap past your first position and is more interested in your track record.

Now? I deal with the SEC, HMRC, SEDAR and ASIC to keep things in line. Clean house on client HR/benefits legal issues while I'm at it despite not having a JD.

Went to one of the city colleges in nyc -> credit risk analyst at a BB -> now credit risk analyst at a HF

Sales Job at a startup > Commercial Banking > Corporate & Investment Banking at a BB

Real Estate - selling properties. Know one person from my HS whose been doing very well (not sure about now) with selling million dollar high rise apartments for a few years now. Know a few people who just reinvest their family money, think $5-15M+ (unique investing mandates, Real Estate development/acquisitions + turning mom/pop shops they bought into annual 200-400K revenue streams). A lot of them invest in blue collar businesses but are college-educated/discipline. I guess you can say this is kind of entrepreneurship through acquisition and I've seen more than a few families that I know personally make generational wealth this way.

Granted those 'few people' were in situations where they parents were wealthy and they had the choice to work with them after college instead of going to the workforce.

I don't think my experience really counts because I have a MSc from a European target school (I'm a MO Risk Quant, currently holding two offers for BB Desk Strats), but I'm close friends with most of my BEng class so I can provide some unbiased info.

I did my BEng in a non-target European school, still well-ranked in my home country but fairly unknown otherwise. Out of all the people in my cohort:

• ~5% went to quant finance by getting MScs from target schools;
• ~15% are doing PhDs, mostly in computer science;
• ~70% work in tech, mostly as SWEs and mostly in no-name companies (I only know one guy who got into Google);
• ~10% work in completely unrelated fields (e.g. copywriting, non-finance sales, one guy is a top dog in a MLM/Ponzi scheme company);
• A few people are still unemployed.

My main takeaway from this would be that breaking into finance/banking is hard unless you go to a target school for an Master's.

Non target > B4 (CPA) > Lateraled to strong firm and group > hoping to get into PE

I’m still on WSO which should tell you a lot!

Immediately after undergrad, I didn’t have a job for around 6 months. Graduated college a semester early but with no internships so was just blindly applying to jobs. Landed an FP&A role at a private company, and since then have worked at several companies doing FP&A and Corp Dev with more responsibility at each.

I'm at a non-target in NYC. Feeling fortunate to have a MM IB offer for post-grad

Vanguard Accounting Operations. Pay is okay, WLB is great, and benefits are really good. The job is incredibly dull, though.