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Yes, they do care about your school - for the simple fact that there is very little else for them to screen on 1 month after you graduate college. Good interview skills/case studies are table stakes, everyone at a top bank/group aiming for MFs will do well at those. Group is important too.

I would evaluate your group's exits and the profiles of the associates at firms you like and make your own judgment on whether this is realistic. Telling HHs you only want MF PE if you are not going to get through the resume screen is kind of a waste of oncycle. MF PE is not realistic for the vast majority of IB analysts and you need to handicap those odds to get the most out of it.

At the end of the day, MM or UMM PE is still PE and all of this hype around being at the BEST IB group, making it to MF PE etc all goes away within a year or two of graduating.

 

They care about school but an EB will get you enough looks from HHs. Depending on your EB and group you will likely be hit up by HHs in the summer for PE analyst programs.

 

You should be having dreams of starting your own company or something that gives you freedom of time and money, not MF PE which gives you neither in the short-medium term.
It can be hard to see until you experience it, but people in PE are just employees and not investors.
Things like being chased if you left the office early with no work (first hand experience) or reworking a whole strategy forecast Excel with 20 tabs sent from a portco hardcoded to make it dynamic instead of asking them for the original excel because the person above you says we "usually don't ask them for things we can do ourselves", makes you realize just how much of a cog in the machine you are (i.e. replaceable too).
From someone who has been in this role for 3mo and 5d and will be quitting soon, I can tell you this is not a "dream" worth having.

 

All points are valid except first one - starting a company definitely won't give you "freedom of time and money" in the short term. Freedom to choose what work you are doing, yes, but not true freedom of time. And probability adjusted, MF PE is more likely to make you the money required to have freedom of time. 

Not arguing with what the rest of what you said. Just seems like a silly example.

 

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