MF PE B-School Slippage?

Have heard rumors of some MFs (maybe Bain and Carlyle) “slipping” in terms of B-school placement, defined as either associates striking out or going to W instead of H/S. Is anyone well-placed to run through the list and specify where this isn’t or is happening?

31 Comments
 

I'm pretty sure MBAs no longer value the IB + MF PE path as highly as they used to.

It used to basically be a lock for H/S/W, but now these profiles are a dime a dozen. 

 

Wait wait lmfaooo so wait people really are upset they get into Wharton mba and not h/s that’s some crazy shiet

 

Wait wait lmfaooo so wait people really are upset they get into Wharton mba and not h/s that’s some crazy shiet

 

Full stop. It is absolutely wild for you to think that Wharton is a subpar outcome as it’s one of the best business schools in the world with a fantastic brand / alumni base. I think it’s a pretty big drop after H/S/W, but I’ll bite. I’m at a fairly large MF in NYC and I did a quick LinkedIn search of all the Associates that went to business from my firm for the last 8-10 years and basically we had ~9 Wharton, ~15 HBS, and ~8 GSB. These figures exclude people that were in middle / back office roles that went to business school and represent just investment professionals w/ some from international offices as well. Surprisingly if you exclude international offices, we send a disproportionate number of kids to HBS / GSB vs. Wharton. We probably had 30-40% come back at the VP / Principal level after business school. I do think as class sizes have increased, there is just a wider dispersion of people going to all 3 schools vs. a decade ago, it was probably 75% HBS, but placements still remains robust. Obviously you can’t have a school accepting 10 kids from the same firm so it’s not possible for everyone to go H/S, but getting into Wharton is an accomplishment of itself. I really don’t know why people discount it against the other two schools, but every major PE firm and HF recruit from the latter as well (e.g., BX, KKR, Viking, Carlyle, etc.).

 

Not quite sure where Bain “slipping” is coming from at all…outcomes at least in NAPE have been effectively certain for HBS/GSB in recent years, especially HBS due to Boston.

Not as familiar with business school placement in the other funds, from observation they’re strong as well but perhaps that’s what people are referring to.

 
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I'm at H/S and let me just say this place is already crawling with PE guys as is. There are some big funds where I can't count the number of people who are at school with me on one hand. There are also some random funds that just magically send an Associate or two here every. single. year. Maybe some funds are shit at bschool placement but the truth is that there are tons of interesting people here and probably the least interesting people here are PE associates, relative to the people who cured cancer and medaled at the Olympics. This is the most risk-off career path with no real lived experiences other than doing dime a dozen transaction stuff which is basically a trade like plumbing or accounting and not that intellectual. The only reason why it's bullshit that there aren't more PE associates here is because there are so fucking many consultants it drives me insane. It is basically the MBB class reunion. 

 

The reality is that for a debt/cost to attend like that you need either to be sponsored or be pretty sure you get a big boy job afterwards. Yes I'm aware a bunch of people are sponsored but these schools are run for-profit. The vast majority of people who go to H/S etc. are very unremarkable, run-off-the-mill and middle of the pack in good corporate job brand names. That's bankers, consultants, PE, etc.  To make it worse, the vast majority of the best ones from that group don't attend because they don't have to and it's hugely expensive / time intensive and instead they can fast-track through to the next level without and MBA. To pretend the place is full of olympic medalists and austronauts looking for their next thing is just pure nonsense

 

While you raise some good points about who chooses to not attend, it is clear you did not carefully read my comment to understand the point that there are tons of PE and MBB people which I specifically highlighted are the majority and the unremarkable. There are however many people who are remarkable of the olympic / founder / scientist / etc. variety - my suspicion is that you have not gone to business school.

 

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