School Tier List for PE

To give some actual insight, what I’ve actually seen from being involved in recruiting is that PE recruiting is more “pure prestige” vs IB.

At banking targets / semi targets / etc are driven by on campus recruiting and what helps bank recruit their analysts efficiently. This typically favors bigger schools / undergrad business schools (places like Michigan, NYU, etc) all have large populations of undergrads studying finance and it makes it easy for banks to recruit.

In PE, because there isn’t an on-campus element, it just seems like HHs and funds like “the best” possible schools, which often is places like LAC (Williams, Amherst, etc) or great academic schools that just aren’t big finance feeders (MIT, Brown, JHU). Also important that for a banking analyst, its (arguably) helpful to hire kids with undergrad finance coursework, whereas PE isn’t hiring out of college so doesn’t matter what someone studied

Obviously not saying a PE fund will look down on someone from Michigan/NYU/etc but the recruiting process tends to favor schools where some 50 year old MD is impressed by more than anything else.