Back to make fun of UCLA, the worst top college there is
THIS IS NOT A SHTPOST. So I recently saw something on WSO about UCLA being shtty for finance recruiting, and decided I might as well make a post here to educate everyone about it. As an alum on the east coast who had to grind just as much as a non-target, no name state school kid had to, I feel like I should write a post to well-inform potential incoming students before they end up committing to UCLA. However, note that I was in one of the clubs, so I was still lucky to have mentorship from my upperclassmen.
UCLA, for a school with a 12% acceptance rate and considered the #1 public school and a top 20 school, is actually a complete non-target for investment banking and other high finance careers generally outside of LA, and a semi target for jobs even within the LA area. A lot of EB spots in LA are usually taken up by Ivy kids from the SoCal area. Also each grade at UCLA probably consists of 6500 kids, with probably about 2000 business-interested kids? And in total for kids that breaking into IB/S&T/ER, only about 30-35 kids max a year. UCLA does have IB Workshop and Sharpe Fellows as solid programs for sending kids into IB, and each of these programs takes about 20 kids, with about 90% overlap between the two programs. However, the IB workshop is also run by students, compared to workshops at other universities run by faculty, so a lot of the times, the kids being let in to the workshop are just those with friends from the previous years in the clubs.
Don't even get me started on consulting recruiting. UBS' consulting workshop takes a good amount of kids as well, but only like half of them actually manage to break into consulting. For MBB, UCLA sends about 5 a year, and mid-tier (Parthenon, LEK, Accenture, Deloitte) and low-tier consulting (ZS, KPMG, Mercer), they send about 10-15ish. Also, Deloitte Tech Consulting is not consulting at all, so don't be fooled by that.
Also take into account that 90-95% of those kids that get those top jobs were kids in one of the finance/consulting clubs on campus (there's about 3 legit finance clubs and 4 legit consulting ones? and each has like a 3-4% acceptance rate), so even if they somehow didn't get into Workshop or Sharpe, they still have their alum and upperclassmen showing them the ropes and/or pulling strings for them to break into those top jobs. Oh yeah, speaking about alumni, people tend to tell you to network with other alumni at your school. However, UCLA alumni are actually pretty bad - they would usually only help you out if you were in their club or their frat. I just happened to get lucky and get into a club, but the general finance vibe at UCLA is very toxic. Like one of the finance clubs has been starting to get a reputation for being sexist...
It's just so unfortunate that UCLA does so poorly in high finance and consulting recruiting, but it's a great school for accounting (where most of their business-interested kids end up), which is kind of sad considering how highly ranked of a school it is. This might also be attributed to it being such a research-focused school (which is great for STEM majors). But hey, if you're satisfied going to a back office audit job, UCLA might be the perfect place for you. So being realistic, it's actually incredibly hard getting into IB/Consulting/S&T/ER from UCLA.
You're not just competing with other Econ and Biz Econ majors, but kids from other majors as well (like STEM majors that decided that they wanted to do business), and this is just my anecdotal experience, but STEM majors tend to do much stronger in recruiting. Just take a look at any Engineering or Life Science major that recruited for finance or consulting on Linkedin.
If you are strongly considering UCLA, you probably had a good chance at getting into Cal, UMich, UVA, UNC, Notre Dame, Vandy, GTown as well, so if you did, I would strongly advise you to pick one of those schools instead. For example, UVA is ranked below us with double the acceptance rate, but it sends over 100 kids into high finance careers every year. While we send 35 AT MAX.
It sucks a lot, but if you're at UCLA, and even though you might be incredibly capable, if you're unlucky and don't get into ANY of the 7? clubs or Workshop/Sharpe or happen to be a woman/black/hispanic/native american/queer, I honestly think you're kinda screwed. Just a warning.
I'm a UCLA alum & I 100% percent agree. UCLA, given its overall reputation, is awful for finance & consulting careers. The career center (and Econ/Accounting departments in particular) are more than happy sending a couple hundred kids to Big 4 Audit and Tax every year. There is no ambition to pursue higher impact, front office careers. The career center is truly a pile of garbage - everyone there deserves to be fired. Alumni are also lukewarm - if you're in one of the clubs mentioned in the post, you can reliably network with club alums. But if you're not, good luck even getting an email response.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time there and loved the campus, ease of access to LA life, and all the friends I made. But I would never recommend it to anyone seeking a career in finance or consulting.
I don’t know why everyone here jerks off to UCLA’s acceptance rate. Lower acceptance rate doesn’t equal better recruiting. Penn State’s MBA program has a lower acceptance rate than Wharton. Are you going to turn down Wharton for Penn State Smeal?
Agreed. UCLA's acceptance rate is misleading. If you're applying to any UC school, the application is identical - all you have to do is tick a box and pick a major, so essentially every UC applicant applies to UCLA & UC Berkeley.
It's free for all CA residents to apply, which further boosts the number of applicants. If you look at the acceptance rate for out-of-state students, it's 3x the overall acceptance rate.