Brown's really good for consulting as well, over Northwestern I'd say. I'd pick Brown unless you really like Northwestern over it.

 

As a fellow Ivy transfer (you should pick brown btw), regardless of what school u pick just know u will likely need to extend ur time at the univ. Unless you're a freshman --> sophmoroe transfer u might be ok. If ur transferring as a junior you're super behind the curve in terms of recruiting and should extend to join relevant clubs/pipelines to get the best ops and mentorship possible 

- transfer who wish he knew this years ago

 

Not sure what world you live in. Junior summer recruiting takes place spring of your soph year, so if this is person is transferring as a junior w/o an internship lined up they're massively behind 

 

Factors to rank and consider:

Location of school (Evanston vs. Providence) and NYC vs. Chicago for banking/consulting. I'm very grateful I got to attend once-in-a-lifetime family events throughout the semester, and I plan to work in Chicago if I can help it.

Cost: Northwestern will negotiate merit financial aid because they can, so ask to negotiate against Brown. Ivy leagues only do need-based.

Prestige: they're equal for their respective regions, but Brown will be better long term in the exit opportunities in NYC and across the US.

Difficulty: not sure about Northwestern, but the average unofficial GPA at Brown is an A- I've heard (they only do individual grades, not GPA calcs), any classes where you get less than a C are expunged from your transcript (and most people just fail instead of get a C), you can drop a class and expunge it whenever you want, you can take any hard class as pass/fail, and there is an open curriculum meaning you can grade inflate easily.

Study: Brown has Business Econ and is entirely open to changing majors if you didn't initially indicate that, I think Northwestern only has Econ.

Fit, which is entirely subjective.

Both should have top tier student-run investment funds and pro-bono consulting clubs, but that might be something you want to research. Selective industry-focused clubs are the easy pipelines into the industry.

So probably Brown unless you have ties to the Midwest

 
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Went to NU, have friends at brown—they will be the same for IB. I actually will go against the grain and say NU probably places better—there’s this weird consulting image of NU due to the bschool and people talking out of their ass. The website stuns me how inaccurate it is when discussing the experience of Northwestern recruitment. Coming from the undergrad school I got interviews at Centerview, evercore, MS, Barclays, WB, GS, Citi. Maybe I had a great resume, but more I think it’s not coming down to school for your ability to get to certain firms when you are hair splitting between brown and NU. I have friends at basically every investment bank and know very few people who tried to recruit that were unable to. Both schools allow you to go basically anywhere in my view if your resume is solid and you network well—will wharton potentially open more doors? Probably, but there really isn’t many better jobs for an undergrad than centerview or GS or evercore, which people go to every year from NU. This forum will have you believe like a analyst role at blackstone beats a centerview banking stint and it really depends on your goals/ they are different jobs lol. Jobs can’t really get ranked due to how non-linear careers are. Point being, neither school has enough of a difference to make a decision based on their finance recruiting difference.

Instead, make your decision on culture, school location, and long term location. Brown is known to be very peculiar. If that’s your vibe—go for it. Also, NU is in the Midwest and has brutal winters and your network will likely be more Midwest concentrated. It’s not to say you can’t go somewhere else, but if you don’t plan on being in the Midwest and know you want to go to the east coast, Brown might leave you with more friends in NYC post college. Do a visit to both or just look up the general reps of each school. Brown has a autistic kinda hippy vibe, NU has a slight big ten and Midwestern vibe. Evanston versus providence are very different locations. Clubs and major strengths are likely different at both as well—if you plan to go join musical type clubs NU will be way better than brown.

If you don’t get an IB offer, it won’t be due to school choice it will be because you aren’t able to get a 3.8 GPA and come across well over the phone and/or email.

 

The days of cold applying are over—competitive positions get thousands of applications. Can it work and do some places run processes that cold applying can work and where networking is less emphasized? For sure. But the reality is most top banks are getting hundreds of 3.7+ applicants and all resumes look the same—sure you are president of a finance club at a top university with a high gpa and test score, but so is everyone else. Also, for many of these places there might by dozens of people applying from your same institution with excellent resumes, so no, you can’t really cold apply to competitive positions. They are competitive.

Separately, on-campus interviews are over rated and it wouldn’t surprise me if they fizzle out in the future minus diversity recruitment. Put another way, students seem to think just because a bank has tons of people from like Dartmouth that if your resume says duke it will end up in the trash. In reality, most people don’t really care what school kids come from as long as their resume connects in some way and makes them want to take a networking call. For example, I was just as likely to take a call from someone from my college as I was for someone that listed interests or roles that resonated with me or that I found interesting. Post college, people care more about competence and someone coming from duke versus uchicago versus wash u versus Michigan versus brown versus Cornell all are kinda the same thing. There’s a bit of a tougher bias for schools that aren’t “top 10/20” schools though.

 

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