College Choice Help: Transfer Student Reflection

Seeing quite a few posts requesting help on choosing colleges and thought I could shed some light through a unique perspective. I transferred from a complete Non-Target Liberal Arts College to a Target Business School, and recently signed at BB/EB for SA 2025. I know everyone knows target schools are generally preferred, but maybe HS students don't know exactly why. Here's what I would say, after seeing and experiencing both sides. If you're interested in Investment Banking, go to a target school. Simple as that. 

1) Recruiting pipelines: systems are in place to prioritize candidates who go to better schools and they get more interviews at top firms. 1) Each year, these schools have X amount of spots specifically dedicated to candidates from that specific university. 2) Additionally, there are often more strenuous interview processes for non-target candidates (many EBs do extra "second rounds" for non-target candidates to weed more of them out).

And even if X Target School isn't a "target" for a firm, when selecting resumes and interviewing candidates, bankers are (whether subconsciously or not) more impressed by those who go to more prestigious schools. And thus, they are more likely to forward your resume/give an interview/pass you in the interview.

As far as I understand, your school "prestige" also heavily impacts buyside recruiting (after IB) as well. The game's the game.

2) Communities/Career Centers: IMO the greatest advantage is the community of students (hopefully friends moreso than competition) that understand the process. It's spoken about - albeit far too frequently. And upperclassmen and career counselors have been through the process, and know how to optimize every step of the way. At a non-target, it's the complete opposite.

But here is the kicker: At these schools (say Wharton), interviews are not a blackbox; what sort of questions PJT RSSG or MS IBD asked in their Superday are passed down the never-ending lineage, an endless cycle. Obscure technical concepts asked in certain interviews are prepared for in advance at these places (evidenced by public Quizlets online created by these students - seriously, not a joke). And all of this occurs while a kid at Nowhere University struggles to walk through a DCF because they think the 400 Q's guide is enough to prepare them. Now, get into an interview and who's looking like an idiot? But who likely spent more time preparing because they had to learn it all independently? Exactly.

The one con to target schools: recruiting is unbelievably toxic. Everyone is competing with one another. No one discusses it. To paint the picture: you know when you throw a piece of bread into a group of pigeons and they fight over it? That's what a bank's info-session at a target school is like: 20 eventual Linkedin "Incoming Summer Analyst" robots and one guy/girl who probably doesn't care about any of them whatsoever. "Hi X, my name is Kevin. Thank you for taking your time and coming down today, really learned a lot. My question is: ... lean deal teams?" Wow. So much fun.

In the end, like one of my own interviewers said: "this whole process is bullshit." So you might as well not hate the player or the game, but instead do your best to stack the odds in your favor and control what you can control. Go with the target school.