43 Comments
 

First and foremost, let's not have another rankings thread. One class of HS students have already made their college decisions and another HS class has yet to even start applying. No one is helped by the timing of this post. When the HS class of 2021 does want to consider wall street recruiting targets in their college decisions (which should NEVER be the sole factor), they can use the search function and find a number of helpful threads (including this one which you seem to have copied pretty heavily https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/comprehensive-undergraduate-targ…). They don't need a new ranking thread every year, nothing is changing that drastically- Wharton is not suddenly going to fall to a Rutgers level within a few months, so there's no point analyzing this again and again, year in and year out.

But you made the thread, so I'll bite. First and foremost, you seem to have forgotten Brown entirely. Not sure exactly what tier it goes in, but if you can remember to include freaking Fordham Gabelli, I'm sure you can remember Brown. Secondly (this might be a little controversial idk), but I would put Stanford in the S+ tier. I don't know where the idea came from that banking is "below" Stanford kids, but that's absolutely not true. If a Stanford kid wants BB or EB banking, they've got it. Not only do they have the prestige of being (arguably) in the top 2 schools in the nation, they also have the ability to tap into the vastly expansive network of the Stanford GSB. NYU Stern is a great school, no denying that. But it doesn't have the academic prestige of any other schools in the S tier. While the other schools tend to produce well rounded students, Stern has the tendency to churn out uninteresting kids with the goal of banking and banking alone. Stern is still a target, but I would move it down to the A+ tier because it just doesn't fit that well in the S tier. Other than that, I don't see too many glaring issues with this list. Don't really see how we can call the IU Kelley IBW a school, but ok. It's a workshop and the workshop might be target, but you can't really put it on a list of schools imo.

 

Great points. I agree with almost all of them.

I personally wouldn’t put Stanford with HYP. You are right that it definitely has much more academic prestige than NYU for example but this isn’t a prestige ranking it’s a target school ranking and I’ve personally seen infinitely more NYU grads on wall Street than Stanford but that might be due to the schools locations and self selection biases (Stanford kids probably want tech or west coast finance the most).

 

Full disclaimer: went to Stanford so I’m biased maybe.

If you want to do finance at Stanford you can do whatever you want/go straight to the buyside/ VCs like Sequoia/ tech PE at Silverlake. Every single door is open to you. Is it as much of a focus as it is at HYPW? Certainly not - especially going to IBD out of undergrad comparatively.

Putting Stanford and NYU Stern in the same bucket...it’s just weird. Would anyone ever choose to go to Stern over Stanford ever? Literally no one, regardless of if they wanted to end up on Wall Street post college.

There’s a lot of schools that can land you solid positions in Wall Street...but out of this list, how many schools can you major in whatever the fuck you want like art history and still make it to GS/PJT? Only like 10 of these schools have that hallowed reputation for churning out financiers from whatever the fuck you spent 4 years doing -> the rest of the list you pretty much have to be grinding it out in a business/Econ major to have a real shot at Wall Street. No ones hiring an art history major from UVA. That says something, so think about that. Wharton’s really the only exception where you’re doing a BS in Finance but top caliber people vs at other big business schools you’re competing against hordes of kids and the top guys will land at great places but plenty of people won’t be as successful in the process.

 
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Jesus again? Enough of these pointless ranking threads by people who simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

First of all, it looks like you missed Brown, which is less of a target than Penn, Cornell, & Columbia but still a target.

Second and more importantly, to the guy above me who mentioned Duke, Cornell, penn, NYU, etc., it’s impossible to quantify placement on a per capita basis. Don’t know why you and other people on this forum point to that meaningless statistic. How many people can you accurately say truly wanted IB (as in studied for technicals, networked hard, etc) and didn’t get it out of all the current students and alumni of a particular school? For a school like NYU, which everyone knows is a top feeder for Wall Street, how could possibly say recruits fewer people than Chicago or Duke on a per capita basis? Same for Penn or Cornell. You are assuming all 15,000 undergrads at cornell for example are gunning for IB and only about ~300-500 per year get it. The fact of the matter is that every school, even HYPW have people who want IB or PE and don’t get it (as mentioned on many other threads) and have people who want something other than IB (accounting, consulting, marketing, corporate law, etc.).

 

Everyone thinks it's cringe but secretly we all want to play the dick measuring games. It's like the guilty pleasure of this forum.

Was obsessed with finance, now do product in tech
 

I don't understand how kids can take the time out of their day to write multi-paragraph potss advocating/critiquing schools and their merits/drawbacks lol...writing already sucks enough

 

If this looks familiar, it’s because OP copied off of a prior list from an older post.

 
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So you think a school that's part of Indiana University deserves to be on the same tier as MIT?

 

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