How are so many schools improving their IB placement?
Talking about both semi-targets and non-targets here. I've seen lots of times on this forum about X or Y school is improving their investment banking placement and sending more kids to IB and top banks every year.
How is this possible? Is investment banking headcount growing? Or are some schools declining for finance and sending fewer kids to IB every year? Is the number of kids entering high finance from targets decreasing and expected to continue to decrease?
Target interest is plummeting (vs. Tech and other options) and the big players are being more open-minded about other schools. Some of it’s because, thanks to HireVue etc. they can interview a lot more, but it’s also because they want career bankers and target kids tend to bail.
Most semi to non target schools are developing specialized programs to get kids into Wall Street specifically IB. Also most non targets have alumni who are super loyal and willing to help kids break into Wall Street. A school that comes to mind is Penn State. They were barely any people from penn state on Wall Street ten years ago and now they have a considerable presence. They have the following programs Nittany Lion Fund: a $10 million dollar student run hedge fund of real investor money Leveraged Lion Capital: a $125 million dollar paper portfolio of fixed income investments There’s also a 15 week program called Wall Street Bootcamp where the kids learn directly from walk street professionals and get to network with them. These programs give kids a huge alumni base, have almost 100% job placements, and drill similar skills to Wall Street such as ATD, professionalism, and working with FactSet and Bloomberg. PSU alumni also love the school and are super helpful to getting kids in.
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It's the proliferation of the Internet and its democratization. People are being exposed to IB and the necessary resources to help them succeed so easily nowadays that they no longer have that disadvantage they once had. WSO itself is a major driver of that. IB used to be the hidden career that was hard to get into or even understand for most people. Now, everyone on WSO whether you're a non-target or in a BO job, knows all the different tiers of banks and which ones are better and all of that jazz, along with which resources to use to get up to speed just by starting a thread and asking.
The Internet and tech itself has made things so accessible to the common man that everything in general is going to be and is already becoming significantly more competitive. Now, anyone can find out how to best position themselves for a solid IB internship after a couple hours of research on this site - something that was not possible and maybe not even available on the Internet ten years ago. I'm so happy that I am in my 20s now and got into a great college and bank but I know for a fact that if I were competing at this time with high school students or college IB hopefuls, then I would not have gotten into the same college or frankly, even the same bank. It's crazy to think that 20 years ago, a 3.8+ GPA and 1400+ SAT score with barely any ECs could most likely get you into at least an Ivy (yes, hard to believe but standards were much lower back in the day). Now, only those stats would get you rejected from most decent schools like Penn State, U Miami, Wake Forest and Emory...
so you're saying all those ranking threads serve a purpose