Is Harvard a target school?
Hi everyone,
I'm a rising junior at a top non-ivy school. Through a recent internship, I had the opportunity to talk to a number of professionals, many of whom had attended top ivy league schools. The analysts and associates I talked to told me that due to increased competitiveness for IB jobs in recent years, Harvard is no longer considered a target school but rather a semi-target at best. I found this information rather surprising, since most online threads had previously led me to believe that schools like Harvard and Penn, while they barely made the cut, are indeed target schools. I would really appreciate some clarification. As the title mentions, is Harvard a target school?
With the economy in its current stagnant form, it's difficult to tell exactly which schools should be perceived as target schools. As a 3rd year banker who has worked, cooperated, and talked with JP Morgan managing directors, the only true target school, the school that they MUST recruit at above all else, in their opinion would be Princeton. Everything else is of lower priority and frankly, they seem to believe that the talent found at Harvard is compared to that of even a NON-target like Columbia.
Harvard is a core school, meaning most banks HAVE to hire at least a couple of Harvard kids (whether they're on par with others or not). However in our day in age, banks pay much closer attention (especially the EBs) to the kids at top UG business schools such as UVA, UPenn, UMich, NYU, Georgetown. Why? Because they hit the ground running. Banks are starting to realize that the kids at these schools come in prepared and ready to take on real work and the kids at Harvard/Yale/Princeton spend the entire summer asking their peers how to do their deliverables.
This is not true. Finance isn't a hard subject whatsoever and these banks have multiple weeks of training that compensate for the lack of undergraduate business knowledge that Harvard students face. The main reason why Harvard representation in IBs and particularly "elite boutiques" is decreasing is because these kids are so smart that they don't even go to banking directly but rather jump straight to a megafund or a reputable PE shop. And these banks are, frankly, just salty that they are missing out on top talent. Our "day and age" hasn't really changed much - there were boutique banks like DLJ, First Boston, Wasserstein Perella, etc back in the day that still valued the merits of someone from Harvard. It's just that back then, PE shops were not hiring out of undergrad. Point is that Harvard is still Harvard and that top students from Harvard don't get rejected from banks, they just decide not to go there.
And this is coming from a student at one of the schools you mentioned by the way.
As someone who has been recruiting for almost 10 years, I can guarantee you that students at undergraduate bschool have a huge leg-up in knowledge and skills which help those students during recruiting (it's easier to learn technicals when you have had multiple finance, accounting, econ classes) and integration (most of what is taught at training is a rehash of what bschool students have already covered). Now, BBs will have huge classes every year and long training that everyone has to go through so it's not that much of an advantage. But for boutiques and PE firms that will have much smaller classes, running a 3-month training program isn't always doable so focusing hiring on bschool students make sense, they can hit the ground running much, much faster. I'm less knowledgeable about EB recruiting, but I can assure you that PE firms strongly prefer undergrad bschool students. I mean, if you look at MFs, 80%+ of their analysts come from Wharton. Silver Lake is probably the firm that hire the most analysts and 100% of them came from undergrad business schools (all Wharton except 1 of each Berkely, Ivey and UVA).
Now as it relates to Harvard, Yes some people are making directly to the buyside, but it's a tiny tiny number and doesn't fully explain the drop in interest in banking. I think the reason you see less people in banking is mostly down to self-selection and much reduced interest in finance.
No
wtf?
It's a good thing I was already sitting down to read this. The room is spinning quite fast
Next we'll have kids asking "Is M&A at JPMorgan really investment banking? Heard from professionals only Goldman does IB."
Holy fuck dude your prediction came true
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/is-ma-at-jpmorgan-really-investm…</a">Is M&A at JPMorgan really investment banking?
You sound as if that other kid didn't read this thread... Naive?
It’ll be branch operations for those that ask
deleted
Since recruiting has become earlier, there are no longer target universities. There are only target high schools like Phillips Exexter.... nice trolling btw
I never expected to see a thread like this on WSO.
Wut
Do bears shit in the woods?
Seems like OP is trolling but to clarify, the following are generally considered target and semi-target schools (in no particular order).
Target: NYU, UChicago, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, UPenn, UMich, Northwestern, Georgetown, UC Berkeley, UVA, UNC.
Semi-target: Emory, Boston College, Notre Dame, Indiana, USC, UCLA, UT Austin, Rice, Vanderbilt, Williams, Amherst.
I understand that there may be minor disagreements but let's not make this an argument over the details, as I'm just posting this to give the OP a general idea.
What? For sure Harvard is a target school
It's a year late, but just inputting my ten cents. I am a student at an Ivy League college, and can assure you that all HYPWharton schools are top picks for IB recruiters. Talking to a number of departments at various IB firms, some groups are almost entirely comprised of either Harvard, Princeton, or Wharton undergrads. Harvard is less a target school than a bullseye in the chest school.
As someone graduate from one of the ivies, i hope other posters realize the fact that students from elite universities do not mean they are smart or good at studying or fast learning, etc.
But more about how the students and their wealthy parents market their kids
Do some shitty eca, be good at running or football, get into a decent high school, take a few retarded grade inflated college level courses before college. Also remember to take sat and get a 2200+ and a few 800 in sat ii and 4/5 in several APs
Easy af and tell nothing about ur "smartness" Seriously there are way too many kids out there with those sat and ap scores
Colleges just choose base on eca, sports, recs, legacy, etc. At the end students with better academics but cbf to do those 0 value activities just get placed into some state school or lower tier private
You know that getting even a decent score on the SAT pegs you miles above most people in existence right?
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