IU Kelley Top Target or Semi-Target?
Seeking insight into Indiana Kelley, it seems like their workshop places absolutely lights out to EB’s, BB’s, and MM’s. However others seem to be skeptical of IU. As a college senior trying to get a holistic view of the school, how well is it respected and perceived on the street? Does the Kelley brand name carry weight?
IU'S IB workshop is excellent. However it is very competitive - keep that in mind when considering schools as IU Kelley without the workshop has limited OCR.
For the workshop itself it is a top target for places like Chicago/midwest (believe most of their placements are Chicago) and a strong semi target for NYC. If you can get scholarship money the IBW is very helpful. But I would still place Ross/Wharton/HYP in a higher tier of "top targets"
I'm a few years out from IU - the program mostly places into NYC (roughly 70% and the rest Chicago with a few in other cities).
I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything: IU Kelley is not a target or semi-target. It's a nontarget.
There are non-target schools that have GREAT (and extremely small) programs for breaking onto Wall St. The IBW at Kelley is a great example, Penn State has the NLF, William & Mary has the "Dog St. to Wall St." program, Syracuse has the OVF. You are basically guaranteed interviews at top firms on the street if you are in those programs, but outside of the programs those schools are not targets at all.
That being said, IU Kelley is a great school and if you can get into the honors program you have the best chances outside of the workshop. The IBW is hyper competitive so you cannot rely on that.
Target schools are the typical Ivies (HYPSW-C) + respected T25 schools like UMich Ross/UVA McIntire/GU McDonough/Duke/NYU Stern/Cornell AEM. Semi-targets are schools like Vandy, Emory, Notre Dame, CMU, etc.
The IBW has about 80 kids a year, wouldn't call that "extremely small"
Would definitely have to disagree with you here, peers who have gone to IU describe the IBW as a top target and for those who do not get into the IBW, can still get into IB without too much difficulty as long as you have a 3.5+, good internships, and relevant club experiences. The drop between IBW and non-IBW is large, but IU Kelley outside of the workshop still sends kids to IB/PE. Also I wouldn’t call placing 80 kids a year to banks “extremely small.” Personally I went to a semi-target school in the northeast, and loved my college experience, but definitely have respect for their business program.
You & your peers do not understand what a top target is. IU Kelley has never been in the discussion on WSO, reddit, at banks, etc. when considering target schools for recruiting.
I listed the target schools in my last post. IU isn't close to any of those in terms of recruitment.
Target schools are schools that get heavy on campus recruiting from all/most of the banks for their NYC offices. The "top targets" are HYPSW & Columbia. The average student at a "top target" can break into IB with relative ease. At IU, only the cream of the crop are going to ib
I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize that an 18 year old college freshman at BYU was so knowledgeable about target schools for IB!
IU Kelley is neither
lol.
The correct answer is "C", non-target.
Most posts on thread are good.
One thing not to forget is that the mentality in NYC finance is VERY classist (and well...there's another factor as well). IBW is great because they have a reputation for producing extremely competent analysts.
That said if you can get into a higher tier school that benefits you: Everyone knows that nobody's going to blame them for hiring the Harvard guy that turns out to be incompetent or unmotivated at IB work whereas pushing a non-target can easily backfire. The industry itself also tends to hire class based and the leadership are generally reluctant to hire people that they see as being part of the lower castes, and there's a strong preference for people with the right pedigree/family/tribal backgrounds.
IU Kelley has great IB recruiting for undergrad if you are in the investment banking network. My best friend who goes there however told me that all students are allowed to go the firm presentstions on campus, they get OCR from (Moelis, Lazard, Evercore, JPM, BAML, Barclays, PWP, Jefferies, WB, CS, and many many more banks). As you can see they have stellar placements if you are in the Investment Banking Network. They also send a select few kids to the buy-side out of school, past placements include Audax Group, BDT Capital Partners, and Maranon Capital; all very solid buy-side placements out of undergrad.
Please don’t listen to 80% of the posts here. They have no context. I went to IU and was in the IBW.
The program is good. It’s was designed to make you a good investment banker, and has a reputation of making kids good bankers for 10+ years. It’s very technical. I mean hell, we probably did 5 different training the street courses over my time there, pitch competitions. A ton of stuff. Because of it, the bankers are knowledgeable and usually pretty good at their job. This reputation has spread, especially as the classes have gotten bigger (4 years ago the program was only ~25 kids. They only took the kids they knew would place.)
So yeah, we have pipelines to almost every bank. If you’re meant to be at Evercore/PJT/Goldman or whatever, you could easily go there with the program. It might be easier with other schools to get there, but tbh if you got into Harvard, you’re probably either smart as hell (or well connected...let’s be honest) so you could very easily go to Indiana, have fun at a really fun state school, and then use your smarts of connections to go to a good bank.
Also, the Kelley school is great. My coursework was actually in-depth finance and accounting courses.
Hope that helps. Doesn’t exactly answer the question, but that’s my 2¢.