Hello everyone,
This is my first time posting, but I'm a long time lurker. Have gotten a lot of value out of WSO over the years so figured this would be my chance to give back. Hopefully I can answer everyone's questions.
Can discuss CBS generally, curriculum, HF recruiting, VI program, social life and probably a lot of other things you'd be uncomfortable asking at a prospective students day.
Full disclosure, I know a decent amount about banking recruiting (most of my friends are bankers now) but have only an outsider's perspective. Even less about consulting.
Best
Ballsacajawea.
Some background. Attended a non-target southern state school and basically stumbled into low-paying analyst internship at a vanilla HF in my hometown that had been operating for 20+ years (he was fund number 3 in the state in 1991). The fund manager's son had been in my college's program (an honors liberal arts course) 10 years a before me and the manager "liked people that came from there." We met socially and in the process of telling him my plans (I was off to law school in the fall), he said that I should come work for him for the summer because the junior analyst had just left for b-school and he needed grunt labor. His pitch was that an M&A attorney (which was my plan at the time) needed valuation experience, however cursory, to be useful. I said sure because $12.00/hour was a lot back in 2015. I had no finance experience, so took accounting classes at the local community college in my first month there.
I guess he thought I had a bit of knack for it because come August he offered to hire me full time (I'd started in late May). I figured I could defer law school for another year and make some decent money in the interim. Long story short I ended staying for 4.5 years. Around year 3.5, the fund manager, who I'd become close with (it was a 4-man team with only 400m AUM) starts asking me what my long term goals are. At this point, Ive fully caught the investing bug and I tell him that I want to eventually launch my own fund. To his credit he was fully supportive, but he said that nobody will ever give money to a state school liberal arts major who only worked at a small fundamental l/s fund, no matter how good his performance. So b-school it was.
Columbia was my first choice because 1. it has the most investing courses 2. those courses are taught by practitioners rather than theorists 3. I could intern during my time there in the capital of global finance 4. because it had early decision and 5. NYC, the few times I'd visited friends there, was a blast.
I went ham on gmat studying and did well (760, 49Q, 45V). CBS is by far the most quantitatively driven as far as admissions goes so I had to make it count. Got my recs and everything else in line by easter, and applied the first day that rolling admissions opened.
After I was accepted (late July) I applied to Wharton and Darden. I applied to the former because Finance School and the latter because my sister had gone there for undergrad and it has, thanks to the GMO founders, the second most robust investing program after CBS. In terms of GPA (3.7), demographics (white) and desired post-MBA role (bigger badder HF in the city) I was a non-starter at HBS and Stanford. Waitlisted at Wharton (I removed myself after two weeks because I was done with anything application related) and admitted into Darden
The second part of your question, on PE recruiting: yes it's available but, unlike the big Mutual Funds (Fidelity, T Rowe etc.), the bigger HFs (Maverick etc.) and banking the recruitment isn't formal. And unlike the small HFs there's not 100 funds posting for analyst positions. Of the friends who went into PE (none to megashops) they got it through a combination of networking and interning during the year. In summation its very doable, but it will be easier at Wharton or HBS if you don't have a background in it. IF YOU DO, its much easier though the megashops will still likely be off the table without some strenous work on your part.
The social life honestly exceeded my expectations. Having been greek at a southern football school, I planned to be underwhelmed. I was wrong, though it was much different from the partying I did in undergrad. First, the sheer amount of free time you have to fuck around is astounding. The school also has grade non-disclosure (Columbia students are forbidden from disclosing their grades to potential employers and companies are forbidden from asking under threat of being banned from being able to recruit CBS students, at least on campus, or posting on the job boards). When added to an ideal setting (NYC in your late twenties/early 30s with a bit of change in your pocket) a potent mixture ensues.
In terms of cadence, First semester of your first year is less wild (though still a blast) because banking and consulting recruitment is fully underway from early September through December. Almost half the fall class (non J-termers) participate in this so it puts a damper on things. Even then, there are peaks of debauchery around the fall break and exam week. Second semester everything accelerates from there. Its even better for those who join one of the big athletic clubs. Men's Rugby and Men's Soccer are basically MBA fraternities that practice twice and week, drink together on the other nights, and play other MBA programs. No experience is required for either though the former seemed to be mostly US Anglos, Brits, Aussies and ex military guys, while the latter seemed to be mainly Latin Americans and continental Europeans. The "SnowSports" Club (even though 95% of people ski rather than board) organizes a bunch of trips during the winter/spring and has the biggest budget of any club except CSIMA.
The one downside, which I'm sure has been expressed elsewhere on WSO, is that there are a small but noticeable chunk of people who see B-school as their last chance to "cool" and act like it. Typically they spent most of high school and undergrad in the library and are overcompensating. However these are few and far between, and can they can be fun on a night out.
The value investing program (though its undergoing a some notable changes in this upcoming year) is essentially eight classes you take in your second year. You apply late in the second semester of your first year and forty people are admitted in the late summer (about six weeks before classes startup again). The centerpiece of the course is a class called Applied Value Investing that centers around doing lots of stock pitches. All who are admitted to the VI program are divided into four groups of ten and take a different section of the AVI course taught by different professors with different investment styles AND VASTLY DIFFERENT content. Its basically four parallel but non-intersecting mini-programs. For example one is focused on high turnover l/s 0.75-1.5 year time horizon type investing. They do a pitch a week. The second was entirely on long-only international buy-and-hold. They only do a pitch every month weeks. A third is focused on long-only deep primary research (i.e. calling up grunts at factories) this had two reports per semester. I cant recall what the fourth was but I think it was basically Tiger-style investing (3 year longs, 6mos-1y shorts). This class, I believe, is a whole year.
This is supplemented by topic-specific classes such as "compounders" "private credit" and "short selling."
The application process is honestly a black box. There's an organization called the Heilbrunn Center that oversees the program, which, though part of CBS, exists outside of the broader school administration. There are three woman there who, with the input of the AVI professors basically pick their favorites. One has to do a lot of "face time" to make it in, such volunteering at the Graham and Dodd breakfast, having a leadership position in CSIMA, acing the unofficial pre-requisite classes like Advanced Investment Research, and getting on the teams that compete in other business school's stock pitch competitions. HOWEVER, investing aptitude is not required. Interestingly, some of the most knowledgeable and competent investors in my class didn't get in or didn't apply. The paradigmatic example is a guy who worked at Kykinos (Chanos' fund) didn't get in. Another example was the manager of a fund I interviewed with who'd been at Coatue for 4 years pre-Columbia who was denied. My theory on this is that the Heilbrunn center views the VI program as a "bootcamp" for people who didn't have incoming experience and a resume supplement for people such as people from equity research departments at LMM banks who want to go to the buyside. Those who are natural fits for big-time shops are viewed as not being able to benefit as much. This is only hearsay of course. A final thing that one should also note that in recent years there's been some noise from both Heilbrunn and the larger B-school about getting more woman and non-asian, non-indian minorities in, so that should likely change things in the years to come.
Work wise...an absolute bitch. Second year everyone is just raging, having locked down jobs. Meanwhile you're spending 40 hours a week cranking out pitches. But if you like investing (many people on or aspiring to go to the buyside actually don't) it's worth it.
Culture
Columbia in my experience is by far the most party heavy school of the M7. I believe this is a function of a few things. First, the culture is decidely non-academic. For one, almost all the professors are adjuncts (i.e. they work real jobs during the day) so they don't hold academics as anything beyond a conveyance of usual information. Furthermore, the school is populated by a disproportionate number of the international supperrich (who'd prefer to be in NYC than Cambridge). Naturally, they want to have a good time before they go take over some South American textile empire or the like. Among the americans, most are not-ultra high achievers or prestige junkies. Those people went to HBS/Standford or didn't even bother going to b-school because they're in Forbes 30-Under-30. Finally, it's the most heavily male of the M7. Not that woman don't like to let loose, but its an empirical fact that females are more concientious i.e. don't skip accounting homework to go rage. While the following confirmation is anectodal, two girls in my social circle were married to guys who'd gone to HBS and they both said that CBS takes academics "waaaay" less seriously than anywhere else. This sentiment was echoed by people who'd visited from Booth, Sloan, and GSB.
IMPORTANT: Something I forgot to add when I first wrote this: You don't need to get into the VI program to get a fantastic "investment" education and you don't need to be in the VI program to land a great HF role. Regarding the first, there are ~2 investment classes open to all students for every 1 VI class. The best class at CBS in my opinion, "Security Analysis" with Michael Mauboussin is open to anyone (though its only taught in the spring). Bill Ackman's class is another example. Interestingly some of the most useful classes in terms of investing skills are hilariously undersubscribed. These include Earnings Quality (basically a "how to find shorts" class) and Paul Kazarian's class on investing in sovereign bonds. Regarding the latter, ~60-70 people my year went into HFs or Mutual Funds and another ~10 when to high end research shops like Bernstein. With only 40 people in the VI program, simple math indicates that, if you put your mind to it, there's a job somewhere for you.
So the only long only I recruited for single strategy and it was very similar to HF recruiting. But at CBS at least, the recruiting for the Mutual Fund managers (fidelity, t rowe, franklin, etc.) is actually quite similar to banking recruiting. There are coffee chats, glad handing "tell me about the culture," diversity statements and the like. Stock pitches are a lot less relevant (they give you a case study where you get five years of financials, an industry report, and 4 hours to do a full model from a blank excel doc with five years of projections and a two page report on why you would and wouldn't invest in that stock). There's also brainteasers, if you can call them that, like "how would you determine the market size for a new type of sneakers" and lots of behavioral questions. At HFs by contrast, especially the smaller ones, it's all about personality and thinking style (you don't get interviewed if the pitch isn't good).
Speaking only for CBS, these places where not as impressive as landing a job at say, a Tiger Cub (pre-2022...)or a Lone Pine spinoff. The general consensus was that they 1. Involved less skill than a HF because they were closet index trackers (they're required to invest in all stocks in a given industry/sector and just change the weightings in response to differing opportunity sets) 2. There's a fixed promotion track (three 3y year cycles in different industries, 5 years a junior PM, then sr. PM) 3. They were very corporate and offered very little latitude for developing your own style. They're very much looking for fresh minds to be molded into the style of the overall firm. Many who went there didn't have investing experience prior to b-school.
What was nice about them is, like a bank, you can get upper upper middle class (10m net worth or so) through sheer endurance, and any company CEO takes your call.
The calibre of people were, if there was a common characteristic amongst them relative to those that went to HFs, more clustered around the middle of the bell curve. "Company men" was the term I heard thrown around a few times. They also seemed of a more cautious tempermant. None were the kind of people who you saw launching their own funds in 5-10 years. That being said, they're still getting bonuses this year so jokes on me.