School Decision

I am a high school student looking to be an investment banker. The only instate schools considered to be notch IB school is UChicago (don't want to go there because of campus life, money and have to get in first) and Northwestern ($$$$). Illinois schools are still expensive for instate students, so I have also made a list of other out of state schools I am considering: Indiana, UT Austin, UNC, Berkley and Gerogetown. Can anyone say the pros of attending these schools, if they are major target schools and any other options? Mainly considering, Campus Life and a job after college at a investment firm that pays well. Thank you.

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Best Response

If you're willing to study engineering, and you would not be unhappy as a programmer at Google or Microsoft, I can't see how you could go wrong with UIUC if you get in state tuition. UIUC gets some banking recruiting, certainly on the order of other quality state schools, but not quite at the level of Ross or Kelley. At the same time it gets placements at the level of a Princeton or MIT into tech and quant roles.

UIUC also has an excellent accounting program and a solid finance program that gets a handful of IB placements and lots of insurance, trading, and F500 gigs.

UChicago and Northwestern are excellent schools, but I don't feel like going $300K into debt for them. It is nice to be able to work in this industry, but it is not so nice to need to work in this industry.

Cue the video of Tom Cruise saying "Looks like it's the University of Illinois" in Risky Business.

 

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