Stanford vs USC

Stanford in a heartbeat

Stanford 1000%

Stanford.. Why even ask

Definitely Stanford. Got recruited for GS TMT along with a buddy of mine last year. Hella Stanford alum are in the SF office so you’ll find good company there right off the bat. As others have mentioned you also have prime buy-side opportunities at your fingertips right out of undergrad at places like Blackstone, KKR, Point 72. They all have OCR here. The best part really is that not many students are going into finance so the pool of competition is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller (maybe like 200 kids will attend an info session, and then actually 50 take recruiting seriously and are competitive), yes that means less alumni on the street — but it also means the ones who are out there are superrrr aggressive about making sure Stanford grads transition into it smoothly.

You also get the benefit of studying literally whatever you want at Stanford and still having the opportunity to recruit for finance. Any major can be spun into your interest in finance and everyone assumes Stanford kids are really smart and can be taught the basic technicals through training. This gives you the opportunity to be a more interesting candidate, or more well rounded, which is (in my opinion) a part of the soft skill set that is greatly undervalued on WSO. If you have the opportunity, pick Stanford and don’t look back.

Come on....is this a serious question? Don't overthink this

Coming from a USC student, go to Stanford. USC will set you up extremely well for LA banks; the alumni network is seriously unparalleled (you have no idea the guys who will pick up the phone for you just because you're a Trojan) and the top kids will place really well (GS TMT, Moelis LA, CS LA, Barclays LA, GS LA this year to name a few), but the Stanford brand name is the best in the world. Stanford will also allow you to recruit for NY if you end up wanting to, whereas USC not as much.