Successful people from Non-Target?

Just wondering of there are any successful people that comes from no name schools.

By successful I hear founders of huge companies, people that somehow brought a novelty to society, or anyone who can be considered a pioneer.

9 Comments
 

Sidney Weinberg is a good example of a successful banker who saved Goldman from bankruptcy. 

You might have heard of Perella Weinberg. Was started by some of his descendants. 

Steve Jobs went to Reed which is like the opposite of a target.  

Larry Ellison UIUC founder of ORCL

Travis Kalanick UCLA founder of UBER

Daniel Ek founder of SPOT 

Bernard Marcus- founder of HD when to Rutgers 

John Menard - founder of Menards went to UWEC

Jan Koum - founder of Whats App went to SJSU

Jim Walton - Walmart BAMA

 

Well, if this is a banking forum, sir, why does your list contain only one banker? None of your examples are applicable to banking other than the first one—no point in talking about entrepreneurs on a banking forum. Also, Ellison went to UChicago after Urbana before dropping out, which is 100% a target.

 
  1. Glad to see you’re practicing some self reflection with that quote
  1. The OP negates the need to mention targets bc these are founders not bankers

Agree to disagree tho, happy holidays

 
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UIUC is a semi-target for cs (top target though if you're looking purely at chicago hft). UCLA is also a semi target for cs. By semi target I mean like a Northwestern or Stern for banking. SJSU definitely punches above its weight, ironically I'm pretty sure you have a higher chance of getting into Apple specifically from SJSU than say UCLA/UIUC/literally any of the ivies. SJSU still places okay for fb/goog but horrible placement for unicorns and even worse for quant.

As someone else eluded to these are all tech examples. Why not add Brian Chesky RISD founder of ABNB. Even then its just searching for a needle in a haystack. For everyone 1 successful decacorn founder from even UCLA/UIUC you'll have dozens upon dozens from Harvard + Stanford not to mention Princeton, MIT, Berkeley, CMU. Part of this is purely due to those 6 schools do attract more motivated and entrepreneurial cs students but I'd say some of it can also be attributed to their background. 

I will concede that if there is a field where you can make it from a non target it is most definitely tech. Unfortunately for anything in high finance or consulting it really is tough luck if you don't come from a target undergrad or M7 mba background.

 

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