Target School Rankings (IB + Buyside)
Let's do it. probably missed some schools.
Tier 1:
Harvard Wharton Princeton Stanford Yale MIT (in that order)
Tier 2: Top Targets
UChicago - Strong pipeline to BBs/EBs and buyside, competitive and just not a great environment
Duke - Strong pipelines to buyside, strong prestige, but a good amount of nepo
UPenn - Competition with Wharton, SEAS, and everyone else.
Columbia - Very competitive, very diversity heavy (firms have recruiting events just for diversity)
Tier 2.5: Top Targetish
Northwestern - Strong pipelines to Evercore, Blackstone, KKR PE, GS/MS, and BAML.
NYU Stern - Extreme Placement, Extreme Competition.
Dartmouth - Strong per capita placement, amazingly strong buyside placement (MF PE), and strong network. Lots of nepo however.
Cornell - Extreme competition and recruiting is vert dependent on specific clubs
Tier 3: Mid to Low Targets (Here it gets harder)
Brown - Students just aren't interested in finance as much. Still easy to place in GS.
Amherst - Strong EB placement to PJT/EVR and per capita placements. Less overall placement and can seem biased to athletes.
Williams - Strong placement to Gugg, Citi, GS. Extremely nepo based or DEI.
UC Berkeley - Juggernaut for HF placement (Citadel, Point72) and GS/MS TMT. Sweaty environment
Georgetown - Very competitive and many placements are nepo. Easy to strikeout.
Tier 4 Low Targets
Notre Dame - Good placement in buyside and JPM, just lack of prestige to compensate.
UVA - Underrated public school. Hard to compete with more prestigious schools.
Tier 5 (Semi Targets)
UT - Strong HF placement and BB, lots of competition.
USC - Places well in select firms. West coast biased.
Tier 6 Low Semi Target:
Vanderbilt - T25, just very difficult to place (more biased to consulting)
UF - T40, lacks prestige but has growing pipelines.
CMU - CS focused school, lack of a representative network.
JHU - focused in medicine and engineering. lack of alumni network.
Congrats on Stern/Berkeley!
Stern might be too high idk. Berkeley is super solid for HF, but I don't go there so i might have overestimated.
Berkeley also just has too many people
Stern might be too high, not familiar with the school. Put berkeley down?
This one lowk isn’t even bad
Its pretty bad. The kid didn't even include Ross lmfao.
why MIT is in tier 1 when the list considers sell-side ranking? Even you argue low competition, it barely has any network on the street for investment banking
it's pretty easy to place from mit anywhere. everyone knows you're a genius
MIT is good enough to place IB or PE even without a strong network.
Replace Stern with Georgetown
I dont think either should be that high. Georgetown places worse than Williams, and Stern is too competitive.
Georgetown places the third highest based on % of undergrad population (behind Penn and Harvard respectively)
Move Northwestern and Dartmouth up. Lower competition and even if you argue with the nepo argument, there’s nepos at top schools everywhere(not mutually exclusive). Northwestern is chill and Dartmouth also has its very tight alumni network, potentially making them the top of tier 2. Move UChicago and Duke down as there’s an INSANE amount of competition, especially for clubs that DO impact your career trajectory and such a focus on diversity pipelines. However, with Trump and a severe de-escalation of DEI, you can argue that these two schools might be able to retain their spots.
Imo Duke and Uchicago still have stronger pipelines, esp in buyside. This is especially true in Chicago (less familiar with NYC), but there isn't a huge difference on the whole and you could make a case that Northwestern and Dartmouth are in tier 2.
Are you sure man, on a per-capita basis? I do agree that on a pure number basis, Duke and UChicago have stronger pipelines in sending slightly more students per bank/buyside; however, you need to consider a few things.
You gave Dartmouth a better qualitative assessment than most of the Tier 2 group, and still put it below them?
Dartmouth and Northwestern are underrated by a large majority of people here. Especially when per capita they excel. I would argue they are Tier 2, and arguably better than both UChicago and Duke, due to their unique traits, such as having strong buyside placements and receptive alumni.
Anecdotally, people I know from both of these schools tell me that the recruiting competition is low, very collaborative, and most hard-working people land decent offers, assuming the classic trifecta of 3.8+ GPA, One/More strong finance internships, and decent club involvement (actual club matters less, because unlike UChicago/Duke, the club your're in has minimal impact [if not none] on your recruiting chances).
justice for notre dame
Current Cornell student - in my experience both parts of your note are overstated.
Sure a lot of people recruit but the vast majority land something, and I generally found people to be very collaborative throughout the process even when we were theoretically competing for offers.
The clubs can help but you don't need them - the connections with serious pull are usually through frats and sports teams. Not very different than anywhere else.
Hard for me to say if tier 2.5 is fair or not given I've only ever recruited from Cornell obviously, but there's a tried and true path to land a solid offer and it really just takes not messing up. Also the alumni network is massive because biggest ivy + huge % of alums from NYC area. I don't think there's many schools like that.
I know that nepotism at Dartmouth is well known / documented, but the same should be done for Duke and Northwestern. Crazy amount of kids with nepotism connects at all three which is not a good thing.
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