Undergraduate Target Schools Tier List (2022 Updates)
Hi all, I was hoping to update this list for 2022, with PE/HF placements accounted for. I don't think it would be accurate to exclude this statistic if a school overperforms in PE/HF placements. Per capita and my general thoughts can be seen in these in 2022 rankings.
What do y'all think? Let me know and I will make the edits if they're generally agreed upon.
Tier S++ (Super Target)
Harvard / Yale / Princeton
Wharton
Stanford
Tier S+ (Target)
UPenn (non Wharton) / Dartmouth / Columbia / Brown
MIT
UChicago
Cornell / Cornell Dyson
Duke
Tier S (Target)
Georgetown McDonough
NYU / NYU Stern
Notre Dame Mendoza
Williams
Amherst
Caltech
UCB Haas
UMich Ross
UVA McIntire
UMich Ross
Tier A+ (Low Target to Top Semi-Target)
Northwestern
Vanderbilt
Rice
WashU Olin
Middlebury
USC Marshall
Claremont Mckenna
Pomona
BC Carrol
Tufts
Bowdoin
Emory
JHU
UVA up to S tier. know of and have seen plenty of kids get spots at UMM/MF
Thought same thing.
UVA has definitely surprised me a little. A decent amount of people at the firm I’m incoming at are from UVA, it was the only school outside the T10 that I saw any representation from whatsoever.
so glad I’m transferring to UVA this semester
Yale / Princeton / Stanford is S+. Harvard and Wharton are the only two that should be in S++ for undergrad.
Sorry you had to go to Wharton
He's right though. What about the programs like Vagelos LSM, Jerome Fisher M&T, and Huntsman? Students in those programs often choose to attend Penn over Princeton, Yale, and Stanford. Sometimes, even Harvard.
Bruh wharton is literally the most represented school at the best places 😂😂😂😂
Combine the s+ and s tiers
Wild that you put Haas that low.
Alot of competition being such a big school, location in sf hurts, Stanford controls SF and ucb haas dosnt necessarily control SF or LA. Very cali based student population, just overrated in my opinion!
Extremely underrated actually. Sending 7 kids to P72 for 22 & 23, sending 5 to Citadel, 1 to DE, 1 to Sig, 10+ to Wear Coast PE, 3 or so to VC and 5+ to BBs and EBs. And thats is Berkeley Investment Group alone, that is not even including Haas or the multiple other investment and trading clubs. You forget that Cal has #3 business program, #1 comp sci, and #4 econ program in the nation. So id say we could probably put them above Notre Dame to start lol.
These tier lists are meaningless nowadays--the advantage at being at a target has never been so insignificant now. In fact, I would argue that recruiting for the BBs/EBs from Wharton as a nondiverse candidate would put you at a disadvantage than if you had recruited from targets like Notre Dame or Georgetown, as there are a set number of spots available for each school. Citi, for example, had 7 spots for IBD at Wharton. You could guess 4 went to diversity (60-70% of a class are diverse nowadays) and 1 was a nepotism hire. That leaves 350+ Wharton hardos gunning for 2 spots. Also, your personality shown through your networking and interviews matters so much more than what school you attend. Wharton kids aren't known for having pleasant personalities. I have two friends at Wharton who are still recruiting and are about to strike out.
Currently at Wharton and completely agree. It's a place with like 20 more resources and 200 more competitions
Would probably merge S+ and S as someone else above mentioned or could argue places like Dyson, Georgetown, Stern, and maybe Duke could be moved up. McIntire, Ross, and maybe Haas seem to be ahead of the other names in the other grouping.
School Tier lists are irrelevant. Being diverse at a nontarget >>> nondiverse at supertarget. The more meaningful list would be a diversity tier list: God tier: Black female, Black male, Hispanic female, Trans. Tier 1B: Hispanic male. Tier 2: Lesbian, gay, disabled, Asian/white female. Tier 3: Bisexual. Tier 4: Spanish dude pretending he's Mexican. Tier 5: Desperate straight guy with a noticeably fake gay accent, but interviewer doesn't want to make that call. Tier 40: White male. 60: Asian male (doesn't matter if Hmong or Pacific Islander, they're all the same right?). Tier 2000 "Fuck these guys in particular": First generation white/asian males who grew up facing adversity and have no connections in the industry.
I wish disabled was higher.
Tier Cheat Code: Black Female
Tier Ez Offer: Black Male, Hispanic Female
Tier +1000% Chance of Offer: Hispanic Male, Native American Female
Tier +750% Chance of Offer: Native American Male, White Female, Asian Female, Pacific Islander Female, Transgender
Tier Are You Even Diversity?: Pacific Islander Male, Gay
Tier "Diversity" (Hint: Not Really): Veteran, Disabled, Bisexual
Tier Fuck You: White Male/Asian Male
Are people joking about this whole diversity thing or is this an actual factor for recruiting?
Edit: bro who ever shited in this comment I am in hs. idk shit. I really don't know what is going on
I am tier 60 first generation facing adversity with no connections in the industry. Good for me.
A more accurate ranking:
Top Tier: HYPSMW
Decent Tier: UPenn Dartmouth Columbia Brown UChicago Duke
Trash Tier: Everything Else
This screams Dartmouth student
Dartmouth probably recruits better than all Ivies (and schools) apart from H/W
Why would they place it in Tier 2 hahaha
I feel like no one on WSO has worked a day on Wall Street. The entire street is filled with alumni from schools in the S and A+ tier, whereas you can go an entire career without meeting anyone from Stanford, MIT, non-Wharton Penn or Brown.
I believe it is more about % chance of getting in rather than raw numbers.
You must be a UNC grad or bball fan with this absolute disrespect towards Duke...
JHU/Caltech?
They got bigger problems to worry about than buy side recruiting. Like figuring out how to talk to bitches.
Lmao you are pressed over a school
Where is Emory?
ATL
Ross should be much higher. I might be biased because I go to Ross, but I have two close friends at Vanderbilt, and our recruiting simply blows them out of the water (and we are ranked similarly on this list). Every single year we send multiple kids to every top bank on the street; we have outstanding placement at essentially all boutiques and most BBs. No reason Ross shouldn't be at the same level as McDonough or Mendoza.
And the fact that Brown is higher than Ross is simply absurd LMAO. We party 3-4x a week and still get better job than all you fuckin nerds studying in the library all day.
True, and Ross has been sending some studs to Blackstone and other MFs in recent years. Check out the top clubs at the school like MIBC, MII, AIC, etc. and their placement is just as good, if not better than the other schools mentioned above.
What do you think people at Brown do? One of the easiest schools by far.
Amherst and Williams should be together in S tier
Stanford does decent but the school is more focused in VC/Quant/Consulting/GE rather than IB/PE/HF. That said, a few do go PE straight out very few if any go HF out of undergrad unless they are doing Citadel Quant. Stanford GSB on the other hand is electric. Per capita, def not bad but idk if it’s deserving of top tier.
You have to be trolling, since you missed JHU and some prestigious LACs
tufts>jhu , times have changed nobody goes to jhu to break into finance youd have a much better chance being in boston at tufts
JHU > Tufts, times haven't changed as much as you say. You are still a freshman/sophomore in college so you cannot make a valid assessment of ranking schools.
JHU > Tufts all day and any day. First of all, JHU is LITERALLY twenty spots ahead of Tufts on the US World New Report, so our students are just naturally smarter. On a per capita basis, JHU places significantly better. Just look at the student investment team. Students, each year, place at pretty much every elite Bulge Bracket Firm with 1-2 heading to an elite boutique. With that being said, Tufts is great school. In many ways, Tufts resembles JHU. Both schools are not finance centric with only a handful of students geared towards breaking into IB. Tufts is practically JHU's polished but inferior younger brother and very well should be on the list, but clearly you are a Tufts alum, so don't disrespect your big bro - JHU. Listen dude, no disrespect. As a big reader of the content on this website, both schools get WAY more heat than they deserved and are shitted on by a bunch of bums at state schools, referencing that their school sends more kids to banking when their school graduates 10x students each year and has an undergrad B-school.
Shocking that Emory is not on there. In the last two to three years have sent multiple people to PJT, Laz, EVR, GS, MS, JPM, PWP, Ares, Roark. Additionally there is insane OCR for BofA, Citi, Truist, and Jefferies.
.
If true, this is monkey shite.
Bruh why is Tufts on there
Might be biased as a Bowdoin alum, but although we have fairly good placement on the sell-side, we actually seem to have stronger placement on the buy-side out of school. In my year I feel like we sent just as many kids to PE/IM (esp. Boston-based shops like Fidelity) as we did to NYC IB.
I think we deserve to at least be on this list if buy-side is included!
Below are from a 2014 report on school representation in the AM industry (PM/analyst respondents mostly)
Go Maroons!
Yes, yes but apparently the funding drives for the Bowdoin graphic arts programs have been lacking in recent years . . .
C'mon, son.
You can blame WSO dark mode for how gray it might appear lol. Looked fine when I uploaded it and it still is fine if you switch to light mode or open image in a new tab
Cornell to S+
Where does UT McCombs place on this list?
Austin
Sorry, I was meaning to ask where McComb's spot on the list was, not the location.
Indiana Bloomington needs to be on here
UPDATED RANKINGS after looking at each comment, let me know how the rankings look now. Any changes?
Any stats for Boston College placement?
its pretty good better than northeastern and boston uni
Is there a difference in recruiting between S++ vs. S+ vs. even S? Or is it just a function of talent+effort at that point with the higher tiers having slightly higher talent on average.
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What about MIT/JHU? Guessing MIT would be better than caltech but not sure about JHU
Both great schools. MIT is already in S+. I'd say for finance it's correctly around Penn / Columbia, but it probably (like Caltech) is appreciated at the S++ tier. Actually a misconception to place MIT automatically above Caltech - if you talk to kids studying Physics, you'll find that a lot of them actually prefer CalTech, especially the more theoretical. Know some MIT (more HF space vs IB/PE). Know 0 Caltech in finance. Disclaimer I chose one of HYP over both. JHU a bit lower for undergrad purposes. Obviously, schools do NOT define a person's capabilities. They're an indicator sure, hence why this stuff exists, but not be-all end-all.
Thought same thing.
Wake Forest. Not saying it's anywhere near the top of this list, probably right at the bottom, but it should be in the mix these days. A quick Linkedin search might surprise you on placements in NYC. For its tiny undergrad size, multiple kids going to some BBs and a lot of MM firms is impressive.
Not sure how ASU was left off this list
I don't get how some of these schools are being compared and ranked. You list Umich and UVA higher than a lot of other schools such as BC and WashU based on total number of placement, but neglect the fact that these big schools have 25k+ people. BC for example has placed a similar amount of total people with less than 10k total students. Can someone please explain.
You can’t do placements per capita because there’s no way you can get the right denominator.
Think about it this way, massive schools like UMich and NYU have tens of thousands of premeds, engineers and countless other random majors. Just because their student population is 25k+ doesn’t mean that’s the number of people gunning for IB positions.
Lazard places well into HYPS
In A+ tier I would remove Tufts, Bowdoin, and JHU and if this rank goes by place I would lift up Middlebury to 2, Vandy down to 3, Emory, up to 4, Claremont McKenna up to 5, BC up to 6. I would also add UNC to A+.
In S tier I would move Ross up and Notre Dame down. I would also add Northwestern to this tier
In S+ I would put Duke at a tie with UChicago. Brown should be bellow Duke and UChicago. Columbia at 1, UPenn at 2, Dartmouth at 3, MIT at 4, Duke/UChicago-5, Cornell-6, and Brown7
In S++
Wharton is probably ahead of Princeton
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