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
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
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
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.
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
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.
JHU/Caltech?
They got bigger problems to worry about than buy side recruiting. Like figuring out how to talk to bitches.
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.
Boo
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.