Wake VS SMU?

If specifically speaking about Houston feeders, a quick search on LinkedIn of the employees working in Finance @ GS/MS/JPM. Here are the following numbers. Make of it what you want -

UT Austin ~ 51 employees

Texas AM ~ 36 employees

U of Houston ~ 50 employees

Rice ~ 30 employees

SMU ~ 11 employees

SMU is a decent feeder, but most come from the MBA program. UT Austin and Texas AM are the main feeder for the Houston offices.

Now in regards to Wake (I am going to assume you mean Wake Forest University, and them being a feeder in general to all firm locations)  Here is an estimate of the employees working in Finance @ GS/MS/JPM (World Wide) -

GS ~ 36 employees 

JPM ~ 22 employees 

MS ~ 59 employees 

Like I said they're just LinkedIn numbers, so make of it what you want.

Me personally, I would just go for SMU, due to the networking potential. SMU is know for their snobby nature, and if you can fake it till you make it, you can slither your way into a decent job. Also, had a couple of friend who went to Cox and got Consulting jobs out of college. Hope this helped!

I have a good friends that go to Wake so I think I can give a pretty good view on Wake in general, but can't really for SMU.

Overall I think that it is more common for Wake to place into NYC spots, especially if you come in freshman year gunning for investment banking. While you don't start taking business classes until your sophomore year (because it is a liberal arts school), there is a "Pre-Wall Street" program that accelerates your entry into business school classes and gives you a lot of resources to recruit into IB, especially in NYC and CLT markets. 

From the outside looking in, it seems that SMU mainly places into Houston, so if you are okay going O&G, go for that. Otherwise, I would recommend Wake Forest. PM if you need more help.

SMU has a significant pipeline to NYC these days - you do need to work for it and want to prioritize getting into the alts program, but there are plenty of alums who will help you - and if you are planning to do greek life, especially so. You can also take finance classes pretty early, which will save a ton of time for technical prep. The finance curriculum now includes in-depth required financial modeling even before you add in the very intensive alts modeling training, so the interns from SMU are usually very well prepared when they hit the desks.

Houston is the path of least resistance because it's fairly easy to land for SMU - many students are from TX or even the Houston area and want to stay, and Houston is very easy OCR, so that is why so many go there. If you are willing to network a bit you can 1000% land NYC. 

Feel like no one’s really giving insight into Wake. I’m a student there, so I can paint a clearer picture. First off Wake is a super preppy and fratty school. It’s tons of fun, and if greek life is your thing, it’s a good place to be. Even if you’re not into greek life you can still party. It’s common to go out 3 days a week.

Onto placement. I really haven’t met anyone here that wanted investment banking who didn’t get it. However, most people here are NOT going to top firms/shops, and nearly all our placement is divided into NYC, Atlanta, and Charlotte.

You can look at Investment Banking Summer Analysts this year, and I think you’d be pleasantly surprised. Bank of America and Barclays usually take ~4-5 kids a year. Most likely, that’s where you’ll end up if you’re a top student here. We do send a kid or two to Goldman every year, but everyone that gets Goldman has been gunning for it since high school. We have tons of representation at Jeffries, HW, Oppenheimer, Cantor, Truist, Wells Fargo, Black Arch Partners, etc… so if you want investment banking you’ll get it, you might just not be able to land a top spot.

Overall, very fun school with very friendly students who are there to have tons of fun and get a good education. I don’t know much about SMU, but I am assuming a top student at SMU would fair better at SMU than Wake, but a mediocre to below average student would fair better at Wake than SMU.

Former SMU student here - generally agree with everyone else in terms of SMU's placement benefits. The one thing I will add is that the "rich and snobby" thing is a bit overblown. You will absolutely find people like that but there are tons of good people there. The school gives out a ton of scholarship money so it is a bit more diverse than people give it credit for. You'll find out quickly who falls into what group.

How is this even a question - just look at the numbers. In Houston, SMU is second to only UT and on a per capita basis, SMU’s placement from Alts is incredibly impressive. To echo the above regarding NYC, there are so many SMU alums in NYC now, you just have to network and you’ll get some first rounds.

Outside of IB, Dallas is an awesome city and it’s a fun school as well.

Lastly, just to support this argument empirically (source: Peak Frameworks) -

Let's be real both are schools for rich kids that didn't have the stats to get into better colleges

Here is some hard data detailing analysts at all BB/EB from 2008-2023. 

In terms of placements per capita, SMU is #20 and Wake is #38. SMU also has a significantly higher # of hires for a comparably sized study body.

This is for undergrads only.

https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

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