Wharton vs Stanford Undergrad
HS senior fortunate enough to be able to choose between Wharton and Stanford for my undergrad studies. Interested in working in IB/PE in NY. Never was interested in VC until Stanford became an option. Generally want to work in New York, however. If I go to Wharton, do I have to get an MBA to make the transition from associate to VP at a Bulge Bracket? Is a Stanford Engineering undergrad and later MBA combo better long-term? I understand that I will have many of the same recruiting opportunities and both schools, but some PE shops recruit exclusively at Wharton (not going to base decision off of this however, due to the incredibly low odds of landing these gigs).
Would appreciate some industry input about this! Thanks in advance.
Current Stanford student here... you'll have to come in network if you want to go to NY but the competition here is significantly less than at Penn... if you work hard, you'll get whatever gig you want IMO
I would lean Stanford. Learning finance / accounting in undergrad is overrated imo
I'd take Stanford and that's coming from someone who went to Wharton.
Wharton is fantastic but it is gets you to the same stupid f***ing banking internship that you can easily get from any top 20 school except you are around 650 other kids all doing the same thing (more like 300-400 because 1/3 will automatically be the marketing/soft skills crowd).
Stanford at least you have the chance to open your eyes to thinks outside the box + much nicer to live in Palo Alto vs. Philly. The negative effect of potentially not being able to seamlessly recruit into New York IB is substantially mitigated by the above.
The downside of Stanford is if you want to be that top 10-20 kid of the 650 kids per class who get the one-off internships at prestigious HFs/PE like Silver Point / Blackstone PE / Silver Lake (Stanford prob also has Silver Lake if i had to guess); those opportunities may not be available on campus. For what it's worth, I did RX banking and would not have taken any of the above 3 names as jobs for reference if i had to redo it again.
Edit: I'm not as familiar with what Stanford offers exclusive opportunity wise for undergrads but the guy above seems to say most PE funds give looks so the Wharton opportunity set vs. Stanford seems to be even more moot than I thought. The other downside i thought of is you become a babbling VC-douche going to Stanford which requires self-control
Went to Wharton, had a generally pretty good experience. It is miles ahead of any other undergraduate business school. However, if I had it to do over again and Stanford engineering was an option, I would choose Stanford 100%. Same reasons as people gave above.
Current Wharton senior. This place is fantastic for people who come into university knowing terms like "bulge bracket" and "PE". Hardos tend to absolutely kill it here, and the fact that you already know so much about recruiting and the finance landscape makes me think you'd do just fine.
That being said, I came in here knowing fuck-all about finance (had no clue what "investment banking" even meant) and the environment really primes you for the real world in finance. From hands-on classes like corp val. and venture cap. to just being surrounded by so much recruiting, despite the culture being somewhat toxic it really brings the best out of you.
Stanford engineering is awesome, but if you know finance is your path then i don't think you could pass up on Wharton. Maybe if you want to keep the option of doing SWE/PM or any tech role down the line, but even then, Penn CS is great for recruiting. The Wharton name does crazy things, even for a moron like myself who managed to land interviews at places I had no business interviewing at. That's just my 2 cents though