Which college is best out of these

Looking to transfer from a current target; how would these colleges rank in terms of opening up the most doors for a long-term career in finance, specifically IB, PE, HF.

- Northwestern

- Cornell

- Stern

- Brown

39 Comments
 

Firstly, what target are you at? Secondly, which of these schools did you actually get into? Thirdly, what location are you more interested in? Northwestern is going to give you better placement in Chicago and the midwest. The other three are more northeast focused and will help you out with New York. Honestly, all 4 of these solid schools and going to them certainly won't close any doors for you.

 

At UCB/UMich, want to work in NYC. Pretty confident I'll get into most of these as I got into half of them out of hs but got scholarships to my current school. 

 

Northwestern is more of a consulting school, it’ll place worse than any of the others for finance just because of the smaller alumni base in the industry.

Cornell vs Stern would just be a preference thing, more or less the same placements. Cornell for a more traditional college experience, Stern if you’re dying to be in the city. 

 

I went to Stern, recruited through there. If you have the option of any of the other schools mentioned, take it. It was insanely competitive, there were hundreds of kids at each info session, and literally hundreds of applications to each spot. The social life sucks, and everyone is cutthroat as hell. Go to northwestern or brown, you’ll have better per capita placement and actually enjoy life a bit 

 
Most Helpful

Right, NYU is better than Harvard Yale and Princeton.....

I swear no one on this website understands the difference between per capita placement and raw placement. Stern has an undergraduate enrollment per class of 700, of which I'd wager 70% are looking to go into finance/IB. That brings us to about 500 kids. So Brown has maybe 40 kids a year looking to get into IB (source, coworker went to a Centerview info session with 15 kids in attendance).

Using the table above, Stern places 4x as many kids into IB as Brown, but has 12.5x as many kids interested. 

 

Is this based on general prestige because for finance Northwestern is the worst on the list

 

I don't think it's "what school" you go to, but rather what you make out of it. Sure a better platform will help you maximize your chances but at a certain cutoff (Non-target vs. target) it'll be more about what you do rather than the platform. People at the top schools don't get offers and people at non-targets get offers, it's not all about the school you go to. 

 

https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/post_grad_data/list Major wise placement

https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/undergraduate-0/ove… Go to the employment by industry section. It'll show the total no. of students going into finance and the no. hired by each company.

I see there's some discussion regarding per capital placement and the no. of people interested. Around 150 students are interested in finance. Discounting Quant/PE/VC/HF, that'd be around 90 or so at best. About 25 grads get into BB/EB NY/SF IBD. Quite a few do S&T and there's a few at top MMs. The other MMs don't quite show up and that implies students don't really strike out w BB/EB recruiting. For instance, Goldman IB took 8 from Brown for 2019 IB. Duke, PTon, and Cornell placed 6 each and Dartmouth placed 7. Cornell/Stern on the other hand have a lot of grads going into MMs and smaller boutiques.

Getting a near perfect GPA at Brown is easy af, and you'll have a very diverse set of peers. It's also a super target for MBB.

Cornell and Stern aren't too different in terms of outcomes but AEM's grading is way more lax than Stern, and Cornell as a whole isn't as hyper competitive.

If you're at Ross tho, this is moot. No point moving.

You might also wanna consider Duke. Its Transfer acc rate is higher than that of Brown.

 

I went to a non-target, so I feel pretty confident in saying I don't have a dog in this fight.

If you're an IB or bust kid, go to NYU. The networking opportunities are second to none. If you take advantage of that, the sky is your limit.

If you want to have fun, look at Northwestern and Brown. These are both great options, but I wouldn't put them on the same level as Cornell.

Now Cornell is what we have left. If you're a real hardo, then I'd still recommend NYU. I've always heard that Cornell is super boring and in a pretty sketchy part of town, so idk how much the "fun" argument will apply to that school. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd put NYU and Cornell above Brown and Northwestern, all depending on your mentality.

 

Cornell = Stern =(ish) Brown > Northwestern 

Northwestern is more a consulting school and isn’t a strong target in finance, contrary to Cornell and Stern which are both heavily recruited. Brown isn’t that strong either but there is very low interest for finance among students, which makes their per-capita placement pretty strong

 

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