My school (UCLA) is what I consider a "good school" but a "semi-target" for IB recruitment in London or NYC. Good enough to get a callback or emails replied to, but not strong enough to push HYP grads aside and fly to the top of the pile.

Most of my peers went into strong roles in entertainment/talent agencies, movie studios and general management in the music/broadcasting/lit business - for them it was more of a target school while I had to go through a few struggles before breaking in.

So it depends on the school, industry, but also the candidate and the internships you held.

 

I am currently a sophomore at USC, and I am hearing the same things about how recruiting to NY is quite difficult. I am wondering were you able to successfully recruit to NY and do you have any advice for someone looking to do the same?

 

Reasons why I think schools out in the West may not be the best pick for London or NYC:

1) pure distance. you'd have to fly in for every event, networking sessions, interview, or industry meetup. this sucks. you can easily do a trip to NY or London if it happens to suit your calendar or it is a great time of year to be there. But most of the time it will really be inconvenient. Especially if you do this many, many times for many different companies, roles or events. This is a huge issue for time, money and overall logistics.

2) I met up with really friendly alumni from LA schools, people were cool and helpful. Problem is, they are mostly based in California. Their network will be mostly around LA or SFO, their industries will have a focus on stuff that is happening in their home state. You will probably not find the department head of a NY BU living and working in Los Angeles or San Diego (everything is possible in WFH life but this one would be a stretch). so your California alumni network may have people in NYC, but it is not the largest group.

3) The schools may not have the strongest links to NYC or London. OCR and rest is reliant on companies working with them as much as the other way round. While they have a strong group of firms, it is simply less likely to see your dream EB from London or NYC reach out to UCLA. They already have more than enough candidates in their home city and 5 surrounding states, do they really need more?

4) Some firms won't consider candidates who aren't local. Call it internal policy or ignorance, but that's how it is.
My own firm will not interview candidates outside of a certain geographical area with the reason that only wealthy people would be able to afford all the flights and hotels. They believe that if a candidate would have to pay significant amounts of money to interview, it wouldn't be fair to people who can't afford to do this. This makes sense if you consider that the majority of applicants are rejected.

5) Your peers are also a valuable resource, most people I met in Los Angeles were simply not interested in finance jobs. This isn't a problem at all, but sometimes it is useful to have people IRL you can speak to about your ideas and goals.

edit: Having said all of this, there are some really good finance roles in California. They may just not be comparable to NYC or London.

 

Target for IB is a school that has structured recruitment (often times with reserved seats) from almost every major bank. Semi Target is a school that has the same structured recruitment at some banks, somewhat informal recruitment at others (maybe not an official core school with reserved seats), and close to no presence at other banks. Typically at true Semi Targets, you can major in anything, don't need to be involved in a specific workshop/club etc. 

Some examples for NYC IB

Target: Ivies, Georgetown, NYU Stern, Duke, Michigan etc. 

Semi Targets: UVA, UNC, Vanderbilt, BC, Middlebury etc.

 
Most Helpful

Also go to UNC. Agree that UVA obviously has a bigger presence with EB's, but we definitely send more kids to BB's with less students interested in IB overall. 

Below is from a prior post on UVA. This is the definition of a semi target school (big presence at some, not as big presence at others.)

GS: 1-2 / year, but just got upgraded to core target so this year will probably be different; assuming 3-5 / year now
MS: no pipeline, but think 0-2 / year
JPM: 2-6 / year
BAML: 3-6 / year
CS: 4-10 / year, head of Sponsors is a UVA grad and he treks down himself for info sessions
Citi: 0-2 / year, non-core for Citi
Barclays: 1-3 / year
UBS: 0-2 / year
DB: no pipeline?

 

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