A Definitive Prestige Tier List of Everything
Schools
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): Wharton
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): LSE
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): Columbia, NYU, Booth
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): the rest
Tier 4 (KYS Tier): Stanford, Berkeley
Jobs
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): MF PE, Top 5 HF
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): IB EB, MM PE, Top 20 HF
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): IB BB
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): IB MM, S&T, ER, non-Top 20 HF, VC
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): AM, RE, CF, Garbage Man, Tech, Doctor
Tier 4 (KYS Tier): MBB Consulting, TS, Lawyer
Banks
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): Evercore, CVP, Lazard
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): GS, MS
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): JPM, Moelis, PJT
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): BAML, Citi, CS, Barclays, PWP, Jefferies, Rothschild (up 1 Tier if in Europe), HL
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): Greenhill, Guggenheim, William Blair, Wells Fargo, HSBC, BNP, SocGen, RBC
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): Apollo
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): WP, Bain, CVC, EQT, TPG
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): Advent, Vista, Thoma Bravo, Cinven, General Atlantic
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): UMM and MM PE Funds
Tier 4 (KYS Tier): LMM PE Funds, Blackrock
Hedge Funds
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): Renaissance
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): Tiger, Two Sigma, DE Shaw
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): Citadel, Millenium, Viking, Icahn
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): Third Point, Coatue, Point 72, other Top 20
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): Pershing Square, Melvin, Baupost, other Top 100 ex-Top 20
Tier 4 (KYS Tier): ex-Top 100, AQR, Bridgewater
Cities
Tier 1a (Legend Tier): NYC
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier): London
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier): Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore
Tier 2 (Gold Tier): Miami, Boston, LA, Tokyo, Dubai
Tier 3 (Crap Tier): Frankfurt, Milan, Shanghai, Canada
Tier 4 (KYS Tier): Chicago, SF, India
Haircuts
I'm gonna use some visuals for this one
Tier 1a (Legend Tier):
Tier 1b (Diamond Tier):
Tier 1c (Platinum Tier):
Tier 2 (Gold Tier):
Tier 3 (Crap Tier):
Tier 4 (KYS Tier):
Based.
Andreessen has to be from the future or some shit. He looks weird, but so did primitive homo sapiens. All that brain matter can’t fit in a regular cranium.
He is limited by his body
Would give an arm to work a tier 3 HF but that’s just me maybe ;)
No way Citadel and DE Shaw are Tier 1. Any tiger cub/activist fund has at least 47% more prestige units than a multi-manager
I had to Google to confirm that photo of Marc Andreessen wasn’t photoshopped…. Is he some sort of alien sent here to guide us towards a new era of technology?
Great reference
Oops. You forgot Ross.
I love this, written like a true bottombuckethardo post.
A few things I disagree with and why:
Princeton is at Stanford/Berkeley tier because it's one of the worst ivy. No social scene and shit academics. Full of Yale rejects. Also too small.
Oxford and Cambridge should be at Wharton's level. They're literally 1000 year old beacons of civilization.
Yale should be above Harvard, I mean how many "MD and CEO were on the Yale rowing team in the 80s/MD and CEO were in the same fraternity at Yale" variations have we heard?
Columbia and NYU are shit-tier, McIntre, Ross and McDonough and even Mendoza should be above them.
MBB should be at tier 1b, they're way more selective and cerebral than pretty much all high financé seats. Unless it's in a backwater place like BCG Pakistan, in which case it's KYS tier.
Tech should have a new tier at the bottom for jobs.
Replace EVR with PJT at tier 1a. EVR has grown too quickly and aren't selective anymore. Also PJT RSSG is godly and makes PJT tier 1a solely on that basis.
DB and UBS should be above the shit-tier boutiques and MMs (Jefferies, Blair, HL, RBC)
RenTech isn't prestigious, it's full of geeks and PhDs. Bridgewater and Pershing should be tier 1a.
Blackstone should be in the lower tiers (with TPG and Ares and Silver Lake), it's way too big and corporate to be selective or prestigious.
"Quant" HFs should be lower tier, doing math isn't prestigious. Fundy/macro shops should be higher tier (trusting your guts is more prestigious).
London should be at least tied with NYC, it has better architecture, culture and girls.
Chicago definitely doesn't deserve to be down there with shitholes like SF and India.
Finally, that guy in the haircuts section who looks like a literal egg had me laughing for 5 minutes in public
Probably the most clear cut case of Dunning-Kreuger I've ever seen. Couldn't do basic arithmetic in high school so considers anything that takes an iota of brain power to be "nerdy and geeky".
It's really funny you say that as the Dunning-Kruger effect is essentially not real and is based on bad math: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101449
Isn't that the opposite of Dunning-Kruger? If I was bad at math, I would think it was easy and call quants "idiots" instead of "geeks" and "nerds", no? The fact that I called them geeks and nerds means that I think math is difficult to an extent, meaning I am at least proficient in math.
Wtf is that cranium. Insane!
Lol thanks. Any more categories you want to rank?
Tie colors
Lol
His stepfathers would be a good start.
India is not a city...
Hey I'm selling a bridge you might be interested in.
Worst tier list I've ever seen. Please delete your account and seek a therapist immediately. No mention of any prop trading firms, yeah, you know the ones that have kids making 7 figures in their mid 20s, that one. And tech being tier 3 shit tier is the biggest cope I've ever seen. Hilarious seeing people on this website thinking working 100 hours a week in a sweaty suit making power-point presentations is pReStIgIoUs, like the idiot non-profit economist a bit above me that thinks working at a secretive quant hedge fund that's had the best track record on Wall Street is not as cool as doing financial modeling that a mentally challenged 8 year old kid could do.
That's the essence of prestige bro.
Exactly.
Long hours/hard work? Check.
Fancy suit and tie? Check.
Get paid ridiculous amounts to do work that a chimpanzee could do? Check.
Work in a prestigious city? Check.
Work in a prestigious firm accused to rigging the global economy/tinfoil jew/illuminati conspiracies? Check. (Having plebeians make conspiracies about you means you're very prestigious).
wearing a suit and tie is prestigious
Lol @ stanford being tier 4. You realize without Stanford you wouldn't have google, hp, nvidia, snap, palantir, cisco, nike, capital one, gap, trader joes, micron, paypal, netflix, expedia, charles schwab, netapp, yahoo, intuit, electronic arts, akamai, bain, and cypress.
I don't see anything prestigious in any of the corporations you juste named.
Did you seriously throw Trader Joes into that list of companies??? Yeah, OK . . .
Lmao, imagine trying to say that your school is prestigious by saying "But our alumni founded Whole Foods!"
No point in even trying with these people, they've never left the investment bank they work at for months, they just bring a sleeping bag with them and a couple of different suits to change into. They unironically think if you tell the average person you work at Google as a software engineer they consider that the same as working as a garbage man. The delusion and cope is astronomical
You realize each of FAAMG+ has more SWE seats than IBD seats in NYC from all the BBs? If we extend this globally and across all ranges (MM, startups, boutiques, other tech companies like IBM, Oracle), it means that IBD/ER/S&T/AM is approximately 3-5x harder to break in by headcount alone. Not to mention you need prestigious skills like knowing how to socialize and network, not just leetcoding 12 hours a day.
A software engineer at Google is probably less prestigious than a garbage man. Allow me to explain.
- Software Engineer was a loser virgin nerd in high school and college, while garbage man was a "thug gangbanger" with tattoos, a Hellcat and guns.
- Software Engineer is basically a woman with the amount of free soy lattes he drank (soy has estrogen) at Google's free cafeteria. Garbage man likely on the 'roids and benchpressing 405.
Should've put Ackman under crap tier
cc Prestigious Pete
Oh man, how many current users do we think have been around long enough to remember that?
Thanks for the list. I’m new to this scene so it’s an interesting perspective.
Are you chasing prestige because you care what others think? Or are you trying to maximize the potential $/future job opportunities?
My view is who cares about prestige if you’re making money? There’s nothing prestigious about the jobs once you’re inside the firm and are the low man on the totem pole. No one outside of us cares, and the rest of society oogles over any HF/VC/PE job. I did LSE/CMU/NY/London/my own business, and i made more than my IB/Hedge Fund friends when I graduated in 2008 (from consulting). I thought people would care about the ‘prestige’, but in reality … no one cares.
Shooting for the best university, and employer, etc. is one strategy, but it’s not the ONLY strategy. Ex. For another strategy … If you’re at Google making $400k/yr a few years out of school then you can take that money and run your own investment portfolio. If you’re really good then you should be able to grow that at 40% per year, which gives you a lot higher probability of hitting $1m liquid more quickly.
Ironic how you're lumping LSE along with CMU, LSE is a global hypertarget (along with Oxbridge and WYD), while CMU is tier 9 at best.
I gave you my background. I didn’t equate all of those things. Based on your response, you sound young and immature. I hope that’s the case because you have a lot to learn.
This list is pretty inaccurate. I suspect you're a Laz or Apollo intern LOL, neither are close to the top of where you'd want to work.
What? Apollo literally pays the absolute most out of all PE shop. LAZ is second tier to PJT and CVP, but it's right beside EVR.
No one views Laz the laggard of all metrics in the US to be “close” or “next” to EVR.
They blow, and are sweaty hardos. It’s clear that you’re an intern there and need to boost your ego because you’re salty that your firm can’t compete with boutiques like they use to 20 years ago. Go look at the firms generating higher Rev and better exits (EVR, CVP, PJT, PWP).
I'm about to shave my head
Where does Lindsay Goldberg sit in this ranking?
Tier 3 (Crap Tier) based on this masterpiece
Tier 1a prestigious shitpost
NYC restaurants next
Inserts Dorsia joke
My bank is in the top tier so therefore I think the list is accurate
Oxford and Cambridge MBA programs are a total joke. would put them below KYS
This list is interesting to look at.
Anyone have an opinion about this?
What is MFPE?
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