Athletics Impact on IB Recruiting

I’ve never understood choosing a college, a place where you’ll spend 4 years (likely 4 of the best years of your life) based off how they allegedly place into high finance. You need to choose what school you feel is best for you, where you’ll enjoy yourself to the fullest extent in every facet of the word. Especially if you have a network already in the industry go to where you’ll be happiest

Jesus dude. Enjoy highschool. Don't pick a college based on your IB chances/ PE recruitment, it's a deeply irrational and a poor life decision. Let me break it down for you why this comes across as really weird and sad to any adult reading this.

1) There is more to life than your career. If you constantly maximize your life path for your career, you will end up friendless, spouseless, and hating your job. You can do some prioritization, but making a college choice based on IB or PE recruiting is beyond warped from a priority standpoint. Honestly, if you even said you chose a college to maximize your PE or IB chances most firms would reject you as a candidate because it shows a severe lack of awareness and maturity--that's how bad this question is.

2) You seriously might not actually want to do investment banking or PE. Maybe you have researched both jobs and that's great, but the truth is, I think most 1st year analysts barely begin to understand what the job is actually like after working for a year straight. Choosing a college based on a job you don't understand and might leave or not like is very ill-advised.

3) For PE recruitment, your bank/ deal experience are what matters and for IB it's more your ability to network, your Test Scores, and GPA. That said, any place you go you are going to need to get a 3.7+ to be competitive in IB recruitment, which is really hard. If you are able to do this, I'd argue your ability to break in at any investment bank isn't going to be that different for any outcome if you are at a top 25 school. Any school it's still going to be very hard and difficult to network, people that tell you otherwise are lying. That said, for your situation specifically, Duke, NU, and Georgetown are actually ranked higher than many ivies from a US News and from an alumni at banks perspective. If you actually have the ability to get a scholarship and need the money, a place like NU is a no brainer compared to a place like Brown or Dartmouth. 

4) No one gives a shit about athletics after college. It's not some secret club where because you did lax at Dartmouth or swimming at Stanford you are immediately going to get offered a job. I'm currently working with several professional athletes (NFL and NBA) and they never bring it up and no one cares. In fact, if they did, many people might resent them for it and they would have a negative professional presence. Since you are talking about times, I'm assuming it is either track or swimming. Frankly, I'd be shocked if you interviewed with a single person who actually knew relative strength of athletics programs. I think most the people I work with might have not even played a varsity high school sport--that's how disconnected they are.

5) The network of a school isn't rankable. It's the kids you have an elective with and the random chance that you call someone who happens to be an alumni of a club you joined. There are a ton of people who graduate harvard who frankly don't utilize their network or have the ability to really use it. There also are a ton of people who go to state schools who learn to leverage the crap out of all alumni. Who you are as a person and your interests are going to matter way more than the school you attend. Anecdotally, I've found especially after your first job if it's a decently respected place, most people will pick up the phone if you call them. In my mind as a professional, a kid from U of I, a kid from Cornell, or a kid from my school who all did investment banking and are reaching out for advice are all equally likely to get a response from me. More often than not, the kids just don't reach out. 

Seriously, this is just a brutally sad question. I don't know where highschool kids are finding this forum, but you need to relax. From being on the hiring side, the actual biggest differentiator between candidates is whether they have the ability to be a normal person, are humble, and have the ability to ask insightful questions and add value. In other words, candidates aren't eliminated just because they went to Duke or Georgetown over Brown or Harvard. Choosing a college based on IB recruitment could be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm saying this because clearly you have worked hard to get those times and are a forward thinking person. In the next 4 years, you and the world are going to change a ton, and thinking about investment banking and PE is something you should revisit after your freshmen year. There are way way way more important things to learn socially as a college freshmen that if you don't learn, I promise you won't be able to use your network of any school and you will fail miserably in getting in the door at any job in finance. 

Choose based on how important the money is to your family, the campus/ culture, and the sort of athletics experience you want in college. The rest will come with time.

First off, I would anonymize yourself. I was able to figure out who you are and where you live in 1 minute. Secondly I would go to Wharton/Yale/Harvard if you can. $100k is worth the investment if you pursue finance 1000000%

Go where you think you’ll be happiest during your short four years of college. Hate to replicate much of what’s been said above, but it’s genuinely solid advice. All of the schools you mentioned will set you up well for IB recruiting, assuming you still want to do that in a few years’ time— many of my friends ditched finance plans to go into tech/consulting/startups/etc. instead.

If you have the time during your senior fall, I would advise you to take as many official visits as possible. It’s a free, fun way to get to see the campus, meet the team and learn what current upperclassmen will be doing with their lives following graduation (seeing as that seems important to you), and—most importantly— to get a sense of how happy you’d be at the school. Having attended an Ivy as an athlete, I always wondered what it would have been like to get the additional perks at a school like Duke...

I strongly disagree with the above. Uni reputation should prime (ie if you had Stanford and chose to go to Wisconsin instead Because they might have a better football team, unless you’re planning on becoming a pro NFL player, you would literally embody stupidity). However, if you hesitate between 2 schools in the same “tier” then definitely location and soft factors should move the balance one way or another. 

If it's Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/Penn, absolutely go there over non-ivy for athletics. If it's Georgetown w/ scholarship vs. Brown w/o scholarship, that's just a personal point. I say this as someone at one of the schools above who lives with 5 athletes (I'm the narp) and all of us are going into finance, their connections made it so easy for them

Choose the most prestigious school. They have their prestige for a reason. Unless you plan on going pro, athletics shouldnt matter too much. I strongly disagree with an earlier poster who said asking this question is weird, sad, irrational, etc, because yes college is only 4 years, but it can make an impact on the rest of your life. Some of us weren't privileged enough to just pick a school and path without carefully considering how it will set us up in the future. 

go to any ivy you can get in end of story

a lot of doors open because of that and you can decide what you really want to do then

take on the debt if you get a spot at HYP

yeah don't listen to some of these bizarre responses yelling at your for asking this.

use the sport to get into the best possible school imaginable.  you've gotta like the place you're going and be comfortable financially, but paying $100k to go to Yale over Duke is extremely worth it imo.  i wouldn't weight the sports rep too much unless you are Zion Williamson - just use the sport to get in to one of these schools and it'll work itself out career wise.

i also totally disagree about the sports thing not mattering later.  there are tons of people that get looks for finance jobs because they connected with alums of their sports teams and/or alums of schools you'll compete against. it's an instant connection and shared experience with someone because you will have committed so much of your life to the same thing

From a current athlete at one of the non-ivy schools you listed above who is going into IB next year, I'd honestly choose whatever school you are going to be happiest at. Any of the schools you mentioned will give you the potential to place into a top-tier bank or any other finance role for that matter as long as you put in the effort. You don't have to go to Harvard to get a solid job and have a good career. Additionally, being a student-athlete will give you a leg up in interviews because you can say you are basically doing the same thing as every other guy (getting good grades, learning technicals, being in clubs, etc.) except you have twenty less hours a week to do it. You'll be able to get interviews with all the top banks no matter which one you pick, so pick a school that you'll actually enjoy going to, with emphasis on liking the team you are going to join as they'll basically be your family for the next four years. I chose a non-ivy over an ivy league school when I was recruiting and couldn't have been happier about my decision. I also had no problem getting offers from solid banks, although it is more of a grind since it's hard to network when you're at competitions every weekend. You only have four years of college, so go somewhere that you will enjoy and be happy about for the rest of your life.