Economics at UCLA
Hello all,
Recently I was accepted to UCLA with a Regents scholarship. This scholarship offers early registration, priority housing, a private tutor, and the opportunity to go to school for a low enough price that I'd also be able to afford a fraternity. In essence, this scholarship would make my next four years absolutely extraordinary. What I wish to know is whether or not choosing to attend UCLA and obtain an economics degree would through away my chances of working for a corporate bank out of after graduation.
Does anyone know how much more difficult it is to land a job in a corporate bank with an economics degree (not business economics, whoops) from UCLA as opposed to Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Vanderbilt? Would making the decision to go to UCLA potentially destroy my chances of being an investment banker?
I was also admitted as a regents scholar to UCLA, so I did extensive research on this option a while ago. The conclusion of my findings was that it is a terrible choice if you goal is finance or consulting. Here's why:
The West Coast as a whole is a terrible geographic region for finance recruiting. The offices are tiny, and they're the first to go during a downsize. Look up school representations at BBs on LinkedIn as a point of reference. NYU places two times as many students into any one bank as every California school put together.
There are too many good schools in California, and UCLA just doesn't have the prestige or networking horsepower. Stanford grads just go into tech, so the small office capacities are filled up entirely with Berkeley and USC grads. Recruiters like Berkeley Haas because it's small and compact (700 students) and USC Marshall because it's relatively selective and it's the closest thing to NYU on the West Coast lol. Both schools benefit from far stronger alumni support than UCLA - which is probably the most important tool you'll be leveraging to get into banking out of a West Coast school.
I also noted that Econ/Biz Econ at UCLA when put together, made up almost 30% of the school. Where do they all go? Big 4 Audit and back office. Lol. That's in the range of 2500-3000 students a year graduating with Econ/Biz Econ degrees from this monstrously huge school and from my observation, roughly 25 students land BB/MM banking gigs - primarily matriculants of the Investment Banking Workshop hosted by their main business society. The empirical data definitely did not look good to me when I was conducting my own analysis.
Berkeley and USC both have "safety" channels in the event that they fall short of breaking into the BBs. Haas kids get Big 4 consulting or econ consulting gigs by default and USC kids trickle into the multiple dozens of MM/boutique banks littered across LA and OC that are run by and only hire USC alumni. UCLA alumni network? Yeah, I think they call it "UCLA Professional Accountants Society."
If UCLA can't match up to USC or Berkeley, how could it even be mentioned in the same breath as the Ivy Leagues that you mentioned? The scholarship "benefits" are complete non factors. At no private school would you worry about priority registration. A private tutor? If you need a private tutor to pass your classes, then you shouldn't be thinking about banking, unless they can tutor you in networking skills. And from what I recall, the scholarship grant was only $2,000/yr anyway - I guarantee the quality of the first summer internship you get will make up for this differential. If you get into UCLA with Regents (which means you have decent stats), then I can safely assume that literally any other option you're considering is better than this one.
This is fucking gold. Please let it be preserved in eternal meme-dom.
One should mention that your competition also includes West Coast natives who are attending top-10 schools (e.g. Ivy Leagues, UChicago, MIT, LACs) and who can make a strong case for wanting to come back home after graduation. SF offices in general are also pretty popular: I've tangentially heard that something like half the SA class in SF is filled with Stanford/Berkeley/USC/UCLA and the other half with everyone else.
Large state schools like UCLA tend to concentrate finance/consulting jobs from two sources: Greek life (usually the "top" houses) and business fraternities (of which there are three). If you're not in one of those two groups, your chances of breaking in are essentially nilch. Private school tend to draw from more diverse sources of talent, which means that you can still break in without having to neatly fall into one of those two buckets.
UCLA = U C lots of Asian. Not to be racist or anytime but thats what they commonly joke about at UCLA. The school is really really big so you'll be competing against over 3000 students for limited IB spots. I second your comment about how Haas and USC had better placement. USC kids get MM gigs in OC all the time, UCLA not so much. Another UCLA joke: Not smart enough for Berkeley, and not pretty enough for USC.
By no means, am I hating on UCLA (my uncle went to UCLA but he was premed), just wanted to share some jokes with you.
This is just a factually inaccurate post.
Agreed
Haas is about ~300 students actually, definitely not 700.
This thread is fantastic. An douchey yet so far undisputed view backed by empirical data versus insecure public school kids throwing monkey shit. This is what WSO is all about!
Anecdotally though, I have met a dozen UCLA MBA graduates in the west, but zero from undergrad. Almost the exact opposite is true from USC, though I did also meet several Marshall MBA grads who did their undergrad on the East Coast. Very good representation from Claremont McKenna for their size, so if that is an option for OP, I'd consider it. Actually thinking about it now, I met a couple of accomplished UCLA MDs, but they would have graduated back when the school was actually good 20-30 years ago. I think that boat has sailed now, because the last time I saw a UCLA kid was during my superday years ago. He didn't make the stretch.
UCLA kids feeding solely into accounting hits close to home. The school is #2 in its own city and #2 in the UC system. I feel like the integer "2" characterizes everything about this school. Those who don't get into their top choices end up attending because "meh, it's cheap". I would be terrified of attending any school that has a 20% out of state yield rate, because it means other people are seeing what I'm not seeing. It's not particularly surprising that the kids who go there only get their #2 choice of career. Berkeley grads call it the UC for Lesser Achievers and LinkedIn placement data supports that. Don't choose #2 over #1 because #2 offered you $2,000. Couldn't they offer you a less insulting bribe? Oh yeah, they're also broke.
For the UC of Likely Accountants, they should hire back some of their graduates to make sure their school is still solvent in 5 years time because according to https://ucla.app.box.com/acct-pdf-AFR-13-14, they're $1.5 billion from being gone.
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/haas/about/facts.htmlSays 711 right here - so maybe 350 students each year since Haas is only Junior/Senior.
For what it's worth I'm a UCLA alum (biz econ) and my two cents is that like most schools that are not "primary" feeders there are a relatively small number of graduates who go into finance/consulting (as mentioned accounting is by far the largest bucket). So from a numbers perspective, you're right that it's a tiny sliver that goes into banking.
That having been said, it's also my experience that the top / most serious candidates (regardless of major) tend to get great opportunities and almost everyone I knew who I would consider qualified at least got an internship of some sort and most went on to get full time jobs if they decided to stick with it. It's not 100 students but it's also not 5. Mind you I also graduated right into the banking meltdown so this was not an easy time to get a finance job for anyone at any school, but I/we did just fine out of UCLA.
You have to think about this way: the number of quality candidates at UCLA was significantly lower than the number at say Wharton thought the gross number was much higher. It makes it look way harder than it actually was if that makes any sense.
Agree with other comments that UCLA does a terrible job of formal alumni outreach/network fostering but when I worked in IBD/PE, there were a surprising number of UCLA alums spattered throughout my firms and others I worked with who were definitely interested in supporting younger grads. It just required more effort on my part to find/foster those relationships.
Feel free to shoot me a direct note if you have any other specific question I could be helpful with.
Hard to say without knowing what any other options are. What are your other options?
I don't know that I agree with the idea that UCLA is a bad place to go into for banking/consulting type routes. I honestly think it's just as good as USC? Take it from someone who has gone through West Coast IB recruiting. If you look at the cold hard numbers, we placed the same number of kids into IB / consulting in 2015 and we have in recent years done the same. Banks actually do actively come to UCLA to recruit analysts, but obviously you can't compare West Coast schools to East Coast ivy leagues. I will say that USC definitely has a stronger alumni network, but the finance community at UCLA is growing very quickly and as far as West Coast recruiting goes, companies take UCLA very seriously. If you want to do banking on Wall Street then by all means go for an ivy league or NYU. I'm not even sure that this needs to be a discussion of UCLA vs USC.
Also, the reason so many UCLA kids go into accounting is because it's what they want to do - not because they can't get into finance. Most of the undergrads I knew in accounting had the view that they were opposed to doing finance and wanted better work life balance. Tons of pretty smart kids go into Big 4 accounting. They just want a normal lifestyle (which banking and consulting do not lend themselves to).
Biz Econ at UCLA is actually very selective. I got into USC Marshall, Berkeley and UCLA. Difference with Berkeley and UCLA is that you have to get good enough grades in all the pre-reqs to even get into the major. So I guess the idea is that even though UCLA is a huge public school, there is a smaller finance community within it that is more cherry picked. If you work hard enough, you can definitely be a part of this group. My view is that Berkeley dominates Norcal finance recruiting and Socal recruiting is pretty evenly split with USC and UCLA. And of course, doing banking in SF vs LA is a different discussion.
Wow, I didn't know my alma mater had such a bad reputation. I would say I knew plenty of kids who went into investment banking from UCLA (GS, Moelis, and so forth). I had an offer from a BB when I attended even though I had this stupid idea I wanted to be an attorney, and hell, I studied History. When I was there five years ago (damn), we had on campus recruiting from MS, BAML, Citi, Barclays and other major banks. I also did transfer from a community college. All in all, if you get into a better school, go there if you are dead set on investment banking. Though, for the life of me, I don't know why so many of you kids do because so many of analysts end up hating the two years before matriculating into something that you feel is more "fun" and "fulfilling".
I would also say it is really what you make of it, but on the surface of it, it is more difficult for UCLA students to land BB positions given its size and general nerdy perception. UCLA is not on the same playing field as UCB, Stanford, Caltech. It's not even close to an Ivy League school.
Nevertheless, is it close to or on par with USC? Tough to say in LA. I work in RE, so there is an army of USC kids running around working to be the next Caruso. But from what I understand, there are good number of UCLA guys at my bank too. However once you get into an investment bank, no one will fault your UCLA credentials when you are there; the school still carries a lot of name cache.
However, the idea that school dictates your career path in life is just stupid. I work with some IB guys at my bank who attended some schools with far less reputations than UCLA, became analysts at BB's, and are now MD's. It's all about how you network; I got all my jobs through a UCLA connection.
Berkeley or any private college in CA will be much better. UC Last Alternative is the safety bucket for Asian kids who have disappointed their parents.
Don't attend UCLA because they're trying to bribe you with chump change. You'll make up that difference in a summer of holding a real internship as opposed to the back-office one you'll get out of UC Likely Accountants. Just look up their representation at major banks on LinkedIn. Their placement is embarassing for a school of that size.
good to be here. there are nice dicussion. it will be helpful to everyone.
http://i.imgur.com/XRxXP2r.png http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/26/prof-corrects-minority-students-capit…
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