How is UChicago IB recruiting?
I will be a first year at UChicago this fall. Are there any recent Chicago grads who can shed light on the recruiting process? In your experience, how many people were interested in an IB job, and how many ended up with a solid offer (BB/EB/MM)? What was the toughest part about the recruiting process: keeping a high GPA at a tough school, networking, getting stepping stone internships, interviews?
Sorry if this post seems redundant. I thought about posting because the other info regarding UChicago on this forum seemed either outdated or not specific enough.
I never went to UChicago but am very familiar with the school. It's a good place for recruiting. However, you need to make sure that you get involved with finance groups on campus, network with alumni, and maintain a high gpa. If you don't take leadership roles or go the extra mile, you may have difficulty standing out during the cutthroat recruiting for top BBs/EBs.
Considering that you are posting on here and are interested so early in the game, you should not have a problem breaking in. People "break in" from significantly worse schools. Obviously, not every UChicago kid gets into a great shop but I'm sure that you will do fine/place better than the UChicago kids at Stout (lol)
Dude I went there and no one who got into IB from that school does “leadership.” What the fuck kind of leadership can a 20 year old have? It’s almost entirely BS and everyone in IB knows that
Sure, it might be BS but it's better to be VP of the women in business group or president of an investement group than just a member who shows up once a semester. Being able to talk intelligently about clubs and roles within those groups helped me greatly in IB recruiting. It's part of the game: the ability to make a mediocre experience sound great.
Path to corporate greatness right here.
I went there. Never once did I get asked about my club positions during an IB interview. If anything questions about clubs are lumped in with questions about hobbies/free time. Sure it could look good if you’re president of TBC (top finance club there) but most of all leadership positions are for 4th years. No one has them when they’re interviewing as second years/ first quarter third years. A 20 year old saying he’s the vp of the model un or the “senior credit analyst” of a 10 person Robinhood trading club is going to incite internal laughter, not impress
The one exception to this rule, that will garner respect, is if you are a varsity athlete. Doing well at UC and being an athlete takes some serious effort.
Leadership positions at uchicago are for 4th years . You recruit second and third year.
Only questions I got asked about clubs were lumped in with questions about hobbies/ free time. Don’t kid yourself into believing anyone takes the “vp” of a 30 person club seriously. If you’re a varsity athlete or student body president that’s impressive. Otherwise it’s just a check in the box to make sure you don’t spend all your free time drinking or jacking off
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It is without question one of the easiest schools to get an IB job from, provided you have A) done the basics (get early finance internships- you can even do this during the year since you’ll be in Chicago, study the guides, know how to tell your story, practice some behaviorals, format your resume well) and B) have a good GPA:
If you are a white/Indian/Asian male you need a 3.7+ to get MULTIPLE TOP interviews THROUGH OCR. Notice this statement is every nuanced
1) If you’re a chick or URM, drop that number to 3.4ish (unless Asian chick in which case 3.6) if you are applying through diversity programs
2) if you’re not diversity, you can still get a one or two good OCR interviews with a 3.5ish
3) If you don’t limit yourself to OCR (I highly recommend you don’t) then you’ll have no issue getting interviews at great shops as long as you are aggressive with reaching out to people. (Again provided you have a 3.5ish). Booth produces armies of BB and EB associates, who unlike analysts have lots of sway over who gets interviews. Reach out to them as well as college alumni
Lastly, know how to craft networking emails, and don’t be socially retarded. Too many uchicago kids think they’re way smarter than they really are. Lose the pretension and you’ll be fine.
If you do these things, there’s really no easier place to get into IB other than like H/W
Thanks for the detailed response. Do you know how difficult it is to get a 3.5-3.7 GPA in a technical major like econ or comp sci? I've heard that UChicago has "grade deflation" and I'm wondering how true this is.
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Almost impossible in CS
Econ is a wildcard. If you’re doing the real Econ and taking advanced electives with the famous professors, it WILL be very difficult to exceed a 3.5
If Bus Econ, or real Econ but with as many bs classes on the side as you can find (not too many to go around at that school) you can do it but 3.7 will still take work because lots of classes are curved to a B+ median
I’d say avg. gpa in Econ major is 3.3-3.4 (and those kids are very smart. They got in to a school with a 6% acceptance rate) The avg for kids getting into a good IB role is probably 3.6
Current undergrad here. This is highly accurate. If you’re thinking this far ahead you’ll do fine in recruiting. Be sure to connect with upperclassmen mentors in clubs, sports teams, Greek life, etc. Just gotta grind interview prep and nail your story/behaviorals especially.
Recruiting is def very cutthroat. Honestly the biggest differentiator is just gonna be the airport test. Can you demonstrate normal social intelligence, speak articulately about things other than finance and generally connect with ppl while networking and in interviews.
UChicago kid about to be a 4th year here.
Definitely echo what everyone else is saying. People will trust that you're intelligent/hard working because of the UChicago name. What you really need to prove is that you're socially competent and someone that other people will want to be around 16 hours a day. Join greek life, make sure your social skills are top notch, and try not to be nervous at interviews. You'll be fine.
I'm UChicago Econ/Math double going into 4th yr. Depends what you want to do, but if you're set on banking specifically, frontload easy classes and major in biz econ while networking and I hope you're a normal person cause in banking nobody cares if you're tip top brains after you finish analyst/associate grunt work phase. Again, this is not what I did because I was in no way deadset on banking when I got here, I took some pretty difficult classes (pondered a CS major for a little bit too) so my GPA came out a bit low for recruiting, but it did not seem to be the end of the world. I had some interviews with pretty top banks where I thought I did pretty well, but got my only offer from a good team at a mid-tier middle market. Would imagine my GPA definitely held me back when I was interviewing with GS/EVR/LAZ type banks but in the end don't think it is a big deal because lateralling is an option after summer banking stint and I'm not too focused on MF PE or anything like that. I got my GPA up from where it was during soph recruiting so imagine that could only help if I do decide to re-recruit (though not set yet one way or the other)
My piece of advice above anything though beyond the scope of what you asked in the thread, figure out what you enjoy while you are in college. This is like the advice of everybody on Earth regarding careers, and still nobody including myself listens. Take a deep breath and try to explore some shit and try something you think is pretty interesting rather than trying to fit the cookie-cutter mold of what you think is going to get you into an EB. IB recruiting is literally directly 1:1 with college admissions--A total crapshoot, focused on arguably the wrong things (nepotism, overplaying diversity, etc), and have 10x the qualified applicants than people they can take. Worrying about it now will probably give a slight leg up in the recruitment process, but you run the risk of going to work and realizing you only ever wanted to do it because it paid well/was prestigious, leading you to reevaluate after 2 years (which felt like 10 because you worked 110 hours a week) what you actually want to do with your life.
As far as my path goes, I see banking as a means to acquire skills. I ultimately think I want to work at a hedge fund (Citadel/P72/Baly) but I acknowledge that those places through you into a fire day 1 and so I want to get my feet set on the hard financial skills to be successful there and banking is a relatively lower-stakes environment (again this is compared to HF where everyday is a war for P&L). The group I work for this summer is a sweatshop and known to be modelling intensive, but I see this as a positive because I want to get as good at understanding a company and modelling as I possibly can while learning how to work incredibly hard. I ideally would stay in banking 16-24 months before jumping ship to one of those above funds or similar. From there I see working at a hedge fund as being something I can sustainably do for the rest of my life because of how much I enjoy thinking about and investing in the public mkts (obviously there will be a few blow ups here and there but ideally you can always find another seat). It's a high stress environment but I feel like my experiences at a place like UChicago have prepared me for that.
Lastly, just to a point on specific recruiting on campus:
- If you want to work in banking the second you step foot on campus and focus unilaterally on that, you will 100% be able to work in banking somewhere. This prior statement obviously has clear costs of reduced personal development and academic exploration which is one of the best things about UChicago.
- As far as raw numbers go, and I am completely estimating, I would expect about 5-8 students per class to place in an IB role at each of the largest bulge bracket banks (call this like 7 banks). For EB, would expect about 20-25 students in total to get into a reputable EB (PWP, Centerview, Evercore, Lazard, Qatalyst, Moelis). And then probably another 20 place at reputable MM banks and like 10 might go to random banks/small regional boutique banks/some niche industry banks. That's about 100 students per class going into investment banking which I think sounds about right. If you want to count roles outside IB for those bulge brackets the number is probably a lot higher.
- While 5% of the class going into IB might seem slim, remember that a ton of UChicago u/g don't want anything to do with investment banking. A lot of people pursue quant (an industry which pay you 3x what banking will but you have to be a genius), consulting, software, as well as graduate school. And that's only the percentage of UChicago students who even have financial motives for a job which some people here probably don't. Also the above excludes people who recruited for banking but got a top PE/HF job (probably about 8-10 of those people I would guess).
That's all I got and this message is long as hell, but if you are going to UChicago and worried about this trust me you will be okay.
Lol OP here and this is my post from three years ago. I'm also going into 4th year and I agree 100% with everything you said, especially about exploring interests outside of finance.
full circle moment lol
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