How much does going to Ivies/MIT/Stanford/Chicago/Duke/etc really help?
I know that for the actual OCR, you get a huge leg up when the BB bank recruits on your school's campus. You can then make yourself known and kiss ass a little to the recruiters in person. But let's say you go to Ivies/MIT/Stanford/Chicago/Duke but want to apply for an internship/job at a bank that doesn't recruit at your school. Would going to a more prestigious school help in getting an offer even if you applied through the general job applicant pool?
you find alum and apply.
This is a no-brainer. Going to a better school means people assume you're smarter and are gonna be more likely to pick you out of a list of people they don't know and have never seen.
This is true to some degree, but more importantly is the network of people from your school who are already at the top banks (and all banks for that matter). Honestly, for someone from a semi-target (the schools you named as well as top LACs and a few others), in my opinion there is no excuse to not get a first round interview with basically every one of the BBs (assuming you have a 3.4 or above and just a decent GPA). There are so many alums out there willing to speak with you and shoot your resume to HR (which, unless your resume is total shit, most referrals result in at least 1 interview/screening). So I would say the advantage of these schools is huge, and obviously it starts at the most basic from people assuming you are smarter, but at this point the networks at the banks is much more valuable.
^ In a nutshell
In essence, recruiting boils down to three key elements. - Are you smart? - Are you hardworking? - Do I like you?
Going to a better school is simply a function of the two elements of those three that someone can't ascertain for themselves in an interview. It means you are likely smarter than others who failed to get into that school and were certainly more hardworking in high school. Those questions out of the way, they'll want to interview you to see if they like you.
This is why non-target candidates on this forum discussing interviews at various firms or sharing their "I broke in!" stories with a long post in the Success Stories section will universally talk about how hard they got grilled on technicals, asked esoteric accounting questions, tested hard on valuation concepts, and slammed by brainteasers. If you aren't at a good school, people want to know whether you are smart and how hardworking you are. You have to prove to them that it's a worthy choice on their part to risk an offer on you over the kid they automatically 'know' or assume to have those traits because he's at Harvard or Princeton.
It certainly isn't entirely true; kids at target schools may have skated in on a family connection, athletic scholarship (Google and read how much the Dartmouth kids hate the Dartmouth athletes), or a padded high school transcript. However, just as Nobel laureate Michael Spence would tell you, going to a good school is simply an act of signalling. People read into it far more than they should, but such is life and you need to know the rules to play the game.
So many of us on this site have either learned this the hard way or witnessed it in action more than enough times that we warn those coming on here to ask "Ivy or state school with full ride?" Short-term, it may seem like a terrible choice to assume debt instead of a free education. Long run, however, your personal NPV rises dramatically simply for having graduated from a prestigious school.
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