ibanking recruiting at penn non-wharton

hey guys. got back all my regular decision applications and i'm like 80% sure that i'm going to Penn this fall in the college of arts and sciences. i absolutely love everything about the school, but i've been hearing some things about finance/consulting recruiting in the school of arts and sciences.

is it tough to get a job as a non-econ major at penn non-wharton? i've been reading a ton of mixed responses on here about it. what do i need to do to differentiate myself from the pack? would i be better served by transferring to another school

anyway, thanks in advance for the help. all help is appreciated!

 
Best Response

I went to W and have had many CAS friends land fantastic jobs in finance. There are pros and cons to the situation, and I'll try to lay them out.

First of all, unless you have an unquenchable academic flame of passion for a CAS degree, look to transfer into Wharton, either through a straight internal transfer or a dual degree app. You're going to need damn near a 4.0 to pull this off (~10 kids do it every year), so maybe skip a couple nights at Smokes or Rumor. It won't kill you. Also try to knock out the required FNCE/ACCT classes your freshman year, even maybe a little beyond what's required. For example, do the requirements for soph transfers in your frosh year (I think this is only a couple of courses); of course, this requires some planning/foresight.

Even if that doesn't happen, I've seen plenty of CAS kids succeed. The first key here are picking Econ or (maybe) PoliSci/PPE as a major. You might be able to finagle IR/History/English, but honestly it gets tough at that stage; Art History might work if you're a girl (that's life).

The major lynchpins come recruiting time are networking and grades, in that order; the benefit to being at Penn is not so much having a theoretical shot to apply everywhere Wharton kids do, but rather the very real opportunity to get heard via alumni emails/calls and info sessions at basically the same rate Wharton kids do. First-round cuts are brutal for any IBD job (~10% MAX cutdown from applicant pool to OCR interviews) and being non-Wharton is a great way to fall under the axe unless a recruiting team has you flagged for being in contact and can recognize your name.

As for grades, it's pretty simple: you have a higher bar than Wharton kids to clear. Where a 3.6 Finance major gets looks, you might need a 3.75+ (assuming networking being equal, which it never is). Be smart about balancing your intellectual curiosity and joke classes (Samba, miming, Nursing, Arabic Chorus, Intermediate Zulu, etc.) to make sure you haven't sacrificed the end number too much in the pursuit of academic enlightenment. Yeah it sucks but if you think IBs are strict, take a look at some top law school GPAs.

Look, at the end of the day, there are pros and cons. Some of the smartest kids I know at Penn are CAS, but there are some who would be in competitive reading contests with Floyd Mayweather. The college isn't exactly known as a fount of intellectual rigor, there's been a lot of dilution with rich daddy's kids and Long Island/New Jersey trash. The average college kid would probably be out of his/her depth at Georgetown. Whatever. That doesn't matter to you: don't be an average College kid. Excel at classes, be smart and aggressive about networking, drink and ball out when you can, and you'll be fine. Don't be the clueless Jersey Shore kid who thinks his Penn acceptance means he's a guaranteed in at Goldman by dropping a resume as a 3.5 STS major with no other contact who gets "shocked" he has to work for his uncle junior summer. Foresight is key.

 

I agree with this in spots, and I think we probably agree on most things, but I want to note a couple things.

  1. When I was trying to steer OP to Wharton, it seemed that he was genuinely interested in finance (he is a pre-frosh on a banking forum after all), and didn't have a major passion for, say, Poli Sci that would override that. While I think studying what gets your mind working is admirable, and I know I sure as hell wouldn't have majored in Finance if I was at Princeton instead of Penn, we have to be realistic here, namely because...

  2. You seem like an excellent, maybe even abnormally so, candidate. A 3.74 is significantly higher than the GPA I had during OCR time, you clearly did your grunt work when it comes to networking, and your username implies an athletic background. OP probably shouldn't bet on having all that in their favor (except the networking, which is completely controllable), and if we conservatively look at a 3.5-3.6, all things being equal, OP is going to want to be Wharton rather than not. Besides, half the classes in a Wharton degree are CAS anyways, and the only truly useless classes in the core are ACCT 102, MGMT 101, MKTG 101, and MGMT 104.

  3. Finally, I want to throw major doubt on the idea that only Huntsman/M&T 3.9+ kids get GS/MS. That's just not true, especially since those firms are so open to networking and value demonstrated interest a ton. I had superdays with both firms with, again, a much lower GPA than you did and with probably similar networking. It's still a brutal cut to get from applications to 1st round interviews, and unless OP is absolutely confident and can bank on an excellent GPA in CAS, why take the risk of having a marginal disadvantage? Networking helps, sure, but there's no reason to start in the relative hole.

  4. The jobs that do need a "superstar" profile (BX/PJT IB/PE, Apollo, Silver Lake, Silver Point, Warburg, KKR, various one-off hedge funds) almost always just pick the top GPAs exclusively from Wharton, so there's an upside case to be made. Even firms that give out less exclusive interview slots (various EBs, Sankaty, Putnam, etc.) will tend to limit their "flyers" to Wharton kids.

 

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