Northwestern IB Placement & Business Clubs
Just a precursor, this post is mainly aimed toward Northwestern alum (except the first question)
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How does Northwestern place into Chicago banks? And as an extension of that, how does it do comparatively in New York/SF?
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I heard that Northwestern doesn't have that much OCR for Investment Banking positions. Is this true?
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What clubs should I be looking to join in Northwestern if I want to get a leg up? I know in some public schools, a lot of the recruiting is heavily throgh the clubs - is this the same case for NU?
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Do specialized programs like the Kellogg certificates or MMSS (which I'm majoring in) have any effect on placement?
Thank you!
Rising NU senior (Economics & Kellogg FE) and incoming Analyst at a BB here. Disclaimer: my route to finance is not typical; I am not part of quite a few clubs I listed below; I don't know the full answer to all of your questions. So pls take this as a personal but still NU student view on the issue. 1. Northwestern places pretty well into Chicago banks. Among people I know I can name one person who got in BAML Chicago full-time every year for the past 4 years. Don't think it places as well in NY, don't know much about SF. I'd imagine with an NU degree you still have an advantage it's still up to what effort you put in, how you network etc. (i.e. I know NU kids who work full time in both cities) 2. Not sure about OCR in general, but I suggest you check out Chicago Field Studies (CFS) if you haven't yet. The finance section of the program looks like off-cycle internship to me, and I heard there are quite a few good opportunities available as long as you don't do it in the summer (more competitive for obvious reasons) 3. If you like Greek life, maybe try out AKPsi or DSP. For non-Greek life stuff, check out Northwestern Capital Management (NCM) in ISBE, and Investment Management Group (IMG). I don't know which year you are in, but you might be eligible for NU Investment Banking Club (IBC). I'm not a part of it (I do S&T) but I heard it has a pretty focused mentoring program that aims to place kids in Wall Street, or IBD in general. For recruiting through clubs and/or programs, unfortunately I can't provide a lot of insight since I'm never the night party type or networking god. What I can tell you though is that the Kellogg program timeline is way too late for normal SA recruitment so don't expect to be able to use what you learned in Kellogg for interviews (whether interviewers will notice & respect the Kellogg name on your resume is another matter of course, but I don't have a definite answer to that) Everything above is purely my subjective view and may or may not be truthful. Just my two cents.
thank you!
As far as the placement goes, I can say northwestern places very well in Chicago. Know there’s a huge alumni base at Blair, along with other top Chicago shops. Speaking purely from personal experience, didn’t run into many Northwestern alumni at NYC offices, but I can’t say whether that’s because it’s very difficult or just because there’s not as many interested in NYC IB.
This won't help you, but I'm always surprised with how infrequently northwestern comes up here. It's like the most overlooked top tier school, maybe along with Hopkins, but Hopkins is heavy premed so I still don't get it
Same with Vandy and WashU from my experience.
Both aren’t up to northwesterns level imo. And tbh, I forget ab washu all the time just in general.
Mhm, there's very little information I could find about its placement in general. I think its generally considered around a Top 15 school in the US, so that kind of suprises me. Obviously, rankings aren't everything, but yah.
An1 in NYC from NU
1) Solid placement in Chicago as said above and decent representation in NYC. There aren’t as many people in NYC as other schools in our tier, but you’ll see at least 1-2 people per major firm.
2) Yeah, not a lot of OCR. Goldman and William Blair might be the only firms that really come on campus for anything more than a presentation. BX BREDS historically takes a person or two from a pipeline established by David Levine, but that’s about it. I’m speaking from experience as someone who focused on NYC recruitment though, so I might be missing some Chicago firms. Comment above on BAML Chi is 100% correct.
3) IBC runs part of the show, would recommend trying to get into that. Besides that AKPsi and DSP have certain resources too, but they’re not as useful. NCM and IMG will give you some stock-pitching experience. You’ll see eventually that it’s really the same group of 20-30 people in all those clubs that are gunning for IB spots.
4) Didn’t do either, would recommend trying to have fun/a life in college instead once you’re done with finance recruitment as opposed to doubling down on learning more finance. Kellogg FE/MA will not get you to Wharton/Stern level however much you try, and you learn most of the skills on the job anyway. MMSS could be cool if you’re actually interested in it, but don’t do it for recruitment.
NU places pretty well into most banks - target/or heavy recruitment for GS (mostly NYC), Deutsche NYC, Evercore Houston, Blair, BAML Chicago, Baird, Citi Chicago, Greenhill Chicago, Moelis Chicago
The school also places into most other banks in Chicago, a few to the core BBs and Boutiques in NYC, and one or two every year to SFC and Houston
Buyside wise Blackstone BREDS always has a spot or two for NU kids as well as GTCR for their analyst programs
Being accepted into IBC really helps prepare you for recruitment and is definitely something to look out for at NU (past two years 90% of members get offers to banking/pe)
Northwestern IBC this year had pretty good buyside placement: BX Tac. Opportunities, 2x Ares, 2x CVC credit, sequoia funds, Audax, Starwood Capital.
With ebs I know they had 4x Evercore, Moelis, Greenhill, which is pretty good.
In past NU has placed many people to GS and MS per year, numerous Laz, Evercore, Centerview, Moelis, GHL people. People at GTCR, numerous BX RE, SIG GE, AQR.
PM me if you want, I've worked with many NU interns and can provide good clarity on placements and the CFS program.
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I’ve got some friends there and they’ve been telling me that kids are crushing it as of late. The banking club website shows kids that are going to BX, Ares, top RE and AM funds, and top banks.
Never really thought of Northwestern as a finance powerhouse which makes sense given how small the banking club is compared to other schools. Honestly looks like it’s a small group of kids that grinded and figured out how to recruit before passing it down to the next classes.
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