Overrated / Underrated banks on WSO

Broadly as a professional in the industry who has done banking and PE—“Lower tier” banks are systematically underrated on this website and “top tier” banks are systemically overrated. People on this forum act like Goldman Sachs versus UBS is going to determine your next 10 years of life when really if you are a smart analyst who can model well, articulate an investment thesis, and you have top notch test scores and a gpa from a good university, your career post banking is going to be more about self selection. All these jobs make you a highly valued professional that many firms want to hire. Also, from my experience, many banking analysts will either burn out, or they will decide they want to try something in an alternate investing arena aside from PE like hedge funds or VC and ultimately they won’t compete for the private equity jobs that it seems many on this forum are after. Additionally, there are so many private equity funds right now looking to hire people that it’s not as hard as people make it out to be to get a job in the industry if you have banking experience from any firm mentioned on this forum. People act like it’s harder than it is to make themselves feel better.

Similarly, a mm place like Jefferies will give you 90% of the opportunities a place like Morgan Stanley would granted the rest of your resume is in line. But honestly, it’s doubtful if you went to jefferies you would even want to interview for the same type of jobs the Morgan Stanley kids would want to. Most often, people choose to continue looking at businesses closer to their domain expertise and analysts are influenced by others around them in the funds they target.

One reason why the rankings don’t really matter is most the kids on this website will leave the industry. Hell, even people on “the path” of IB->PE->HBS/GSB eventually have to leave “the path” when they go to another industry or try to create their own fund or join a growing fund, in which case one has to wonder how much different their outcome would be if they went to “lower banks/ firms”. On that topic, I personally know many people who have done non-top bank-> LMM/MM PE—> HBS/GSB. Point is, much of this ranking is just completely splitting hairs with people at banks arguing their bank is better than all the others to make themselves feel better about the amount they sacrifice for their job.

Navigating a career involves a lot of personal and professional choices—whether the prestige of the first bank you work at is #1 or #20 you still are getting experience most people never even get close to in their lifetime.

Edit: since I think it’s really a great analogy—I think caliber of bank is like caliber of school. Are there firms out there that only hire Wharton grads? Absolutely. That said, do a majority of firms hire more broadly and they will be impressed by any school in the top 10 while also taking candidates from outside the top 10 if they are exceptional? Yup. The job market is way way bigger than people on this forum make it out to be. In fact, it’s way bigger than the school market and the analogy to schools eventually breaks down because there are top notch firms at different ends of the market due to how they strategically positioned. Way more of a free for all than even college admissions.