Princeton vs Yale vs Stanford (undergrad)
Recruited athlete here deciding between these 3 schools. I am looking to go into finance after college. Which school out of these 3 do you think is the best in terms of alumni network, recruiting, and getting a finance job on wall street (in I-Banking, PE, trading, etc.) Seems to me that Princeton > Yale > Stanford based off my research and the fact that Princeton has ORFE while Yale and Stanford only have econ. Do you think there will be sizable differences in getting a job after graduation? And what college will best enable me to have a successful finance career because of the network/recruiting? (I know I can in all places, key word here is best) Princeton does have grade deflation, however, I assume that those hiring are likely aware of this so it likely won't hurt too much. Also, please do not comment you should make your decision based off other factors, as I am, yet those other factors I can weigh myself, while these factors are the ones I am asking about and would like info on. Thanks, I appreciate all responses.
For NYC - Princeton >= Yale > Stanford.
West Coast - Stanford >> Princeton = Yale
IMO....
Congrats on being in such an incredible situation, you simply can't go wrong here. Blank112 brought up a good point about geography. To add a bit more color, it's not that banks in NYC will think any less of you if you come from Stanford, there will just be fewer Stanford alumni in NYC to network with than Yale or Princeton. If you want to work finance on the east coast I'd go with one of Yale or Princeton (no difference in job opportunities between the two IMO), but if you think you might have an interest in tech or want to work out west, go to Stanford.
This is all, of course, with the caveat that these schools are ~the same from a career perspective and you should really choose based on other factors (fit, potential major, distance to home, etc.). Also, since you're an athlete, do you like the coach/future teammates more at one school? For what it's worth I'd rather be an athlete at Stanford than one of the Ivies.
For alumni network and shared experiences, (ie. probably to build the best network just based on college) Princeton probably hands down. So much of the network is about quality, not quantity and one will have no problems with either in any of these schools. My impression as an older guy is that Princeton has the whole “shared experiences” and “alum familiarity” thing much more than Stanford or Yale. In short a random student can approach a random alum and probably has a much better chance to connect with said alum if it’s Princeton vs. the other two. I could be wrong but that’s my impression and I’m pretty confident that’s the case.
That said, as a poster above mentioned, one can’t go wrong. Personally I hope the OP has visited each school. With that where does the OP feel most comfortable? College is an all engaging, full time four-year experience. Learning, enjoyment, making friends and having an awesome life experience that hopefully positively shapes you and your life is what it is all about. One can get that at any of those schools but each is different and without knowing more, it’s a decision OP will have to make.
Even if the OP does go into finance (So much can change in four years) there is much more to college than getting a job in like Lev Fin or covering industrials at GS and being a PowerPoint and Excel monkey for 100 hours a week.
Hope this helps. Congrats on having these choices!
Good Luck
I'm not understanding the emphasis on networking when these schools are all uber-targets and won't require networking. Additionally, even if Stanford has fewer alums on the east coast, it also has fewer candidates going for those roles and so the overall ability to leverage an alumni contact (if you'd ever need to) should be similar. If anything, with tech being all the rage for current generation but less so for the prior generations, you might have an outsized ratio of Stanford alums to Stanford students on the east coast and thus more alums willing to bend over backward to help out. Although again I wouldn't weigh that much to begin with.
From a career perspective alone, and recognizing that we're totally splitting hairs here, I'd choose Stanford because of the more well-rounded finance exposure you'll get being near the tech scene that is basically driving our economy today. You'll see finance from more different and relevant angles because you'll have friends doing things in the startup/tech world, more influence from the VC community etc. Ultimately what we call "finance" cannot be separated from the broader economy, in fact I would argue the biggest financial mistakes come from financial whiz types who didn't get the broader economic perspective in which finance must operate. In other words, to really get Wall Street you need to get Main Street and right now Main Street is the valley.
Networking is literally life especially in service related industries like finance. If you are in sales or any people related business (and at higher levels it is almost always people related), who you know or your connection to that person is critical in success.
All of these schools will have competitive applicant pools for banking as mine did. Plenty of very qualified folks who did all the right things and went the normal route didn’t get the coveted banking jobs while some who knew people and sidestepped the competitive process did due to their connections. Once you leave school that network becomes much much more important because you are not sheltered at said school and have to get someone to read your resume when literally hundreds or thousands of people are applying for the same job you are.
Even though I have benefitted from networking and my school’s connections, believe me, I wish it was not the case and that it was more of a meritocracy.
In short keep networking no matter where you go to school.
Good Luck
Agree that networking is standard part of the process of landing an internship. But if you're at an upper-end target school, it's just another step in the process and pretty much a box checking exercise toward getting the internship.
Then networking after school . . I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I don't think school matters nearly as much when building a professional network after graduating. Especially when comparing target vs. target. Yale/Princeton vs. Lehigh, sure. But Yale/Princeton vs. Stanford, I just don't think the larger quantity of grads makes much difference when you already have a critical mass of Stanford grads. If one school has 1,000 alums you can call and another has 2,000, how's that really going to affect anything.
I also question the intensity of these connections. I think the quaint idea of the 60 year-old senior partner helping out the young whippersnapper because he's a fellow Princeton kid is a concept from a bygone era when life was easy for the partner and recruiting was opaque. Today that same partner is under much more competitive pressure to get the best people and after receiving 1,000 resumes efficiently culled down to 20 unbelievably accomplished candidates, isn't going to have much room left to consider who went to his school.
What I will say to OP is this. WSO and finance advice circles in general have a very strong bias towards tangible things over intangible things, to the point where even a small tangible thing is considered more valuable than a large intangible thing. In this case, the tangible is that Princeton and Yale have more alums on the street. That's a hard, indisputable number. But the value of it? Personally, not seeing that it has much value.
The intangible thing is that Stanford will, IMHO, be a better place to learn business/finance and build your network because . . well unfortunately it's intangible so the reasons are a little messy. But I don't think I need to get into the details; more importantly I just don't like to see people blindly favor tangible over intangible just because one feels cleaner and simpler. I think you're better off tackling the messy task of figuring out how Stanford's unparalleled access to tech (also known as "the economy"), makes it a more thorough education and network for you. Note also that when it comes to finance, there's a large piece of the broader finance pie (VC, growth equity and other early stage) that's dominated by Bay area investors.
tl;dr Every school of this caliber has roughly similar access to Wall Street, but one school has unique access to the Valley and that's an important and growing part of finance.
I think networking is absolutely required at a target school. Sure virtually every bank recruits at Princeton, Yale, and Stanford, but the amount of people vying for those jobs is insane. If Evercore takes 50 people a year, maybe 10 diversity and 5 nontarget, that leaves 35 spots (even though some of those diversity candidates will be target students). You have 8 ivy league schools, other targets (Stanford, UChicago), and semitargets (UVA, Kelley, Stern) all competing for those 35 spots. They may take 5 people each from HYPS and the rest everywhere else. But then you have a quota of 5 for your school (on average, obviously if there are 6 amazing candidates they'll go over, but if you look at linkedin a relatively similar number of students from each target is recruited each year). And if every bank is like that, that doesn't leave a lot of positions open for your school, especially at top firms like Evercore. Rather than getting 5000 applications from nontargets through the regular application form, they probably get 250-500 applications from everyone interested in banking at that school. Then that goes down to however few first rounds, and then however few superdays, all to culminate in 5 students getting the offer.
The only way to differentiate yourself, target or nontarget, is through networking. Granted target students can do a lot of their networking when banks come and give information sessions on campus. But the only way to form somewhat personal connections is through one-on-one networking. You can't just be a target student and expect to get an interview everywhere.
What does this have to do with choosing between Stanford and Yale/Princeton?
You could major in african american studies at stanford and still have a better shot at NYC IB in comparison with yale and princeton. go stanford bud
what sport?
Stanford doesn't have only Econ. There is the Management Science & Engineering major which is essentially a finance major.
**Pick the school that you think gives you the best environment to be successful as a student and happy as a person. Can't overstate how important this is. **
You'll have a million opportunities at any one of these schools if you do the little things this site suggests. You'll be in the best place to capitalize on those opportunities if you're happy.
I went to a top target on the east coast. All of my peers would have gone to Stanford in a heartbeat, but I don't see many Stanford kids dying to go to the Ivies. All NY IB opportunities will be available to you from Stanford, and if you couldn't land NY IB, it wasn't because of Stanford.
Go to Stanford. When you're enjoying the sun and riding you bike around campus while your Ivy peers are miserable and depressed trudging through snow, you'll realize how easy of a decision this ultimately should have been.
exactly
A lot of misguided comments above along the lines of "IB requires networking and networking is easier on the east coast." That logic doesn't hold, because Stanford kids compete against Stanford kids. It's like saying go try for the NBA instead of MLB because hitting a jump shot is easier than hitting a baseball. Doesn't make sense, it's all relative.
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