Stanford vs Columbia for a career in finance
Hi everyone,
I was recently fortunate to be accepted into many great colleges (undergrad), and I've narrowed my decision to Stanford and Columbia. These are both obviously great schools and I'd be happy at either, but one of the factors that I'm considering is how well they will set me up for a career in finance/consulting. I know that either would make it pretty easy to break into BB, but I'm more curious about how well they would do for elite buy-side recruiting and mbb consulting (investment banking doesn't seem that interesting to me).
Any insight would be massively appreciated, especially from current students/recent alumni.
Thanks
Stanford hands down. I go to the other school across the bay, and you can't beat the California weather, girls, and sports.
I don't go to either but I do go to HYP and my friends that went to Stanford all didn't enjoy their undergrad experience as much as they thought they would, also Stanford feeds more into tech/VC in SF, but I suppose it would also be just as easy to get into MBB but slightly harder for MF PE right out of undergrad. I think it would be hard to pass up Stanford in this situation, if it was Harvard then I would choose Harvard > Stanford.
Function of geography, what are the big finance cities in the U.S.? NYC/BOS/CHI/SF. Columbia is far closer to 3/4 than Stanford so it naturally wins out.
Stanford = Bay Area = VC/GE primarily and some HFs and PE firms.
Columbia doesn't have quite the same hedge fund recruiting as H/W but it does have access to the vast majority of northeastern MF PE, top mutual funds, and top hedge funds. At Columbia there's a strong finance scene, at Stanford not so much. Currently at Columbia for context
Sounds about right - Columbia is a great place to be.
Thanks it's helpful to know that there's such a strong finance scene at Columbia. A current student at Stanford told me that there has been a big presence from nyc offices but just not that much interest among students in moving to the east coast, so I guess that you're right about the proximity role.
Columbia and Stanford are pretty cool places to be in different ways. You can’t really make a wrong choice here.
Congrats. Have fun.
Dude, do Stanford! Same exit opportunities but Stanford is 10x better in terms of social life. Columbia has wayyy too much WOKE kids. Stanford is Tier 1 and Columbia is not what it used to be back in the day.
Social life in NYC is better than any other place in the world.
Yeah when your out of college totally agree with you but NYC is not a college town bud.
Every single buyside firm that would recruit at Columbia would undoubtedly also recruit at Stanford (KKR, Bain Cap, SLP, Ares, many more not to mention the HFs). Look through comments on past threads there's so much on colleges.
Why would you want to go to a lower-ranked, worse weather, less hot girls school like Columbia?
I live in New England so Columbia's a lot closer to home, and I like NYC/proximity to wall street
all else equal stanford will be a more enjoyable school to go to
Stanford.
Stanford unless you want the NYC experience
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