Target vs. Non-Target

One thing that's very disheartening to read on this forum is the bias against kids from targets. Apparently, kids from targets just happened to be privileged enough to get into a good school while kids from non-targets unfairly get screwed. I'm sorry, but when did working hard in high school and middle school become "privileged"? I know some outstanding kids at non-targets and mediocre kids at targets, but the kids here who attack targets on here honestly sound like OWS. 99% of the spots in banking are filled with 1% of schools!!!!!!

Listen: If I'm looking at Harvard 3.6 Poli Sci with no real internships, and a Non-Target 3.6 Finance with boutique IBD internships, I'm taking the former ALL DAY (assuming that he's sociable, knows what IBD is, etc.). Why? Because I know that Harvard kid was motivated enough to spend 4 years in high school working his ass off, getting 2300+ SATs and 3.9+ GPAs and leading sports teams while the Non-Target kid made some cold-calls to random boutiques and got lucky. Yes, you can argue the whole "can't afford Harvard" or "rich parents made donations" angle (and I ABSOLUTELY sympathize with the kids who couldn't afford to go to Stern or GTown or some other low-financial aid school), but generally speaking, most targets are actually incredibly generous with financial aid and development cases make up a tiny portion of the population (and those kids get hooked up anyway). In fact coming from a poor background helps you get into Harvard.

Just my rant. To quote someone from this forum, "it's not a silver spoon if you've earned it." I'm not bashing non-target kids in anyway (the ones I've met in banking are terrific), just the ones who paint the Ivies with the same broad stroke.

 
Best Response

I'm a non-target and I have a ton of respect for people who attended target schools. Even when I was working in a BO type of role, I knew I got what I deserved and I also knew that from that point on I would have to work twice as hard to make up for all of the bullshitting I did in school. I should've worked harder in HS, I should have scored higher on my SATs, I should have applied and gotten into better colleges, but I didn't...I was average at best, so why bitch about it?

The whole "can't afford Harvard" shit is crap. There are plenty of shitty schools out there that cost 35-40k+ a year and kids still go there and still complain about it like god hates them or something...Fuck that.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 
Flake:
I'm a non-target and I have a ton of respect for people who attended target schools. Even when I was working in a BO type of role, I knew I got what I deserved and I also knew that from that point on I would have to work twice as hard to make up for all of the bullshitting I did in school. I should've worked harder in HS, I should have scored higher on my SATs, I should have applied and gotten into better colleges, but I didn't...I was average at best, so why bitch about it?

The whole "can't afford Harvard" shit is crap. There are plenty of shitty schools out there that cost 35-40k+ a year and kids still go there and still complain about it like god hates them or something...Fuck that.

Not to point this finger at you, because you do seem like a pretty smart guy, but there is way too much shoulda, coulda, woulda on this forum in general

 
jaschen27:
Flake:
I'm a non-target and I have a ton of respect for people who attended target schools. Even when I was working in a BO type of role, I knew I got what I deserved and I also knew that from that point on I would have to work twice as hard to make up for all of the bullshitting I did in school. I should've worked harder in HS, I should have scored higher on my SATs, I should have applied and gotten into better colleges, but I didn't...I was average at best, so why bitch about it?

The whole "can't afford Harvard" shit is crap. There are plenty of shitty schools out there that cost 35-40k+ a year and kids still go there and still complain about it like god hates them or something...Fuck that.

Not to point this finger at you, because you do seem like a pretty smart guy, but there is way too much shoulda, coulda, woulda on this forum in general

Agreed.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
There is a particular poster on this forum who bashes Ivies every chance he gets, resorting to saying that getting into Harvard undergrad is the work of your parents, not your own work.

Sounds like a bitter asshole.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 
Flake:
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
There is a particular poster on this forum who bashes Ivies every chance he gets, resorting to saying that getting into Harvard undergrad is the work of your parents, not your own work.

Sounds like a bitter asshole.

I have a lot of respect for that guy, he's a smart guy that gives a lot of sound advice on this forum and he is one of the top posters on this forum.

However, he has the biggest chip on his shoulder against Ivies for some reason.

 
seedy underbelly:
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
There is a particular poster on this forum who bashes Ivies every chance he gets, resorting to saying that getting into Harvard undergrad is the work of your parents, not your own work.

illini?

Yes. Just go read the thread:

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/lowest-ranked-mba-you-would-atten…

page 6-7.

His viewpoint is that all it takes to get into Harvard is to be born under high-achieving parents, and it is the work of those pushy parents that get a kid into Harvard, not the kid's own hard work and intellect. Hence, just because a kid goes to Harvard, that in and out of itself doesn't signal the kid's intellect, hard work, or whatever, but it just tells employers that this kid comes from an elite family background.

As much as I respect illini, I get really pissed when I encounter ridiculous viewpoints such as this.

 
firefighter:
One thing that's very disheartening to read on this forum is the bias against kids from targets. Apparently, kids from targets just happened to be privileged enough to get into a good school while kids from non-targets unfairly get screwed. I'm sorry, but when did working hard in high school and middle school become "privileged"? I know some outstanding kids at non-targets and mediocre kids at targets, but the kids here who attack targets on here honestly sound like OWS. 99% of the spots in banking are filled with 1% of schools!!!!!!

Listen: If I'm looking at Harvard 3.6 Poli Sci with no real internships, and a Non-Target 3.6 Finance with boutique IBD internships, I'm taking the former ALL DAY (assuming that he's sociable, knows what IBD is, etc.). Why? Because I know that Harvard kid was motivated enough to spend 4 years in high school working his ass off, getting 2300+ SATs and 3.9+ GPAs and leading sports teams while the Non-Target kid made some cold-calls to random boutiques and got lucky. Yes, you can argue the whole "can't afford Harvard" or "rich parents made donations" angle (and I ABSOLUTELY sympathize with the kids who couldn't afford to go to Stern or GTown or some other low-financial aid school), but generally speaking, most targets are actually incredibly generous with financial aid and development cases make up a tiny portion of the population (and those kids get hooked up anyway). In fact coming from a poor background helps you get into Harvard.

Just my rant. To quote someone from this forum, "it's not a silver spoon if you've earned it." I'm not bashing non-target kids in anyway (the ones I've met in banking are terrific), just the ones who paint the Ivies with the same broad stroke.

Take everything you read on this website with a grain of salt. You'd think half of the people on this board are terminally ill by the constant complaining

 

I don't judge people based on the school they attended (unless it's WVU). To assume that somebody had a 3.9 GPA, 2300+ SAT, and "led sports teams" (lol what?) in high school in order to get into Harvard is just plain retarded. And I admit I'm somewhat bitter over my education, but really, that's a fucking stupid assumption not grounded in reality. People get into top schools for many different reasons.

 
jaschen27:
Every kid i know who went to a top 5 school earned every bit of it in high school. How many fucking "elite families" do there have to be to populate the ranks of the ivy league?

Yes. Unless you are a Bush or a Kennedy, you aren't getting into Harvard just because of who your daddy is. This is a irrefutable fact.

Actually, coming from a non-elite family background may help you get into Harvard, ironically. Being an impoverished URM from inner-city region will make it 100 times easier to get into Harvard compared to a talented gunner White or Asian guy. Sad, but true.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
jaschen27:
Every kid i know who went to a top 5 school earned every bit of it in high school. How many fucking "elite families" do there have to be to populate the ranks of the ivy league?

Yes. Unless you are a Bush or a Kennedy, you aren't getting into Harvard just because of who your daddy is. This is a irrefutable fact.

Actually, coming from a non-elite family background may help you get into Harvard, ironically. Being an impoverished URM from inner-city region will make it 100 times easier to get into Harvard compared to a talented gunner White or Asian guy. Sad, but true.

I think this completely ignores the fact that many high schools feed into the Ivies (mainly prestigious prep schools and Catholic private schools). Simply going to a public school puts you at a disadvantage for many of the Ivies.

On the other hand, I agree that especially non-traditional backgrounds probably benefit you for Ivy admissions.

"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen."
 

Just a caveat: to those who say that not everyone who got into an Ivy earned it and not everyone who could have gone Ivy went, that's what the SAT/high school sections are for. If I see that you had a 4.0 in HS and good SATs but went to a non-target, I'll basically give you the benefit of the doubt as if you actually went to an Ivy

 
firefighter:
Just a caveat: to those who say that not everyone who got into an Ivy earned it and not everyone who could have gone Ivy went, that's what the SAT/high school sections are for. If I see that you had a 4.0 in HS and good SATs but went to a non-target, I'll basically give you the benefit of the doubt as if you actually went to an Ivy

Where are these sections you're talking about?

 

I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

 
ProspectiveMonkey:
I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

Are you retarded?

So, attending a private school gets you into an Ivy?! LOL. I guess that the nearly 100% of the kids at every typical Private HS, and about 80% of the kids at every elite Private school (just 5 or 6 elite schools, really) just lucked out by only getting into semi/non-targets, right?

 
seedy underbelly:
ProspectiveMonkey:
I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

Are you retarded?

So, attending a private school gets you into an Ivy?! LOL. I guess that the nearly 100% of the kids at every typical Private HS, and about 80% of the kids at every elite Private school (just 5 or 6 elite schools, really) just lucked out by only getting into semi/non-targets, right?

Seedy, for once, I 100% agree with you.

How does going to a private school = acceptance letter to Harvard??!!

If anything, if you go to an elite prep school, you are living AWAY from your 'elite' parents, so you are more on your own to get your shit done.

 
seedy underbelly:
ProspectiveMonkey:
I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

Are you retarded?

So, attending a private school gets you into an Ivy?! LOL. I guess that the nearly 100% of the kids at every typical Private HS, and about 80% of the kids at every elite Private school (just 5 or 6 elite schools, really) just lucked out by only getting into semi/non-targets, right?

Before you go around calling people retarded look in the mirror. I work and live in Manhattan and I have seen first hand the craziness and competition that goes into gaining admission to a Pre-K Private Prep program. From coworkers with toddlers to neighbors, the competition is fierce. I was told last week by a coworker that his kid was recently denied admission to a private 25K/Year school (for a 4 year old!!!) due to the lottery system and pre-admission testing they used. To top it off, this school GUARANTEES top tier college admission (how? I have no clue). It is absurd but sadly in Manhattan this private school shark infested, parent controlled pressure exists. One last thing- I overheard someone being ridiculed becuase they haven't started using flashcards with their 3 year old to prep for private school admissions- sickening.

 
seedy underbelly:
ProspectiveMonkey:
I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

Are you retarded?

So, attending a private school gets you into an Ivy?! LOL. I guess that the nearly 100% of the kids at every typical Private HS, and about 80% of the kids at every elite Private school (just 5 or 6 elite schools, really) just lucked out by only getting into semi/non-targets, right?

WTF.... Do you and Sexy_like_enrique really think that going to elite prep school doesn't give its students a ANY advantage in getting into elite American colleges?

Nobody says elite private prep schools guarantee admission, and they don't. But these prep schools are basically your "target" schools for Ivies admission recruiting. For example, not everyone at Wharton get to go to BBs, elite boutiques, HFs and PEs out of college, but a descent number of them do compared to the rest of the universities in US and preferences are given to them over non-targets. It's the same shit at prep-school level: Not everyone at Andover or Harvard west-lake go to Ivies but a significant percentage of them get into elite colleges. And not just American private schools feeds students into American universities, a lot of elite prep schools kids from all around the world feed their students into top American colleges . Ever heard of the G20 schools? I bet you have not. These schools take prides in who sends the most students into HYP. And you and Sexy_like_Enrique refuse to acknowledge that going to private schools doesn't give any advantages in getting into Ivies?

Going to elite private junior schools does give a HUGE advantage for its students to go to Ivies and top LACs. You guys might be smart and likeable on other issues but on this simple matter you sounded so fucking retarded and ignorant.

BTW: some prep schools at kindergarten level is harder to gain admission than Harvard (source: Too Big To Fail).

 
ProspectiveMonkey:
I think that his, and most peoples reasoning for such a statement is pretty sound. I've even had a number of highly successful people who have already in a sense "made it" speak of such an established system. These are people making 7-8 figures in professional services (IB, Consulting, Law, F500 execs, etc...).

These people have said that they way to ensure their children's success is to get them into the best undergraduate programs (ivy) and that way even if they don't go on to some prestigious career path they have an advantage over pretty much everyone for other job types and volunteer work because of this "brand name" school. But here is the catch: how do you ensure your child gets into an ivy league school?

Well the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private high school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). How do you go about getting them into a private high school though?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. Get them into a private junior high/grade school (tuition $20,000-$80,000/yr). But again, how do we get them into that private grade school?

You can tell where I am going with this. Get them into private Kindergarten, Preschool and Daycare (all still at the same tuition level).

Obviously not everyone who attends an Ivy league goes through this same track but from my experience the Ivy coworkers almost always went to a private high schools (which I think for the most part can imply the rest of the formula took place in some way, shape or form) unless they have some miraculous story. The "higher-ups" that I've met 100% swear by this system and just a simple multiplication gets you a grand total of $300,000 - $1,200,000 before your child opens up a dorm door at their new Ivy college. In a way this argument helps to explain the increasing income/wealth disparity of our country. Kids lives are decided before they are in Preschool.

http://admissions.cornell.edu/

From Cornell, 66% of kids come from public high schools, 18% come from private, and 16% from home school. I am too lazy to check on Harvard stats, but my guess is they're similar.

Clearly, most of kids at an Ivy school come from non-private high school.

My take on this is that sure, having an elite parents would work to your advantage, but it balances out: Asians or whites (or Jews) have to overcome much higher admissions hurdle standards to get into top colleges than many of poor URM kids, who may not have pushy or elite parents.

In other words, you need to compete against others from similar backgrounds as you, and stand out from that crowd, to get into Harvard. If you are a 2300 SAT scorer and Asian or Jewish, you are competing against hundreds of other gunner Asians or Jewish kids with very elite or pushy parents to get in, and you aren't competing against those poor black kids whose parents don't give a fuck about their kids' education.

Bottom line is this - no matter how 'elite' or pushy your parents are, you obviously need the drive, diligence, and due intelligence to get into top colleges unless you are a Bush or a Kennedy. Individual merit trumps familial pedigree in this equation, by far.

Lastly, the vast majority of kids at Ivies get substantial financial aid, implying that majority of kids at Ivies don't come from money.

 

parents are such a big factor in getting into any good college. if you had shitty parents that didn't give a fuck about you and grew up in a shitty neighborhood with shitty schools, you probably aren't getting into any college at all. having overachieving parents that forced you into extracurriculars, made you go to an SAT tutor, and made sure you did your homework, will give you such a great advantage over anyone else. i strongly believe in nurture over nature for this.

 
whatwhatwhat:
parents are such a big factor in getting into any good college. if you had shitty parents that didn't give a fuck about you and grew up in a shitty neighborhood with shitty schools, you probably aren't getting into any college at all.

You're right, and of course I'll consider where the kid came from, etc. when thinking about resume selections. If dude went to Andover and ended up at a non-target, it's a much different story than a kid from North Dakota who ended up at a Big 10. Information isn't perfect unfortunately, and so we'll use school as a screen and take kids from then.

 
firefighter:
...while the Non-Target kid made some cold-calls to random boutiques and got lucky.
. Just to establish perspective, I am a non-target. I agree with your post and think that target kids get shat on way too often in this forum. However, don’t you dare belittle the process of getting in from a non-target. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent building a list of contacts over a 2-3 year period, how I had to travel back a forth from school 6 hours at a time for a 30 minute lunch with some rando who perhaps could get my resume to the right person. I had to bust my hump like a slave working for nothing for an entire summer just to get a little experience. (Actually paying to work because I had to pay for transportation).Now that may not be the typical nontarget story but it certainly highlights the painstaking efforts many of these kids take to get their resumes in front of a banker. Also, and remember this ..."The harder you work, the LUCKIER you become"
 
U Accrete Me:
firefighter:
...while the Non-Target kid made some cold-calls to random boutiques and got lucky.
. Just to establish perspective, I am a non-target. I agree with your post and think that target kids get shat on way too often in this forum. However, don’t you dare belittle the process of getting in from a non-target. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent building a list of contacts over a 2-3 year period, how I had to travel back a forth from school 6 hours at a time for a 30 minute lunch with some rando who perhaps could get my resume to the right person. I had to bust my hump like a slave working for nothing for an entire summer just to get a little experience. (Actually paying to work because I had to pay for transportation).Now that may not be the typical nontarget story but it certainly highlights the painstaking efforts many of these kids take to get their resumes in front of a banker. Also, and remember this ..."The harder you work, the LUCKIER you become"

I actually have more respect for non-target kids who broke into IB than the target kids. It shows your passion, dedication, and preparation.

However, one thing that may make your life easier: if you are at non-target but want a shot at banking OCR, just transfer to a target or semi-target school.

Getting into HYP as a transfer is impossible, but schools like Indiana, UNC, U Michigan, UVA, UCLA, Northwestern, UIUC, Cornell, Boston College, or Duke. These schools get pretty decent OCR from banks, yet they're far from being impossible to get into as a transfer if you have competitive stats.

Indiana, in particular, is a very easy school to get into, yet they have a decent placement record into IB. (they have an IB workshop from which IB placement success is very high)

 

Another thing -

If your parents are rich as fuck or very well connected, you don't need to attend Harvard to get a good job. You can bank on your daddy's connections or accumulated wealth to coast through your life, and as a result, may have less incentive to get into a top college and gun for IBD analyst gig compared to a guy that comes from a poor family background who is hungry as fuck to attain financial success via elite education and hard work.

Clearly, there are both sides to the argument, but in the end, it is clearly the individual's merit and intellect that will get him to Harvard.

 
JDawg:
why does WSO find these stupid arguments about prestige so fascinating?

It kills time.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 
technoviking:
OCR at Target = GS,MS, JPM, etc OCR at Non-Target = Aflac Salesman

Dont tell me Targets work just as hard..

Nobody actually cares what's happening with OCR. The subject is all about the fact that you don't just miraculousely end up in a target.

While you were trying to bang that high school hot chick and throwing paper balls at the teacher the Ivy guys were studying to get perfect SAT scores.

Now instead of waiting for JPMorgan to come to your campus you have to work your ass off. Sounds pretty fair considering your former laziness.

There are exceptions, stupid kids in targets and bright ones in non-targets, but broadly speaking, it seems that non-targets are just ranting because they realise (too late) that studying hard at high school was actually worth it, and not just a weirdo thing.

Your reasoning sounds like : - Why do private equity firms prefer those retarded privileged guys from Morgan Stanley ?

I'm a hardworking genious working for [email protected] and I have to work 100 times harder than ex-MS to get an interview with KKR.

 

Plenty of qualified people are rejected from the Ivies, people who had similar stats and ECs to those that got in. Some of them end up going to other t20s but a lot of them end up going to non-targets. Just because someone didn't get into an Ivy doesn't mean they were slacking off in high school.

 

I think if I'm looking at Harvard 3.6 vs. non-target 3.6 w/ boutique internships, straight up I'll go Harvard. No question. But if the non-target guy has good SATs, has networked with my firm, and seems to be hustling while the Harvard guy just clicks two buttons on OCR, I'd probably take the non-target.

MM IB -> Corporate Development -> Strategic Finance
 

Private HS does not guarantee you an easy route into an IVY but I am sure it helps a lot.

From a European perspective, Oxbridge here is full of private/grammar school kids and its true that some colleges have a bias towards them. But who can blame them? They start college much sharper, well rounded than the state school kids.

I went to a wack inner city school which placed about 10 people into a decent college every year. Our HS A Level grades were far below the national average. We didn't have the careers/college talks nor did we do anything that was enriching. Now in contrast to a lot of friends who came from private high schools, their profiles were full of charity work abroad, employer insight days, work experience etc.

It certainly does not help to come from a state school when interviewing at a place like Oxford for a Economics degree and the interviewer asks you "What is your view on Neo-Liberal Economists?" - everything taught at states schools here is the bare minimum, syllabus material.

The fact is I went to HS with a lot of bright people, far brighter than me who came out with crappy grades but its important to note that no matter how good or bad the teaching is, you have to work at it yourself. Nonetheless, these guys who might have gotten into a decent college now don't have a chance in hell at applying to any IB because A Level grades are screened online.

Fees are a not a problem here for british citizens since it costs the same to go to Oxbridge as it does to go to SuperDigreeezColage and that is where the high school system comes into play.

 

You guys do have to admit that getting into an Ivy such as Harvard these days is a crapshoot, right?

And CKS2016, people like you are the reason why non-target kids are biased against target kids. I understand what you are saying, but do you see why a kid who has done everything in HIS power (3.8+, internships, ECs, "led sports teams", etc) who went to a "great school" would be frustrated that a "middle of the pack" Ivy league kid, who may or may not know what IBD even is, gets the nod "every day of the week"?

"That dude is so haole, he don't even have any breath left."
 

This is the typical crap you hear from the upper class, that they earned it more than the lower class and it has nothing to do with the situation they were born into. Many kids from poorer backgrounds like myself had to work 40-50 hours a week in high school. Its almost impossible to get great grades if you have to contribute to the family income in this way. From an upper class background, many kids don't have to work, so they are able to get 3.9's and lead sports teams. I'm not saying that one works harder than the other, they probably both work about the same when all is added up (the rich kids great grades and sports achievements vs. the poor kids work hours and mediocre grades) its just that one might go to Harvard the other might just get into a state school.

 

Some people bash the ivies here, no doubt about that. Ivies also take every chance they get to flash the name of their school like they are better than everyone else. MBA programs are one thing, undergrad recruiting is another:

Hire the kid with experience.

Get busy living
 

It is also a lot more important what you do in your university years compared to what you did in high school. Good for the target kid who worked his ass off in highschool to get into PoliSci at Harvard but didn't show any effort in getting internships, why should he? He goes to Harvard right? And now he is like umm you know..I do like investment banking..whatever that is.

But the other kid who did okay in highschool, went on to a non target but worked his ass off by doing well in school, getting IB internships at boutiques and BB's because he knew what he wanted. I'll take that kid over a PoliSci graduate from Harvard ANY DAY OF THE WEEK! And I don't care what you think...that kid deserves to be picked over the other one.

"Give me guys that are poor, smart, and hungry and no feelings."

 

Listen, I went to visit Wharton when applying for colleges because one of my best buds was a sophomore there. I was smarter than the average student in his classes (edit: and that's not because I'm some sort of genius either. This is a comment on them, not me). These were sophomores and they were asking me, the high school senior, how to do problems the professor put out. And they deserve internships/jobs more than I do? That's not even remotely fair.

Now, that being said, I do agree that life isn't fair and the employers have every right to do this.

 

Also, am I the first person to notice that firefighter has a lot of posts where he takes one extreme view or another, often contradicting each other between posts?

Look, people are free to have their views that MIT, Princeton, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford are the best schools ever and we should only hire from them. Good for them if they choose to see things that way. But the cool thing about the US is that only the past two or three years really matter. We're a Hamiltonian society that loves to ask "So what have you done lately?" This question is one that guys who are on their way up are thrilled to answer, and a question that guys who are on their way down dread. So seeing what you've done with the cards you've been dealt over the past 2-3 years gives me a lot more information about you than which school you got into.

 

Ok... A few things from someone who has had the responsibility of hiring people to invest... their mistakes mean that we lose money:

Background: - We have both targets (LSE/Oxbridge/Columbia/HBS) and non-targets at our firm etc... I attended a non-target. - Young guys at our firm are experienced. We rarely higher out of undergrad.

Hiring people: - Performance over anything. This is the driver of all our hiring. We want people who will deliver results. You need to demonstrate this. - Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. - No, that's not a typo. - Our hiring: I've hired guys with undergrad degrees from state schools in the mid west over Columbia students with Masters degrees in our sector. Why? because the state school guy had superior experience and killed the interview/model. i.e. the total package demonstrated higher performance. - Signalling performance: As a DISTANT second to experience, top schools (i.e. MIT/Ivy/Oxbridge/LSE, etc...) help signal that a candidate cares about performance. Other proxies include high GPAs, etc... - Network: Personal recommendations / referrals are actually superior to brand name schools for getting in front of us if we value the person making the referral. Why? Because the other guys is putting his reputation on the line. - Target appeal: All brand name schools candidates get the benefit of the doubt, regardless of the interviewers school. - Supporting your school. My colleagues were very clear about trying to interview candidates that had attended their same school. This applied to big state school colleagues and Oxbridge folks.

Lessons: So what's the conclusion? - Performance above all. Everything else is either a proxy for this or an enabler of this - Attending a Target is a good thing. I would only go to a Target for my masters as the branding is very useful. No target bashing here. - Hiring Targets is a good thing, in so far as you can't determine performance in another manner. It's a proxy. You might have to teach them how to make money if they don't have the experience. - Hiring high performing/potential non-targets is a very smart thing to do. - Do your homework and work on yourself. You will lose out to the non-target guy if you screw up on our tests/interview or if you didn't articulate your ability to help us make money. - Make friends and work on your network/relationships. Lots of buyside jobs are unadvertised and your networks is the distribution channel for your skills/resume.

Disclaimer: I might be missing out on some of the class/social structure/social mobility issues in with regards to Target Vs. Non-Target discussion in the USA.

 
Relinquis:
I might be missing out on some of the class/social structure/social mobility issues in with regards to Target Vs. Non-Target discussion in the USA.
I make the case that those structures didn't work out so well these last couple of years.

People from the guilded group like to point to non-targ trolls that lost some money at UBS and a couple of other firms. I like to point out that Target people collectively helped wreck the entire fucking global system. Look at it that way, and all of a sudden, it's very easy to see target schools for all that they are: a recruiting platform.

Everything else, as far as I'm concerned, is irrelevant.

Get busy living
 
Relinquis:
Ok... A few things from someone who has had the responsibility of hiring people to invest... their mistakes mean that we lose money:

Background: - We have both targets (LSE/Oxbridge/Columbia/HBS) and non-targets at our firm etc... I attended a non-target. - Young guys at our firm are experienced. We rarely higher out of undergrad.

Hiring people: - Performance over anything. This is the driver of all our hiring. We want people who will deliver results. You need to demonstrate this. - Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. Experience trumps all as far as it indicates good performance. - No, that's not a typo. - Our hiring: I've hired guys with undergrad degrees from state schools in the mid west over Columbia students with Masters degrees in our sector. Why? because the state school guy had superior experience and killed the interview/model. i.e. the total package demonstrated higher performance. - Signalling performance: As a DISTANT second to experience, top schools (i.e. MIT/Ivy/Oxbridge/LSE, etc...) help signal that a candidate cares about performance. Other proxies include high GPAs, etc... - Network: Personal recommendations / referrals are actually superior to brand name schools for getting in front of us if we value the person making the referral. Why? Because the other guys is putting his reputation on the line. - Target appeal: All brand name schools candidates get the benefit of the doubt, regardless of the interviewers school. - Supporting your school. My colleagues were very clear about trying to interview candidates that had attended their same school. This applied to big state school colleagues and Oxbridge folks.

Lessons: So what's the conclusion? - Performance above all. Everything else is either a proxy for this or an enabler of this - Attending a Target is a good thing. I would only go to a Target for my masters as the branding is very useful. No target bashing here. - Hiring Targets is a good thing, in so far as you can't determine performance in another manner. It's a proxy. You might have to teach them how to make money if they don't have the experience. - Hiring high performing/potential non-targets is a very smart thing to do. - Do your homework and work on yourself. You will lose out to the non-target guy if you screw up on our tests/interview or if you didn't articulate your ability to help us make money. - Make friends and work on your network/relationships. Lots of buyside jobs are unadvertised and your networks is the distribution channel for your skills/resume.

Disclaimer: I might be missing out on some of the class/social structure/social mobility issues in with regards to Target Vs. Non-Target discussion in the USA.

SB. This is exactly right.

Man made money, money never made the man
 

Your view of getting into ivy league schools is skewed by where you grew up (mine probably is as well). But this is inaccurate, someone can have amazing stats and work really hard in high school and not get into an ivy. Most of the people who attend the ivies are from new england/east coast/mid-atlantic area (Where these colleges are located). This gives you a huge advantage over kids from other parts of the country. It's all about where you grew up. I have friends who were the top students at large competitive schools here in the midwest and had some of the best stats(valedictorian, top test scores) in the state and were rejected from ivies. I do not know a single person who go's to an ivy, but I know plenty at northwestern/umich.
Also, for those who weren't from the city and were stuck in some small rural school are at an even bigger disadvantage because the quality of education at these schools are so poor you are never prepared for the standardized tests, but the top students from these schools go on to become top students at Big10 or 12 schools, and but were disregarded by the ivies.

 
farmerbob:
Your view of getting into ivy league schools is skewed by where you grew up (mine probably is as well). But this is inaccurate, someone can have amazing stats and work really hard in high school and not get into an ivy. Most of the people who attend the ivies are from new england/east coast/mid-atlantic area (Where these colleges are located). This gives you a huge advantage over kids from other parts of the country. It's all about where you grew up. I have friends who were the top students at large competitive schools here in the midwest and had some of the best stats(valedictorian, top test scores) in the state and were rejected from ivies. I do not know a single person who go's to an ivy, but I know plenty at northwestern/umich.
Also, for those who weren't from the city and were stuck in some small rural school are at an even bigger disadvantage because the quality of education at these schools are so poor you are never prepared for the standardized tests, but the top students from these schools go on to become top students at Big10 or 12 schools, and but were disregarded by the ivies.

Number of high schools in the US: 15000 - 20000 depending on which source you use Harvard annual freshman intake: 1600

The top student at every high school only has a 10% chance of getting in to Harvard, and 60% chance of getting into an ivy league school. That's why these anecdotal examples of top students at random schools not getting into ivys are really dumb. Even at that level, it's still competitive as hell.

 
Awon Eleyi Awon Eleyi Won Bad Gan:
farmerbob:
Your view of getting into ivy league schools is skewed by where you grew up (mine probably is as well). But this is inaccurate, someone can have amazing stats and work really hard in high school and not get into an ivy. Most of the people who attend the ivies are from new england/east coast/mid-atlantic area (Where these colleges are located). This gives you a huge advantage over kids from other parts of the country. It's all about where you grew up. I have friends who were the top students at large competitive schools here in the midwest and had some of the best stats(valedictorian, top test scores) in the state and were rejected from ivies. I do not know a single person who go's to an ivy, but I know plenty at northwestern/umich.
Also, for those who weren't from the city and were stuck in some small rural school are at an even bigger disadvantage because the quality of education at these schools are so poor you are never prepared for the standardized tests, but the top students from these schools go on to become top students at Big10 or 12 schools, and but were disregarded by the ivies.

Number of high schools in the US: 15000 - 20000 depending on which source you use Harvard annual freshman intake: 1600

The top student at every high school only has a 10% chance of getting in to Harvard, and 60% chance of getting into an ivy league school. That's why these anecdotal examples of top students at random schools not getting into ivys are really dumb. Even at that level, it's still competitive as hell.

This. And often the Ivies prefer the sal or the kid ranked fourth over the val, because overall they might be more accomplished.

I understand that the non-targets in IB are just as smart, if not more, than the kids at targets. But to say that it is not immensely difficult to get into a target in the first place, or that you just "chose" not to attend because of girls, tuition (lol yeah, right! Over 60% of kids at my Ivy are on financial aid, with the average package being over 35,000 dollars), or any other dumb reason you make up to feel good is just sad.

Anyways, I'm done with this thread. +1 for OP.

 

LMAO @ anyone that has the time to worry about where every Tom, Dick and Harry went to school and why or how they got in. I went to a non-target and I could not care less how or why some of my peers/competition got into the schools that they did. At the end of the day it does not help or hurt me.

'We're bigger than U.S. Steel"
 

I had no idea what a target was when I applied to college. I didn't want anything to do with business, I wanted to study political science, get into state politics. All I knew is that going to a big Ivy League school didn't sound like a lot of fun, so I went to a smaller school. Turns out it was a non-target. Maybe I could've done "better" in some of your eyes, but turns out, if you're smart enough to pull a 4.0 and 1550+ on SAT in high school, you're probably smart enough to do well in college, and smart enough to be a banker, consultant, trader, whatever.

Every spot I take from a snotty HYPSW kid makes me a little happier.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of Starwood Points
 

I attend a non-target school and I have been contemplating whether I should transfer to a target school to give me a better chance at IB.

Here's what is preventing me from transferring: I have created a bond with various people and I don't really want to leave them; I am a part of our investment club and I want to improve the structure of the organization.

I have a decent chance of getting into GA tech if I apply, and it is a the closes university to where I attend

When luck shuts the door you gotta come in through the window - Doyle Brunson
 
firefighter:
Listen: If I'm looking at Harvard 3.6 Poli Sci with no real internships, and a Non-Target 3.6 Finance with boutique IBD internships, I'm taking the former ALL DAY

This is incredibly myopic and probably not indicative of the majority of interviewers. Thank god we have an interview process... it's pretty obvious that someone in a non-related major with no relevant experience should have more to prove. I'm not saying kids from Harvard aren't smart but this is just retarded. I have a stack of 200+ resumes on this desk right now and I can point to probably 50 at least that are from non targets with above a 3.8 and more than one finance internship. If I see a kid from Harvard with some demonstrated experience or has a really cool background and has been heavily involved in ec's and has a 3.6 in poly sci, then fine I think that checks the box. If he just has a 3.6 and nothing else and you say because he went to Harvard he deserves an interview over the kid with an equivalent GPA and experience then you're off your fucking gourd. I worked with kid from Harvard and he shares this view.

Why should you be giving someone credit now for something they accomplished 3+ years ago. Sure they are smart, yeah they did well on a standardized test, but finance is and always will be about "what have you done for me lately." If you only have the 3.6 in poly sci, you certainly don't bring more to the table than a kid who has already interned in banking... get serious. I have to teach the kid from Harvard more and there is no reason to believe that he will perform any better than anyone else. If you look around Analyst classes there isn't much of a correlation between how good someone is and where they went to school. This is a fact. It might get you in the door because of the biases of your interviewer or someone like firefighter, but after you get in it ceases to matter. I don't care where someone went to school as long as they are smart and I have heard of the institution. I know tons of kids in my Analyst class from Indiana and Vanderbilt that are way better than kids from Penn, Dartmouth or Harvard. It is completely dependent on the kid.

I agree there is a lot of whining on this forum from non-target kids directed at target kids. To this I have the following to say:

  1. Deal with it... if you are good enough to get in and you put the work in, you will find a job somewhere if you don't give up.
  2. A lot of you think you are good enough but "maybe the banks just aren't that into you" because you think of yourselves far too highly. You need a reality check.
  3. It's a tough year for recruiting so the above may not be true and it may just be a numbers game... if you've done an objective self assessment and received feedback from people in the industry who say you can do it, then I refer you to point number one.
 

It's becoming even more apparent to me that the average age of WSO posters is very young.

Because personally, I'm 25 and I don't really give a shit where you went to school. Unless we have a direct connection with someone, it's not like I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because you went to Harvard.

This is petty, senseless shit that little boys jerk off to behind their computers. In the real world your education is of course notable, but when it comes down to it, those in power don't care about your education; they care about the results. The results being who you are as a person and what you can produce.

I see a lot of ignorant commentary thrown around on WSO about targets/non-targets as if you can determine who a person is by where they went to school. It's naive and it's non-existant in the real world. So we need to end it here.

I've had the opportunity to meet guys from WSO in real life, and their school has never mattered to me. Their personality and work ethic was never reliant on what school they attended.

I'm much more interested in their personal life, their hobbies, their one night stands, their work experience, etc. To me, stereotyping someone based on Target/Non-Target is the definition of shallow.

 

^^^ Seedy is the Republican who is mistakenly supporting a troll charicaturing the ivy league. Kinda like a Republican mistakenly believing that Stephen Colbert is serious and cheering for him.

You two have some sort of inferiority complex about jobs or something. Everyone working in industry (including several hiring managers) keeps saying that it doesn't matter too much where you go to school and non-targets have been making serious gains over the past few years; you guys (still in college) keep insisting that where you went to school matters. And when your assumptions get challenged by folks in the actual know, you respond with ad-hominems. It's like Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus trying to explain Heliocentrism to a bunch of Catholic nuns and having food thrown at them in response. Maybe the nuns just weren't mature enough to listen, consider the facts, and decide whether or not they wanted to reject the thesis and offer a counterargument.

The earth is round, we are not the center of the universe, and while target school vs. non-target carries some weight in careers, it is not all that important and it is diminishing in importance. If you disagree, that's fine; but let's have a real conversation rather than a foodfight.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ Seedy is the Republican who is mistakenly supporting a troll charicaturing the ivy league. Kinda like a Republican mistakenly believing that Stephen Colbert is serious and cheering for him.

You two have some sort of inferiority complex about jobs or something. Everyone working in industry (including several hiring managers) keeps saying that it doesn't matter too much where you go to school and non-targets have been making serious gains over the past few years; you guys (still in college) keep insisting that where you went to school matters. And when your assumptions get challenged by folks in the actual know, you respond with ad-hominems. It's like Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus trying to explain Heliocentrism to a bunch of Catholic nuns and having food thrown at them in response. Maybe the nuns just weren't mature enough to listen, consider the facts, and decide whether or not they wanted to reject the thesis and offer a counterargument.

The earth is round, we are not the center of the universe, and while target school vs. non-target carries some weight in careers, it is not all that important and it is diminishing in importance. If you disagree, that's fine; but let's have a real conversation rather than a foodfight.

I, too, don't care where you went to school. I've mentioned this before, the boutique I will be interning at this summer is overwhelmingly non-target. Does that detract from the success or ability of everyone working there? Absolutely not. In Analyst classes, often-times the most capable, according to seniors in my college, are students from UVA, NYU, Berkeley.

What I do have a problem with is whiny, having-achieved-nothing non-target kids ranting on about how they're "just as smart" or "how they had gotten in but decided not to go because the girls weren't to their liking" (yeah, ok, stud) or "how the Ivies are just rich-kid schools where anyone who went to a private school can get in" when the majority at even the best-in-the-world school for college placement end up at non/semi-targets.

So, stop with the nonsense that I have a superiority complex. I don't. At interviews if I see a non-target kid, I immediately assume him/her to be the best prepared because it would have taken him/her a whole lot more to have gotten to that round. I only have a problem with non-targets whining and bitching about "how easy it is to get into a target if you're rich" or "how easy it is to get an interview at a target" (yeah, how about you try competing against the best from around the world at an Ivy, when you couldn't even compete against the best in your own fucking high school to get in in the first place).

I sincerely apologize for the harsh tone, but it had to be said.

 
seedy underbelly:

I, too, don't care where you went to school. I've mentioned this before, the boutique I will be interning at this summer is overwhelmingly non-target. Does that detract from the success or ability of everyone working there? Absolutely not. In Analyst classes, often-times the most capable, according to seniors in my college, are students from UVA, NYU, Berkeley.

What I do have a problem with is whiny, having-achieved-nothing non-target kids ranting on about how they're "just as smart" or "how they had gotten in but decided not to go because the girls weren't to their liking" (yeah, ok, stud) or "how the Ivies are just rich-kid schools where anyone who went to a private school can get in" when the majority at even the best-in-the-world school for college placement end up at non/semi-targets.

So, stop with the nonsense that I have a superiority complex. I don't. At interviews if I see a non-target kid, I immediately assume him/her to be the best prepared because it would have taken him/her a whole lot more to have gotten to that round. I only have a problem with non-targets whining and bitching about "how easy it is to get into a target if you're rich" or "how easy it is to get an interview at a target" (yeah, how about you try competing against the best from around the world at an Ivy, when you couldn't even compete against the best in your own fucking high school to get in in the first place).

I sincerely apologize for the harsh tone, but it had to be said.

Again, you're still stuck on this whole target/non-target culture/mentality. In all honesty most guys in the financial industry don't even know what it means when you say target/non-target. This is a WSO mentality, not one of finance.

I assume you're younger and your alma-matter is uber important to you still. Don't get me wrong, I love my school and I love to tell people that I love it. However as you get farther into the industry, it becomes less of a benchmark and/or talking point. What starts to matter is who you are as a person, who you know, and what you have done. No one really cares what your GPA was at Harvard unless they are insecure as well.

Even the higher ups who DID go to top universities could care less if you went to a top college or not. Unless you went to the same school, they're going to judge you on YOU. Trust me, coming from an average school, I would definitely notice if hiring managers and directors looked down on me for not attending Harvard. BUT they don't.

Again, the target/non-target mentality is a WSO mentality. And that is all.

EDIT: obviously in recruiting, school does play an important role (however there are ways around this). However your first gig in finance is a SMALL part of your career. as time goes on, school matters less and less.

 

Here is a point I have not seen being made that I believe needs to be said: when coming out of HS, there are tons of highly qualified candidates who go to TOP universities that do not happen to be targets for banks. For example, I know from my HS, that there were a lot of people with 3.8+ 2250+ and great ECs that were encouraged to apply to and attended top 20 universities like Wash U, Vanderbilt, Emory, and Johns Hopkins. How were these people, who probably did not know what ibanking even was, supposed to know that their excellent schools would not be targets for banks?

 

You mention how getting into Harvard is not based on your merit, but more so on having the 'right' or 'elite' parents. Then you go on to keep saying how going to a target school doesn't make much difference in your career. And, you mentioned how any kid with proper tutoring can get rock solid SAT and hence, anyone from a wealthy family background can get into a top Ivy.

Your remarks are not only very controversial, but rather just... irrational. Are you seriously arguing that the job opportunities available to Harvard or Princeton kids aren't any better than the job opportunities present to students at Arizona State University?? Last time I checked, employers like McKinsey, Goldman IBD, or even Wells Fargo IBD don't recruit at schools like Arizona State. At Harvard, in good economy about half the graduates go on to finance/ consulting, and many others go to top law or med schools.

And, dude, I know a TON of kids from rich background that never cracked 2000 on SAT despite months of tutoring and studying. If you are dumb, lazy, or lack ambition, sorry no matter who your parents are, you aren't going to suddenly end up with 2400 on SAT and get into Harvard. I went to the richest high school district in Midwest and most of kids from my high school went to schools like UIUC, Wisconsin, or Indiana. Many from my high school, despite having 'elite' parents, never even got even close to sniffing a letter of acceptance to any Ivy school, let alone Northwestern.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
You mention how getting into Harvard is not based on your merit, but more so on having the 'right' or 'elite' parents. Then you go on to keep saying how going to a target school doesn't make much difference in your career. And, you mentioned how any kid with proper tutoring can get rock solid SAT and hence, anyone from a wealthy family background can get into a top Ivy.

Well, again, my experience was that I took a prep class and got a perfect score on the SATs along with approximately 500 other kids in the country that year. And I went to Illinois and most of the kids I met there were smarter than me. But SATs aren't ONLY what gets you into Ivy League schools. It's experiences in HS (which again, mommy and daddy can pay for), and most importantly, tuition.

If your family makes more than $500K, paying for school is easy. Same with your family making less than $50K. If your family makes somewhere in between, it gets very expensive.

Your remarks are not only very controversial, but rather just... irrational. Are you seriously arguing that the job opportunities available to Harvard or Princeton kids aren't any better than the job opportunities present to students at Arizona State University??
I can't speak for Arizona, but we had GS IBD, McKinsey, Getco, Citadel, DE Shaw, etc. recruit at Illinois's engineering program. It was tougher than it would have been at Harvard, but for a smart person, it was totally doable.
And, dude, I know a TON of kids from rich background that never cracked 2000 on SAT despite months of tutoring and studying. If you are dumb, lazy, or lack ambition, sorry no matter who your parents are, you aren't going to suddenly end up with 2400 on SAT and get into Harvard. I went to the richest high school district in Midwest and most of kids from my high school went to schools like UIUC, Wisconsin, or Indiana. Many from my high school, despite having 'elite' parents, never even got even close to sniffing a letter of acceptance to any Ivy school, let alone Northwestern.
So in other words, you went to New Trier High School. Had you studied engineering at Illinois and saved $30K/year in-state, you'd have been surrounded by kids who scored an average of 33.5 on their ACTs. Beyond that, getting a 2400 on your SAT comes down to studying and luck. Instead you're at Cornell with a similar class and smaller classrooms.

My view is that there's smart people everywhere and a non-target like Illinois is indicative of how things work at many other non-targets. And for a bright candidate, it doesn't matter where you went to school.

You sure you don't want to transfer back to UIUC? Ask your parents to pay you half the difference on tuition- $60K invested at 5% dividends means $250/month of income.

What I do have a problem with is whiny, having-achieved-nothing non-target kids ranting on about how they're "just as smart" or "how they had gotten in but decided not to go because the girls weren't to their liking" (yeah, ok, stud) or "how the Ivies are just rich-kid schools where anyone who went to a private school can get in" when the majority at even the best-in-the-world school for college placement end up at non/semi-targets.
1.) I thought you had walked away from this thread. 2.) It's not really that big of a deal though. Cornell and Princeton are really no better than schools like Berkeley and Georgia Tech. They just cost more and have smaller classes. My concern is when people think target school kids have- or should have- an advantage. The fact is that most of the advantage is diminishing. And if you eliminate the target school system at banks, you eliminate the whining.
 
firefighter:
One thing that's very disheartening to read on this forum is the bias against kids from targets. Apparently, kids from targets just happened to be privileged enough to get into a good school while kids from non-targets unfairly get screwed. I'm sorry, but when did working hard in high school and middle school become "privileged"? I know some outstanding kids at non-targets and mediocre kids at targets, but the kids here who attack targets on here honestly sound like OWS. 99% of the spots in banking are filled with 1% of schools!!!!!!

Listen: If I'm looking at Harvard 3.6 Poli Sci with no real internships, and a Non-Target 3.6 Finance with boutique IBD internships, I'm taking the former ALL DAY (assuming that he's sociable, knows what IBD is, etc.). Why? Because I know that Harvard kid was motivated enough to spend 4 years in high school working his ass off, getting 2300+ SATs and 3.9+ GPAs and leading sports teams while the Non-Target kid made some cold-calls to random boutiques and got lucky. Yes, you can argue the whole "can't afford Harvard" or "rich parents made donations" angle (and I ABSOLUTELY sympathize with the kids who couldn't afford to go to Stern or GTown or some other low-financial aid school), but generally speaking, most targets are actually incredibly generous with financial aid and development cases make up a tiny portion of the population (and those kids get hooked up anyway). In fact coming from a poor background helps you get into Harvard.

Just my rant. To quote someone from this forum, "it's not a silver spoon if you've earned it." I'm not bashing non-target kids in anyway (the ones I've met in banking are terrific), just the ones who paint the Ivies with the same broad stroke.

tl'dr
I banana back
 

It's funny I go to a top semi-target / target and the kids walking around with their Exeter / Andover / Kent shirts are in the same place as the kids who went to public schools. The same is true for IB. Once you get in, everyone's in the same boat. Your parents connections or your top-tier education are not going to save you from having to perform. The people who do care either have an ego issue or are insecure.

I will say that EVERY student at a top-tier school I know has largely deserved it, either through athletic work, intellectual achievement, or all around being a good person. I will also say that I know some very, very smart people at state schools who, for whatever reason, did not end up at Ivy / Ivy equivalent schools.

 

I'd actually argue that a lot of the elite prep schools are better to go to than the actual colleges everyone is focused on bc they are even more concentrated with wealth and power.

Let's be honest, if a middle-class provincial like me can get into Wharton along with the other prols, it can't be that selective can it?

One of my friends from Wharton went to one of the aforementioned high schools in the LA region and he's become friends with the kids of the Schwarzeneggers, Halliburton's, etc.

I'm not joking when I say that since I've moved to LA, the lowest net worth out of any person I've met through him has been ~$50MM.

 

I'm just amused that all these kids are desperately trying to defend the fact that they are better because they went to a target, but I am the guy who is interviewing them, and I likely paid 1/4 to 1/3 what they paid for their education.

I'm in Illini's camp on this one... if you're good, you're good. Go to a flagship state school, chase girls, invest the saved money, and buy yourself a rusty honda. I can tell you for damn sure I'm glad I don't have the additional burden of another $60k in debt for going to an ivy because IT GETS YOU THE SAME job... and after that it doesn't matter... you guys can sing the merits of going to Harvard to the high heavens, and I don't deny that it's a phenomenal school... but you don't really have any leg to stand on when you try to prove you're better than my friend who went to my university, then GS FIG, then a Megafund... AND he saved a boatload of cash on his tuition... all you prestige whores who actually care about Megafunds would love to be in his situation, and he did it without saddling tons of debt.

The point is, go to a school because you love the school and you are studying something that fulfills you... but don't get into an intellectual circle-jerk about how going to an ivy makes you better qualified than someone who went to a school that YOU perceive to be less prestigious, because they will likely be beating you out in interviews and then you will only be left with your perceived prestige to keep you warm at night while you whisper Veritas between stifled sobs.

 
So in other words, you went to New Trier High School. Had you studied engineering at Illinois and saved $30K/year in-state, you'd have been surrounded by kids who scored an average of 33.5 on their ACTs. Beyond that, getting a 2400 on your SAT comes down to studying and luck. Instead you're at Cornell with a similar class and smaller classrooms.

My view is that there's smart people everywhere and a non-target like Illinois is indicative of how things work at many other non-targets. And for a bright candidate, it doesn't matter where you went to school.

You sure you don't want to transfer back to UIUC? Ask your parents to pay you half the difference on tuition- $60K invested at 5% dividends means $250/month of income.

I suck at math or science, and would have gotten crushed had I gone to UIUC's engineering program.

I chose Cornell because I could major in Econ and still end up with decent recruiting opportunities. Plus, I am not attending with sticker price. I get decent financial aid from Cornell, since I have 3 other siblings, 2 of which are in college now.

And, LOL. I am about to graduate from college in like 3 months, so no, I am not transferring to UIUC.

I can't speak for Arizona, but we had GS IBD, McKinsey, Getco, Citadel, DE Shaw, etc. recruit at Illinois's engineering program. It was tougher than it would have been at Harvard, but for a smart person, it was totally doable.

UIUC engineering isn't really a 'non target'... regardless, did those employers only recruit at UIUC engineering, or did they also recruit school-wide?

Well, again, my experience was that I took a prep class and got a perfect score on the SATs along with approximately 500 other kids in the country that year. And I went to Illinois and most of the kids I met there were smarter than me. But SATs aren't ONLY what gets you into Ivy League schools. It's experiences in HS (which again, mommy and daddy can pay for), and most importantly, tuition.

If your family makes more than $500K, paying for school is easy. Same with your family making less than $50K. If your family makes somewhere in between, it gets very expensive.

My dad makes more than 250k a year and I still get decent financial aid. I have 2 other siblings in college and 1 older sibling that got MBA recently. All these factors were considered and I don't pay sticker price. True, I still pay more than what I would pay for UIUC in-state tuition, but additional cost isn't outrageous.

It's like when a consumer buys BMW 5 series over Honda Accord despite 30k differences in net prices, that doesn't mean that particular consumer in question is dumb. It just means for that person, extra 30k is worth it for the brand of BMW, enjoyment of the driving experience, etc.

If price dictates every consumption behavior among human beings, we should not be seeing any luxury cars, luxury watches, or luxury clothing on streets. Yet, truth of matter is, if you go visit an affluent neighborhood, you see Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's, and Porsche's left and right and you get to see more luxury cars than those rusty Honda's that you speak of. Hell, in my high school, I knew a couple of kids who drove Ferrari's. Does that make them dumb? No. It just means they can afford to live that way and extra bucks for this baller lifestyle is worth it for them, rather than saving that extra cash and investing them for profit.

2.) It's not really that big of a deal though. Cornell and Princeton are really no better than schools like Berkeley and Georgia Tech. They just cost more and have smaller classes. My concern is when people think target school kids have- or should have- an advantage. The fact is that most of the advantage is diminishing. And if you eliminate the target school system at banks, you eliminate the whining.

LOL... Wait, say that again? You really think Princeton = Georgia Tech??

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
UIUC engineering isn't really a 'non target'... regardless, did those employers only recruit at UIUC engineering, or did they also recruit school-wide?
Ah, the trick was that if you weren't in engineering, you came the engineering career fair anyways.

Illinois was a school without a whole lot of pretense. There were kids studying liberal arts or accounting who were smarter than most engineers. Why not let everyone in and let the reps sort things out? It certainly didn't feel like the College of Engineering was like Wharton at UPenn or the Math program at Chicago. We were a school of 40,000 students, 8,000 of them were studying engineering, and everyone was pretty darned bright.

My dad makes more than 250k a year and I still get decent financial aid. I have 2 other siblings in college and 1 older sibling that got MBA recently. All these factors were considered and I don't pay sticker price. True, I still pay more than what I would pay for UIUC in-state tuition, but additional cost isn't outrageous.
My Dad had the house paid off and didn't trust 401ks for retirement savings. I had a brother seven years younger than me.
It's like when a consumer buys BMW 5 series over Honda Accord despite 30k differences in net prices, that doesn't mean that particular consumer in question is dumb. It just means for that person, extra 30k is worth it for the brand of BMW, enjoyment of the driving experience, etc.
Sure, but if the purpose of the car is to take it to the track and do the 1/4 mile, and the guy gets smoked by the Honda, that's when he feels pretty darned dumb.
If price dictates every consumption behavior among human beings, we should not be seeing any luxury cars, luxury watches, or luxury clothing on streets. Yet, truth of matter is, if you go visit an affluent neighborhood, you see Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's, and Porsche's left and right and you get to see more luxury cars than those rusty Honda's that you speak of. Hell, in my high school, I knew a couple of kids who drove Ferrari's. Does that make them dumb? No. It just means they can afford to live that way and extra bucks for this baller lifestyle is worth it for them, rather than saving that extra cash and investing them for profit.
Well, the question is that you start asking yourself why they drive it. Most cases, it's to advertise that they're rich... or take their car to the track and race. What if nobody else cared? What if random guys wearing wife-beaters and John Deere caps started asking funny questions about the car and started bragging about their (faster) tractors whenever anyone got too excited? What if they talked about how their aunt Edna bought one but then it broke down and those darned Italians don't know how to build cars and I'm sticking with my F150. If the only people who care that you have X feel bad for you, you're going to stop making decisions based on what other people think and start making decisions based on what you want.

People would start behaving more rationally. Buying the cars they enjoyed driving rather than cars that impressed other folks. Instead of getting obsessed with prestige and impressing people, they would focus on the things that really mattered in cars and they would be free to be much happier drivers.

LOL... Wait, say that again? You really think Princeton = Georgia Tech??
Take a look at the engineering rankings and Google's hiring rates out of Ga Tech and Princeton. Georgia Tech has them beat. As engineers, if I'm better than you on one thing, and you're better than me on something else, they still need both of us and we're equals.

They're both good schools. I don't think the differences are anything to get worked up about.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
UIUC engineering isn't really a 'non target'... regardless, did those employers only recruit at UIUC engineering, or did they also recruit school-wide?
Ah, the trick was that if you weren't in engineering, you came the engineering career fair anyways.

Illinois was a school without a whole lot of pretense. There were kids studying liberal arts or accounting who were smarter than most engineers. Why not let everyone in and let the reps sort things out? It certainly didn't feel like the College of Engineering was like Wharton at UPenn or the Math program at Chicago. We were a school of 40,000 students, 8,000 of them were studying engineering, and everyone was pretty darned bright.

My dad makes more than 250k a year and I still get decent financial aid. I have 2 other siblings in college and 1 older sibling that got MBA recently. All these factors were considered and I don't pay sticker price. True, I still pay more than what I would pay for UIUC in-state tuition, but additional cost isn't outrageous.
My Dad had the house paid off and didn't trust 401ks for retirement savings. I had a brother seven years younger than me.
It's like when a consumer buys BMW 5 series over Honda Accord despite 30k differences in net prices, that doesn't mean that particular consumer in question is dumb. It just means for that person, extra 30k is worth it for the brand of BMW, enjoyment of the driving experience, etc.
Sure, but if the purpose of the car is to take it to the track and do the 1/4 mile, and the guy gets smoked by the Honda, that's when he feels pretty darned dumb.
If price dictates every consumption behavior among human beings, we should not be seeing any luxury cars, luxury watches, or luxury clothing on streets. Yet, truth of matter is, if you go visit an affluent neighborhood, you see Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's, and Porsche's left and right and you get to see more luxury cars than those rusty Honda's that you speak of. Hell, in my high school, I knew a couple of kids who drove Ferrari's. Does that make them dumb? No. It just means they can afford to live that way and extra bucks for this baller lifestyle is worth it for them, rather than saving that extra cash and investing them for profit.
Well, the question is that you start asking yourself why they drive it. Most cases, it's to advertise that they're rich... or take their car to the track and race. What if nobody else cared? What if random guys wearing wife-beaters and John Deere caps started asking funny questions about the car and started bragging about their (faster) tractors whenever anyone got too excited? What if they talked about how their aunt Edna bought one but then it broke down and those darned Italians don't know how to build cars and I'm sticking with my F150. If the only people who care that you have X feel bad for you, you're going to stop making decisions based on what other people think and start making decisions based on what you want.

People would start behaving more rationally. Buying the cars they enjoyed driving rather than cars that impressed other folks. Instead of getting obsessed with prestige and impressing people, they would focus on the things that really mattered in cars and they would be free to be much happier drivers.

LOL... Wait, say that again? You really think Princeton = Georgia Tech??
Take a look at the engineering rankings and Google's hiring rates out of Ga Tech and Princeton. Georgia Tech has them beat. As engineers, if I'm better than you on one thing, and you're better than me on something else, they still need both of us and we're equals.

They're both good schools. I don't think the differences are anything to get worked up about.

You obviously haven't steered a luxury sports car, such as M3 or Porsche. Many people buy cars because of the driving experience - a car isn't just about mileage per gallon, or pure maximum speed, etc, but it is also about style, steering, transmission, braking, cornering, acceleration, the 'feel' of the ride, and so much more.

Do yourself a favor and stop by a Porsche dealership and take a 911 out for a test drive. Until then, I am afraid you will keep living in your fantasy that Porsche owners spend extra 100k on their ride just to show off to others that they are rich.

Regarding academic pedigree - in certain careers, such as I-banking, management consulting, and especially law, your academic pedigree is very important in assisting you to break in. Case in point - most people who go to non-target law schools never even get close to getting any offer from a large law firm with 160k salary. On the other hand, over 90% of students from Harvard Law are guaranteed a 160k/year, white-shoe law firm jobs.

To deny that academic pedigree doesn't matter at all would be stretching it too far. Maybe in certain careers such as engineering, CS, or accounting, your academic pedigree doesn't matter much. My dad is a successful accountant and he went to a no-name 4th tier state school that most people haven't heard of.

 

Sometimes, I don´t understand most Americans.

Why are there always stupid discussions like "Target vs. Non-Target"?.

I know that some Asian countries like South Korea have copied the American educationsystem. There must be top schools, which must be well known worldwide.

Yes, Oxford and Cambridge are well respected by any other countries, but go to work in London (GS, JP Morgan, MS etc.). You will meet tons of people, who didn´t go to Oxbridge.

But that system works!

Go to Germany. There are not really well known schools like Harvard. But go to work in Frankfurt. Most of bankers didn´t study at Harvard, Yale, MIt or whatever. Maybe, they are not smart enough, but they actually work as bankers and it works!!!!

I don´t understand why Americans like to discriminate Non-Targets..

I am German and I am really proud of being German. At least, it is fair in Germany. Target or Non-Target...It is up to you and not to schools.

People, grow up!

 
Kuggi2011:
Sometimes, I don´t understand most Americans.

Why are there always stupid discussions like "Target vs. Non-Target"?.

I know that some Asian countries like South Korea have copied the American educationsystem. There must be top schools, which must be well known worldwide.

Yes, Oxford and Cambridge are well respected by any other countries, but go to work in London (GS, JP Morgan, MS etc.). You will meet tons of people, who didn´t go to Oxbridge.

But that system works!

Go to Germany. There are not really well known schools like Harvard. But go to work in Frankfurt. Most of bankers didn´t study at Harvard, Yale, MIt or whatever. Maybe, they are not smart enough, but they actually work as bankers and it works!!!!

I don´t understand why Americans like to discriminate Non-Targets..

I am German and I am really proud of being German. At least, it is fair in Germany. Target or Non-Target...It is up to you and not to schools.

People, grow up!

America >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Germany.

That is all.

 
seedy underbelly:
America >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Germany.

That is all.

Deutsche Bank owns America. Germany owns Deutsche Bank. Therefore, Germany owns America.

America is like the guy with the rented Ferrari while Germany owns their BMW- and America's Ferrari- outright. It gets to collect rent checks on the leased Ferrari, and when it wants to, it can repossess it.

Enjoy working for your rented boutique bank, seedy. You may think you're better, but Germany owns you.

 
seedy underbelly:
Kuggi2011:
Sometimes, I don´t understand most Americans.

Why are there always stupid discussions like "Target vs. Non-Target"?.

I know that some Asian countries like South Korea have copied the American educationsystem. There must be top schools, which must be well known worldwide.

Yes, Oxford and Cambridge are well respected by any other countries, but go to work in London (GS, JP Morgan, MS etc.). You will meet tons of people, who didn´t go to Oxbridge.

But that system works!

Go to Germany. There are not really well known schools like Harvard. But go to work in Frankfurt. Most of bankers didn´t study at Harvard, Yale, MIt or whatever. Maybe, they are not smart enough, but they actually work as bankers and it works!!!!

I don´t understand why Americans like to discriminate Non-Targets..

I am German and I am really proud of being German. At least, it is fair in Germany. Target or Non-Target...It is up to you and not to schools.

People, grow up!

America >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Germany.

That is all.

This guy currently studies in ivy league when his profile is correct.

That should be a reason, why companies should think about potentials of Non-Taget kids again.

 

I love these threads. Look, the reality is this: if you're a standout, it's not going to matter if you went to Harvard, or a great public university. I probably had visibility to 90% of the same opportunities as kids coming out of Harvard. The 10% I missed, I probably didn't give a shit about anyway. All the major banks, MBB, F500 competitive rotational gigs, etc. recruited at my school. All of my friends went on to top 5 Med / Law / MBA programs, and frankly, we all partied like rock stars in college. Lastly, exiting undergrad is just the first cut. You have 40 years of opportunity to distinguish yourself where it really matters - on the job. A few years out, nobody gives a shit where you went to school. If you're a rain maker, fuck everything else. If you're not a rain maker, that's on you, and stop whining about lack of opportunity.

 

My view is that your goals, whatever they might be, get exponentially harder to achieve the longer you wait. For a non-target competing for a top finance position, this means essentially starting from zero, while the target student has already put in the work to get their foot in the door.

I don’t doubt the fact that the target student put in the work to get where they are, that’s not what makes me angry. But as a non-target who secured a top-tier equity research offer, it pisses me off to no end when target students belittle the effort it takes to earn an offer without any OCR or alumni.

I didn’t do shit in high school, had no drive, and no real idea what it meant to get into a great school. But once I figured out what I wanted to do, I had to work twice as hard to overcome the (earned) stigma of the non-target student. But now that I have an offer, I have to say it feels damn good knowing I only paid $20K for my education while my counterparts paid $200K for the same fuckin' thing.

 

My dad went to a complete 4th tier non-target. He got a job as an auditor at Big4 accounting after college, made it all the way to the senior manager at Big4, built some strong connections, and started his own audit/ tax shop.

He is very successful and makes much more money than many of target grads ever will. I agree that once you get your first job, where you got degree from doesn't mean shit.

However, it is important to note that in certain careers, such as Management Consulting, I-banking, or BigLaw, getting your ass in the door straight out of school is very hard to do without going to a target/ semi-target school.

 

A kid can be naturally intelligent but never be in the environment to nurture that intelligence into actual knowledge. Intelligence is useless unless you have something to apply it towards. That doesn't even begin to address the amount of opportunities and experiences you are exposed to in a quality school.

My boss has two kids. One goes to the best private school in the state and the other goes to the public school they live next to. The kid who goes to the private school is doing shit in third grade that I was taught in middle school. They also have more extracurricular activities than my god damn college has. The other kid's school has to hold fundraisers to pay for a band teacher who instructs a class of 50 kids three days a week because that's the only way they could swing it. All of the students had to buy their own instruments because the school could not afford any. The rest of the school is in similar shape. Put two kids of equal intelligence in each of those situations and you're totally full of fucking shit if you don't think one of them will have a significant advantage.

 

...This thread is turning into a circle-jerk of middle-class to upper-class 1st world kids talking about who's suffered and worked harder in their lives. It reminds me of analysts pretending to complain about how many hours they work but then trying to turn it into bragging rights.

As said before, once you're at the interview stage, they'll just hire whoever is best.

 

Well, again, it's the honda vs. ferrari complex.

A few people buy Ferraris because they enjoy driving them. Most people buy Ferraris because they want to show off. Some people also try to claim that they fall into the first camp when they really fall into the second. Never mind that a mildly supped up Honda or Nissan can beat them on the quarter mile.

How do we help these people grow as human beings?
(1) fortunately it's easy because you never see Ferraris at track days- the best street legal cars for racing are Japanese (2) feel genuinely sorry for the people who bought the Ferraris. It was a waste of money on a poor racing car.
(3) When they expect "wow this guy's rich" and get morose looks of empathy instead, they start focusing more internally. On the things that really matter to them and make them happy.
(4) If it works, next car will be a rusty honda. (OK, or at least a classic Mustang convertible.)

 
firefighter:
Yes, you can argue the whole "can't afford Harvard" or "rich parents made donations" angle (and I ABSOLUTELY sympathize with the kids who couldn't afford to go to Stern or GTown or some other low-financial aid school), but generally speaking, most targets are actually incredibly generous with financial aid and development cases make up a tiny portion of the population (and those kids get hooked up anyway). In fact coming from a poor background helps you get into Harvard.

Sure, if you’re poor, Harvard will cover you. But not if you’re middle class, which is obviously the majority of the population. Based on my FAFSA, my parents would have had to cash out their entire retirement savings to pay for me to go there, which clearly is not really feasible.

So, I had the choice of going Ivy with a lot of debt or to my state school, where I got a full-ride, and after I graduated, my parents gave me the money they had been saving for me to go to college (equaled about 1 years tuition at Harvard). Sure, going to the state school was a short-sited decision and I often regret it, but I was 18, a little naive, didn’t really know what I wanted to be, and received some suspect advice from my public school counselors, etc. I’d venture to say many kids are in similar situations.....

I do think, however, Harvard changed their policy the year after I graduated to make it a little easier on the middle class, but that would only start to affect this years class of SAs.

 

Again, income is only one factor in FAFSA.

A HUGE factor is whether your parents still have a mortgage.

Another huge factor is how close your parents are to retirement.

If your parents make $200K every year and spend $200K, you are going to get a much better financial aid package than a family with $120K in income and the mortgage paid off with enough in the 401k to retire.

 

My wife turned down acceptance at Princeton and Dartmouth, in favor of a full ride at Indiana University. She got a 750 on her GMAT with no preparation. She got into Kellogg, Booth, Haas, and Sloan. She makes more money than most people in this country, including ivy kids, which is the success measuring stick most of you use. Back to my point about standouts - the true talents are going to rise up regardless of undergrad pedigree. I don't get why more people don't see that.

 

Most kids and ivy league schools come from prestigious prep schools such as horace mann, exeter, eton, etc. So, there is a privilege class that does benefit in Investment banking. Most of the ivy and Oxbridge type schools also mainly consist of kids who went to prep schools. Only about 30% of these schools consist of kids who studied in American public high school. There is a class gap in investment banking without a doubt.

Wu-Tang
 
hopefulinvestmentbanker:
Most kids and ivy league schools come from prestigious prep schools such as horace mann, exeter, eton, etc. So, there is a privilege class that does benefit in Investment banking. Most of the ivy and Oxbridge type schools also mainly consist of kids who went to prep schools. Only about 30% of these schools consist of kids who studied in American public high school. There is a class gap in investment banking without a doubt.

You moron.

admissions.yale.edu/node/2040/attachment

More than 60% of students at my Ivy are from publics. And the kids from boarding/elite-private schools are more accomplished at 18 than most people will ever be at 60. 99% of students at my school absolutely got in on merit. The 1% who are so rich that daddy bought a building, of course didn't. But they're paying for my and other students's financial aid, so can't complain.

Honestly, so many hillbillies on this website complaining "them Ivyies for rich folk!!11."

 
seedy underbelly:
hopefulinvestmentbanker:
Most kids and ivy league schools come from prestigious prep schools such as horace mann, exeter, eton, etc. So, there is a privilege class that does benefit in Investment banking. Most of the ivy and Oxbridge type schools also mainly consist of kids who went to prep schools. Only about 30% of these schools consist of kids who studied in American public high school. There is a class gap in investment banking without a doubt.

You moron.

admissions.yale.edu/node/2040/attachment

More than 60% of students at my Ivy are from publics. And the kids from boarding/elite-private schools are more accomplished at 18 than most people will ever be at 60. 99% of students at my school absolutely got in on merit. The 1% who are so rich that daddy bought a building, of course didn't. But they're paying for my and other students's financial aid, so can't complain.

Honestly, so many hillbillies on this website complaining "them Ivyies for rich folk!!11."

Haha, obviously shit talking begets shit talking begets shit talking. But you're right--prep school kids are both accomplished and few and far between. It just so happens that a lot of them flock to finance after college, so it just seems like every ivy leaguer is a trust fund baby.

 

This is getting kinda ironic. When folks start throwing out ad-hominems, you know they've pretty much lost the argument and are getting desperate.

At Illinois, which represents a good cross-section of the US who take college prep classes, about 90% of students come from public high schools. Additionally, 5% came from Catholic schools in areas where the public schools were weak (Downtown Chicago's school system is not like New York's).

It seems like over and over again, the implicit message from SLE and Seedy is that 2/3 of students at Ivy Leagues come from the 99%. That's great, until you realize that 1/3 comes from the 1% and just how skewed the distribution is.

So let's get this straight. While wealthier students are working on research and going to Zimbabwe with Amnesty International, middle-class kids are working summer jobs to pay for gasoline and insurance for their cars. And when it comes time to go to school, FAFSA doesn't give middle-class kids anything if their parents were reasonably responsible when it came to paying off the mortgage, building emergency savings, and saving for retirement.

So it's just natural for some of the smartest suburban middle-class whites and asians to go to public state schools. $15K/year tuition sure beats $50K/year.

And then finally, the funniest part is when people get more confident in their accessories than they are in themselves.

Every year, Ducati calls up Valentino Rossi and begs him to switch from Team Honda to Team Ducati. Many people think Ducati makes the highest performance motorcycles. Rossi likes to stay with Honda, though, so that when he wins, everyone knows it came down to the rider- and his team- and not the motorcycle.


When kids from certain Ivy League schools start getting so confident with their degrees that they lose a sense of confidence in who they are regardless of the degree, we see a different picture. We see a marathon. There are runners who are perfectly able-bodied but show up with crutches . There are other who show up with their own two feet. As everyone's getting to run the race. Some of the kids with crutches are bragging about how much they spent on them- how it gives them an advantage- how not everyone can buy them. Others of them think they can run faster without their crutches and set them down on the sidelines.

Then the race starts and the kids who didn't bring crutches start pulling ahead. A few of them may have shown up with them and set them down at first, but crutches don't seem to help them. Winning comes down to who they are- not their accessories, and even if crutches might have somehow helped, they wanted to know that they won the race on their own.

Finally, a 7'6" runner from Zimbabwe is the first to the finish line. Having some experience getting chased by paramilitary groups sure helps you run fast. He could barely pay the entry fee, but when reporters start asking him how he managed to win without expensive crutches or an advantage of any kind, he simply responded, "Well, there's fast people everywhere and I'm not sure those crutches would have helped me more than my two feet already do."

 
IlliniProgrammer:
This is getting kinda ironic. When folks start throwing out ad-hominems, you know they've pretty much lost the argument and are getting desperate.

At Illinois, which represents a good cross-section of the US who take college prep classes, about 90% of students come from public high schools. Additionally, 5% came from Catholic schools in areas where the public schools were weak (Downtown Chicago's school system is not like New York's).

It seems like over and over again, the implicit message from SLE and Seedy is that 2/3 of students at Ivy Leagues come from the 99%. That's great, until you realize that 1/3 comes from the 1% and just how skewed the distribution is.

So let's get this straight. While wealthier students are working on research and going to Zimbabwe with Amnesty International, middle-class kids are working summer jobs to pay for gasoline and insurance for their cars. And when it comes time to go to school, FAFSA doesn't give middle-class kids anything if their parents were reasonably responsible when it came to paying off the mortgage, building emergency savings, and saving for retirement.

So it's just natural for some of the smartest suburban middle-class whites and asians to go to public state schools. $15K/year tuition sure beats $50K/year.

And then finally, the funniest part is when people get more confident in their accessories than they are in themselves.

Every year, Ducati calls up Valentino Rossi and begs him to switch from Team Honda to Team Ducati. Many people think Ducati makes the highest performance motorcycles. Rossi likes to stay with Honda, though, so that when he wins, everyone knows it came down to the rider- and his team- and not the motorcycle.


When kids from certain Ivy League schools start getting so confident with their degrees that they lose a sense of confidence in who they are regardless of the degree, we see a different picture. We see a marathon. There are runners who are perfectly able-bodied but show up with crutches . There are other who show up with their own two feet. As everyone's getting to run the race. Some of the kids with crutches are bragging about how much they spent on them- how it gives them an advantage- how not everyone can buy them. Others of them think they can run faster without their crutches and set them down on the sidelines.

Then the race starts and the kids who didn't bring crutches start pulling ahead. A few of them may have shown up with them and set them down at first, but crutches don't seem to help them. Winning comes down to who they are- not their accessories, and even if crutches might have somehow helped, they wanted to know that they won the race on their own.

Finally, a 7'6" runner from Zimbabwe is the first to the finish line. Having some experience getting chased by paramilitary groups sure helps you run fast. He could barely pay the entry fee, but when reporters start asking him how he managed to win without expensive crutches or an advantage of any kind, he simply responded, "Well, there's fast people everywhere and I'm not sure those crutches would have helped me more than my two feet already do."

If you are middle class, it's cheaper to attend Harvard than to attend State U. By middle class, I am talking about parental income between 60-140k.

The people who get screwed are those from upper middle class, with income between 160-300k. These people don't get much fin aid from Ivies, so it becomes very expensive. For people from this demographics, yes, going to a good State U makes more sense financially.

However, what if one does NOT live in a state in which a strong in-state university exists? For example, if you are from Oklahoma, then guess what - your in-state colleges are schools like University of Oklahoma, which is a pure shit school.

If you are lucky and live in California, Michigan, or Virginia, you can go to fantastic State U's with affordable tuition - U Michigan, UVA, or UCLA. IF you are not In-state for U Michigan, attending U Michigan as an out of state student is more expensive than attending an Ivy college.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
If you are middle class, it's cheaper to attend Harvard than to attend State U. By middle class, I am talking about parental income between 60-140k.
Again, it all comes down to how much home equity they have. If they were responsible and have the house paid off and have savings for retirement, they're screwed.
However, what if one does NOT live in a state in which a strong in-state university exists? For example, if you are from Oklahoma, then guess what - your in-state colleges are schools like University of Oklahoma, which is a pure shit school.
Elizabeth Warren went to U of Oklahoma. You study your school's strongest STEM major. Not everyone can pull that off.
If you are lucky and live in California, Michigan, or Virginia, you can go to fantastic State U's with affordable tuition - U Michigan, UVA, or UCLA. IF you are not In-state for U Michigan, attending U Michigan as an out of state student is more expensive than attending an Ivy college.
Might be true; many of these schools also offer scholarships to highly qualified out of state students to make the cost comparable to in-state.
 
Do yourself a favor and stop by a Porsche dealership and take a 911 out for a test drive. Until then, I am afraid you will keep living in your fantasy that Porsche owners spend extra 100k on their ride just to show off to others that they are rich.
I've driven a porsche (rental). I've also driven a '66 Mustang GT. I like the Mustang more. Take the top down, watch the car accelerate from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds. To know that back in the '60s, that was a true feat of engineering and that the car has to struggle a little bit- to make it a bit. The 300 horsepower engine roars at it climbs to 3.5, 4, 4.5 RPMs as you charge down the on ramp onto the Edens. The whole car shakes and the rearview mirror jostles a bit as it seems like every atom in the car focuses on hitting 65 mph in six seconds.

You turn up the ancient pre-stereo sound system as it blasts out the Beach Boys over the wind and the engine. The wind rushes over your hair with the smell of freshly cut grass as the sun rises over the Botanic Gardens.

Rich north shore folks in porsches stop looking at the road ahead of them and turn to look at you. They see your car charge down the road from their lexii, porsches, and BMWs. Their car is probably more expensive, might look cooler, might be faster. But yours' is a heckuvalot more fun. They wish they had bought a classic convertible. No pretense, not that much of a status symbol other than the fact that you can afford two cars- you can get a classic mustang for as much as a new Hyundai- but there's nothing quite like the experience.

 

Eh, not really. Out of state at UMich might be comparable to Ivy's, but certainly not more expensive. As an undergrad it's $19k for F/S year, and $20k for J/S year, per semester. So, $40k per year. That's similar to Ivy / High End Privates, but not really more.

 

I'm middle-class. My parents make a combined 75-80K. Guess what I'm paying at my Ivy? $0. Guess what I'd be paying at my country's best public uni: $10K.

I'm not saying Ivies are better or whatever, or that I'm confident in my degree (fuck no... my school's recruiting sucks compared to that of nearby NYU Stern and even Indiana Kelley)... but it's a fine school nonetheless and the people who made it here did work harder than those who did not. The only thing I am refuting on this thread is your diminishing of the Ivies' admissions standards to make yourself feel better. That's all.

Heck, I think even Michigan-Ross does better than us in recruiting--can never discount the value of a pure business education, which none of the Ivies except Penn provide at the undergrad level.

 
seedy underbelly:
I'm middle-class. My parents make a combined 75-80K. Guess what I'm paying at my Ivy? $0. Guess what I'd be paying at my country's best public uni: $10K.

I'm not saying Ivies are better or whatever, or that I'm confident in my degree (fuck no... my school's recruiting sucks compared to that of nearby NYU Stern and even Indiana Kelley)... but it's a fine school nonetheless and the people who made it here did work harder than those who did not. The only thing I am refuting on this thread is your diminishing of the Ivies' admissions standards to make yourself feel better. That's all.

Heck, I think even Michigan-Ross does better than us in recruiting--can never discount the value of a pure business education, which none of the Ivies except Penn provide at the undergrad level.

Wait, say what?? Indiana Kelly has better OCR than Columbia?? Is this true?

Actually, now that I think about it, going to a good State U ain't bad at all. Girls are much hotter, academics are much easier, tuition is cheaper, and if OCR is indeed comparable to Ivies, then why the fuck not??

However, many, MANY people live in states in which strong state universities don't exist. Second, many times, attending an Ivy is actually cheaper than attending a state school, especially if that state school in question is out-of-state for that individual.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
seedy underbelly:
I'm middle-class. My parents make a combined 75-80K. Guess what I'm paying at my Ivy? $0. Guess what I'd be paying at my country's best public uni: $10K.

I'm not saying Ivies are better or whatever, or that I'm confident in my degree (fuck no... my school's recruiting sucks compared to that of nearby NYU Stern and even Indiana Kelley)... but it's a fine school nonetheless and the people who made it here did work harder than those who did not. The only thing I am refuting on this thread is your diminishing of the Ivies' admissions standards to make yourself feel better. That's all.

Heck, I think even Michigan-Ross does better than us in recruiting--can never discount the value of a pure business education, which none of the Ivies except Penn provide at the undergrad level.

Wait, say what?? Indiana Kelly has better OCR than Columbia?? Is this true?

Actually, now that I think about it, going to a good State U ain't bad at all. Girls are much hotter, academics are much easier, tuition is cheaper, and if OCR is indeed comparable to Ivies, then why the fuck not??

However, many, MANY people live in states in which strong state universities don't exist. Second, many times, attending an Ivy is actually cheaper than attending a state school, especially if that state school in question is out-of-state for that individual.

Lol, yeah.

Kelley placed more at GS and JPM than here. Bain & Co. recruits there while it doesn't actively recruit here (although from what career services has hold us they will be recruiting starting FT this year thanks to new majors - Financial Econ and Business management - or whatever).

Never discount the value of a pure business UG education. It's the only reason Penn (Wharton) dominates over HYPS and Columbia, despite being much easier to get into (both in admitted %age and admitted SAT score range).

 
seedy underbelly:
I'm middle-class. My parents make a combined 75-80K. Guess what I'm paying at my Ivy? $0. Guess what I'd be paying at my country's best public uni: $10K.
Jesus dude you are completely missing Illini's point. Either you're doing it intentionally or you're not as smart as you think you are. And I know your response to this will be "LOL U DUNT GO 2 A TARGET UR A RETARD" but seriously your posts in this thread don't portray you as a bastion of intellect.
 
Thurnis Haley:
seedy underbelly:
I'm middle-class. My parents make a combined 75-80K. Guess what I'm paying at my Ivy? $0. Guess what I'd be paying at my country's best public uni: $10K.
Jesus dude you are completely missing Illini's point. Either you're doing it intentionally or you're not as smart as you think you are. And I know your response to this will be "LOL U DUNT GO 2 A TARGET UR A RETARD" but seriously your posts in this thread don't portray you as a bastion of intellect.

I don't think you get what I'm talking about. I never said anything similar to this. I've been saying the opposite.

The only point I've been making here is that getting into a target is no joke. That's it. Nothing else.

 

The idea that the superior financial aid at top schools gives kids an even shot at attending them misses the point - while the financial aid is certainly helpful, your parent's wealth still has a significant effect on your "merit" of getting into these schools in the first place.

People with high income parents are more likely to grow up in a family where education is considered important and will have all the tools and family stability necessary to succeed - many times, as was mentioned, they will have the benefit of a private education, which can mean a lot depending on the quality of local public schools.

They will typically have the benefit of tutors when they are needed, SAT prep, etc, which are things that poor/middle class families cannot afford. And finally, a more subtle point is that kids from poor/middle class families are far less aware of the opportunities that exist. If you come from a low income or even middle income environment, chances are you don't have a good sense of what a "top school" is, what is necessary to get in, and what the benefits of attendance are.....until, if that, your last year or two of high school, when most kids actually start looking at colleges. Meanwhile, rich parents are more inclined to have gone to a top school and be able to guide their child's college search and get their kids doing what it takes to look impressive to colleges as early as middle school or earlier.

Unfortunately, there's no way that I'm aware of to fairly correct this kind of inequality, outside of improving public school systems. It's a lot more difficult of a problem to correct than the mere cost of attendance issue.

 

It is definitely a benefit to go to a great HS. My HS was ranked in top 25 by WSJ and I can tell you first-hand that the ranking helped big-time in getting into colleges. Our college counselors had incredible relationships with the admissions people at all of the Ivies and other elite schools and there were some a 3.8, 2250 kids who got into HYP who probably would not have been able to do so at other schools. Furthermore, we were located in the same city as a top-15 non-Ivy, and our HS became a major feeder for that college because the college knew that the caliber of students from my HS was very high, so kids with .2-.3 lower GPAs and 100-150 lower SATs routinely got in.

 

What are you guys arguing about? Class issues in American education? Optimal high school and university choices for the middle class?

People who actually work in the industry and are responsible for hiring recent graduates and junior professionals have given you a response to the OP's question.

Oh, and test of whether or not Ferrari's, Porsche's and other sports cars are any good as a driving experience is their performance in turns or on winding country roads, not their 1/4 mile or 0-60 performance. A Lotus Elise can be more fun than a AMG S-class... but this is a subject for another thread (I'll start one shortly).

 
seedy underbelly:
Kuggi2011:
Seedy Underbelly is just a moron. I don´t know if he really studies at ivy or lies.

If it is true, it will be a hard decision to hire ivy kids without any doubts.

Learn english.

Learn to read.

 

I think a kid who has experience and takes initiative to pursue a particular career would be more promising than an ivy-leaguer who finds out about banking junior year.

I mean, does it really matter to you what the kid was doing from age 14-18?

I'm not very emotionally invested in this argument and I'm not taking a jab at targets by any means, but I for one can say that I was an entirely different person during my high school years.

 
Studiofan:
Can you guys care to elaborate on the Kelley Vs. Columbia argument. I find it hard to believe regardless of the IB workshop that Kelley has better recruiting than Columbia.

yeah, if this is true, then i feel bad for ivy kids. they worked their ass off to go target and do much more work than those Indiana Kelly kids, since getting into Indiana or doing well there is a fucking joke.

if recruiting opportunities at easy state U's are same as Ivies, then what the fuck is the point of going to Ivy??

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
Studiofan:
Can you guys care to elaborate on the Kelley Vs. Columbia argument. I find it hard to believe regardless of the IB workshop that Kelley has better recruiting than Columbia.

yeah, if this is true, then i feel bad for ivy kids. they worked their ass off to go target and do much more work than those Indiana Kelly kids, since getting into Indiana or doing well there is a fucking joke.

if recruiting opportunities at easy state U's are same as Ivies, then what the fuck is the point of going to Ivy??

Don't be ridiculous, now. There's no reason to feel bad for anybody who goes to an Ivy. If they continue to work hard in college they'll be able to do anything they want in life.
 

^^^ State schools aren't exactly easy. Illinois has a ~50% dropout rate in engineering. It's a little easier in Accy/Finance, but not much.

More importantly, there's no structure, no handholding. They toss a textbook at you, lock you in an austere cinderblock dorm room, and tell you "college is what you make of it. Hope you don't fail out, hope you don't wind up alone and friendless, but in all honesty, we really don't care. You're 18, you're on your own." Gulp.

Outside of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, Chicago, and maybe Cornell and Stanford's engineering departments, though, you don't really get that system at a liberal arts school. There might be more work (I still don't think it's more than a typical engineering, physics, or math degree at a top 50 school), but there's more safety nets, smaller classrooms, and you grow up slower. There's lower fail-out rates.

Honestly, I wouldn't call Kelly easy. Neither with engineering, physics, or math at a school ranked in the top twenty or thirty for that subject. Especially if it's a private tech school (CMU, Cal Tech, MIT) or state school.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ State schools aren't exactly easy. Illinois has a ~50% dropout rate in engineering. It's a little easier in Accy/Finance, but not much.

More importantly, there's no structure, no handholding. They toss a textbook at you, lock you in an austere cinderblock dorm room, and tell you "college is what you make of it. Hope you don't fail out, hope you don't wind up alone and friendless, but in all honesty, we really don't care. You're 18, you're on your own." Gulp.

Outside of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, Chicago, and maybe Cornell and Stanford's engineering departments, though, you don't really get that system at a liberal arts school. There might be more work (I still don't think it's more than a typical engineering, physics, or math degree at a top 50 school), but there's more safety nets, smaller classrooms, and you grow up slower. There's lower fail-out rates.

Honestly, I wouldn't call Kelly easy. Neither with engineering, physics, or math at a school ranked in the top twenty or thirty for that subject. Especially if it's a private tech school (CMU, Cal Tech, MIT) or state school.

Any legitimate engineering program is not easy. Any finance/accounting program is a complete joke in terms of difficulty no matter which school.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ State schools aren't exactly easy. Illinois has a ~50% dropout rate in engineering. It's a little easier in Accy/Finance, but not much.

More importantly, there's no structure, no handholding. They toss a textbook at you, lock you in an austere cinderblock dorm room, and tell you "college is what you make of it. Hope you don't fail out, hope you don't wind up alone and friendless, but in all honesty, we really don't care. You're 18, you're on your own." Gulp.

Outside of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, Chicago, and maybe Cornell and Stanford's engineering departments, though, you don't really get that system at a liberal arts school. There might be more work (I still don't think it's more than a typical engineering, physics, or math degree at a top 50 school), but there's more safety nets, smaller classrooms, and you grow up slower. There's lower fail-out rates.

Honestly, I wouldn't call Kelly easy. Neither with engineering, physics, or math at a school ranked in the top twenty or thirty for that subject. Especially if it's a private tech school (CMU, Cal Tech, MIT) or state school.

illini, where I would agree with you is that UIUC engineering program is tough, but that is the case at pretty much anywhere. engineering is the toughest major at any college. I would bet that getting through UIUC engineering is much tougher than getting through Econ at Harvard/ Princeton. But that's besides the point.

we're talking about Indiana kelley here. That school is an absolute joke to get in. from my high school, the kids who went there were complete idiots with like 22-23 on ACT, who didn't even know how to spell their name correctly. seriously, these kids were borderline retarded.

If schools like Indiana Kelley get same OCR opportunities as schools like Columbia, Dartmouth, or Duke, that's just fucked up.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
If schools like Indiana Kelley get same OCR opportunities as schools like Columbia, Dartmouth, or Duke, that's just fucked up.

Fact: There are M&A analysts at the bulge bracket US investment banks from Indiana undergrad... There are also associates, VPs, MDs, from the same undergraduate programme at the major boutique investment banks and other firms in finance (Moelis, Perella, etc...).

Do a search in the team profiles of investment banks and other firms on LinkedIn or on the web for Indiana undergraduates. You'll find Analysts, VPs and MDs who attended the university for their undergraduate studies.

Focus on making the most of your Ivy league experience and enjoy your time there. A lot of people would have loved to be in your shoes. You aren't at a disadvantage despite the success of people from other schools.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:

If schools like Indiana Kelley get same OCR opportunities as schools like Columbia, Dartmouth, or Duke, that's just fucked up.

Why is that fucked up? You can't seem to grasp the concept that someone is not automatically better qualified for a job in IB (or any other field, for that matter) by virtue of having gone to a higher ranked university. I went to Michigan, and I'm definitely smarter and more accomplished than some people I know now that went to Harvard for undergrad. That's just how it goes.

Banks are good at finding talent that fits their organizations. Much better than you are, and somehow their recruiting methods fly in the face of what you think is "right". The fact that you find this so difficult to grasp says a lot about your own suitability, regardless of whether you go to an ivy or not.

Your implied (and flawed) assumption is that every kid coming out of high school is going to go with the most prestigious university they can get into, as defined by some silly rankings peddled by a news organization, which would then theoretically yield the most qualified students coming out of those higher ranked schools. The reality is that a LOT of students that are perfectly qualified for ivies opt to attend schools like IU because they can still get good educations, and get them at a fraction of the cost (as noted above, my wife attended IU for free in lieu of a few ivy acceptances that she would have had to pay for). Banks know this, which is why they go hunting for those talented kids as well.

 

^ Kelley is actually easy as hell lol. The rich kid ranked 35th in my class now goes there and has been acing all his courses, while here at Columbia I've been competing with other [ :D ] world champions in Math, state champions in Chess, people who have won international prizes for their writing, etc (you get the gist). Almost everyone was valedictorian (having been valedictorian of your school is barely registered as an 'accomplishment' here lol). But, yeah, Kelley still has the same, if not better, recruiting. I've seen their placement stats. :)

 

^^^ At Illinois I was one of twenty perfect SAT scores in my year out of 500 in the country. Everybody was a valedictorian or salutatorian too, especially in CS. Malaysia and the Phillipines had a contract with us where they selected their 20 top students- they didn't have a choice- and sent them to UIUC for engineering. I had to compete against kids who'd already taken differential equations and real analysis at the age of 16. A couple of them were working as software architects at dot-coms before they graduated high school. So it's really not a big surprise that Illinois, UT Austin, and Berkeley beat every single Ivy League in the Comp. Sci and engineering rankings despite handicaps such as gigantic class sizes and lower graduation rates.

Now that we're hopefully done with the pissing match that always seems to go on in these threads, there's smart people everywhere and I'm sure things are similar to Columbia or Illinois at a program like Kelley.

They're all world-class institutions and Kelley happens to teach finance in undergrad. To make up for what are perhaps small differences in selectivity, there's also absolutely no safety net at a state school. If you die in your dorm room, the coroner will be there to take your corpse to the morgue the next day and life will move on. When you hire an intern from Columbia, you know you're definitely getting something special. But when you hire a kid from Kelley, you're getting someone who's probably pretty darned special, has been trained to think differently than most Northeasterners, and you're definitely getting an adult professional.

 

Bingo. Columbia or Cornell means you'll never be at a disadvantage (OK, maybe in Chicago), but the question is how much of an advantage you'll be at. Five years ago, Columbia gave you a much bigger advantage than it gives you today. So Indiana's success isn't much of a threat- it just means that the best kids there get to compete against you on a more level playing field.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
Bingo. Columbia or Cornell means you'll never be at a disadvantage (OK, maybe in Chicago), but the question is how much of an advantage you'll be at. Five years ago, Columbia gave you a much bigger advantage than it gives you today. So Indiana's success isn't much of a threat- it just means that the best kids there get to compete against you on a more level playing field.

Can you elaborate on your claim that advantage of attending Columbia is lesser today that it was 5 years ago? What are you exactly implying here?

 

^^^ No wonder. You'd never stand a chance trying to get into CMU's EE program. More selective than Columbia.

Why is it that kids from Columbia are always painfully insecure? It's like they got rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Chicago/MIT/Stanford or something and Columbia is somehow an inferior school and they have to pick on non-target students. Why do I suspect that Seedy grits his teeth whenever someone college-aged says he's taking the train back to New Haven? Why do I suspect he is STILL losing sleep over something that happened three years ago.

Nobody knows how or why Thumis wound up at Pitt. His story could easily have been similar to mine. If they otherwise see a strong profile, they will probably assume it comes down to money more than anything else.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ No wonder. You'd never stand a chance trying to get into CMU's EE program. More selective than Columbia.

This thread is too funny. Watching the troll attempts from a kid from Columbia.

Everyone knows how Seedy wound up at Columbia and why he has such an inferiority complex about landing a full-time job. He probably grits his teeth whenever anyone mentions they're taking the train back to school in New Haven or how they enjoy canoing on the Charles river. It probably drives him crazy and trolling non-targets is his only defense mechanism.

Nobody knows how or why Thumis wound up at Pitt. If they otherwise see a strong profile, they will probably assume it comes down to money more than anything else.

This thread is not at all about me, I was just using my story as an anecdote. But I'm not going to let a bunch of econ majors tell me they could have gotten into CMU's EE department. That's just stupid.
 
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ No wonder. You'd never stand a chance trying to get into CMU's EE program. More selective than Columbia.

Why is it that kids from Columbia are always painfully insecure? It's like they got rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Chicago/MIT/Stanford or something and Columbia is somehow an inferior school and they have to pick on non-target students. Why do I suspect that Seedy grits his teeth whenever someone college-aged says he's taking the train back to New Haven? Why do I suspect he is STILL losing sleep over something that happened three years ago.

Nobody knows how or why Thumis wound up at Pitt. His story could easily have been similar to mine. If they otherwise see a strong profile, they will probably assume it comes down to money more than anything else.

Lol. Someone who is good enough to get into Columbia's Econ program is definitely more than smart enough to get into CMU's engineering program. Hell, CMU is a fucking safety for Ivy kids.

If you have stats to get into Ivies but don't have strong math/ science record in high school, you can just apply to CMU's econ program and do internal transfer into CMU engineering after one year.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
IlliniProgrammer:
^^^ No wonder. You'd never stand a chance trying to get into CMU's EE program. More selective than Columbia.

Why is it that kids from Columbia are always painfully insecure? It's like they got rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Chicago/MIT/Stanford or something and Columbia is somehow an inferior school and they have to pick on non-target students. Why do I suspect that Seedy grits his teeth whenever someone college-aged says he's taking the train back to New Haven? Why do I suspect he is STILL losing sleep over something that happened three years ago.

Nobody knows how or why Thumis wound up at Pitt. His story could easily have been similar to mine. If they otherwise see a strong profile, they will probably assume it comes down to money more than anything else.

Lol. Someone who is good enough to get into Columbia's Econ program is definitely more than smart enough to get into CMU's engineering program. Hell, CMU is a fucking safety for Ivy kids.

If you have stats to get into Ivies but don't have strong math/ science record in high school, you can just apply to CMU's econ program and do internal transfer into CMU engineering after one year.

Bro, YOU STRUGGLED WITH CALC 1. YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PASS THE PREREQS FOR EE.
 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
Lol. Someone who is good enough to get into Columbia's Econ program is definitely more than smart enough to get into CMU's engineering program. Hell, CMU is a fucking safety for Ivy kids.

If you have stats to get into Ivies but don't have strong math/ science record in high school, you can just apply to CMU's econ program and do internal transfer into CMU engineering after one year.

LOL, take a look at the engineering rankings. CMU is #1, tied with Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley. Cornell is #6, and engineering is Cornell's specialty. Princeton rings in around 10 (after a glut of state schools), Columbia and Penn ~20, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth all making it into top thirty but just barely.

CMU's EE program takes about 10% of applicants and waitlists another 5%, and most people who want to study engineering simply bypass most of the Ivies and apply to MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, Illinois, Cornell, and maybe Princeton. They appeal to two different types of applicants, but Cornell and Columbia (less selective) would have been a slam dunk for Thumis in most quantitative majors if he got waitlisted at CMU.

 

Sorry Thumis, I thought I was posting under Seedy. Getting waitlisted for engineering at CMU is tougher than getting accepted at Columbia.

Seriously, why is it that Columbians are ALWAYS SO INSECURE. Closely followed by Brown and a very small subset of Cornellians. State schoolers and private engineering school types don't really get worked up about this stuff quite as much.

 

Are top tier targets actually that competitive? 2300+ SATs?

When I was going to school (HS grad in 2003) the average Harvard admit was still only like 1450/1600 (obviously good extra-curriculars...but that score certainly wasn't 'elite').

 
PetEng:
Are top tier targets actually that competitive? 2300+ SATs?

When I was going to school (HS grad in 2003) the average Harvard admit was still only like 1450/1600 (obviously good extra-curriculars...but that score certainly wasn't 'elite').

2200+ on SAT is bare minimum to get into likes of Columbia. As a non-URM or non-athlete, 2300+ on SAT is almost necessary nowadays.

The average SAT score for Harvard, Princeton, or Columbia looks actually lower than it really is in reality, because 25-30% of incoming Freshmen got in due to URM status or being an athlete despite having shitty SAT scores, hence bringing down the average SAT stats. If you are just an average white dude with no hooks, you need to be near perfect to get in.

 

Hahahahahahahahah, illini, really???! I really had more respect for you man.

I was accepted to Harvey Mudd and Caltech as well, which is why I didn't even fucking consider a shit school like CMU. Want proof? Send me your email and I'll forward you the campus days for accepted students invitations.

HAHA, you know what? I had set out to prove that non-targets were just as good as targets and didn't need to have an inferiority complex, and then they shot themselves in the foot lol.

:D !

 
seedy underbelly:
Hahahahahahahahah, illini, really???! I really had more respect for you man.

I was accepted to Harvey Mudd and Caltech as well, which is why I didn't even fucking consider a shit school like CMU. Want proof? Send me your email and I'll forward you the campus days for accepted students invitations.

HAHA, you know what? I had set out to prove that non-targets were just as good as targets and didn't need to have an inferiority complex, and then they shot themselves in the foot lol.

:D !

Seedy,

I am getting tired of non-target people on this site talking like how the reason they didn't get into Ivies was due to 'bad luck', or not being born under 'elite parents'

This is all bullshit, lol.

 
seedy underbelly:
Hahahahahahahahah, illini, really???! I really had more respect for you man.

I was accepted to Harvey Mudd and Caltech as well, which is why I didn't even fucking consider a shit school like CMU. Want proof? Send me your email and I'll forward you the campus days for accepted students invitations.

HAHA, you know what? I had set out to prove that non-targets were just as good as targets and didn't need to have an inferiority complex, and then they shot themselves in the foot lol.

:D !

Fact: You did not get into Cal Tech and choose to go to a 'mid tier Ivy'. At this point you're embarrassing yourself.
 
Thurnis Haley:
seedy underbelly:
Hahahahahahahahah, illini, really???! I really had more respect for you man.

I was accepted to Harvey Mudd and Caltech as well, which is why I didn't even fucking consider a shit school like CMU. Want proof? Send me your email and I'll forward you the campus days for accepted students invitations.

HAHA, you know what? I had set out to prove that non-targets were just as good as targets and didn't need to have an inferiority complex, and then they shot themselves in the foot lol.

:D !

Fact: You did not get into Cal Tech and choose to go to a 'mid tier Ivy'. At this point you're embarrassing yourself.

Getting into Columbia is tougher than getting into Cal Tech, you dumb ass. Or, they're very similar in selectivity.

Maybe this kid got into Cal Tech but turned it down because he didn't want to go through all that bullshit engineering rigor and coursework, not to mention Columbia's location can't be beat.

For a kid who wants to go into finance, Columbia Econ is a better pipeline than Cal Tech. You will have more fun, work less hard, and still end up with better recruiting.

 

The cluelessness in this thread is incredible. Non-target vs target is a bullshit comparison that only matters to kids who are in high school or in college and extremely insecure. With the same base intelligence, hard work, and networking I submit that most kids can land anywhere they want post-college, and after that first job it's basically meaningless compared to what you have for professional experience. Take a look at your MDs or partners (except most of you can't because you're still in school and have zero perspective on anything), you'll see that undergrad doesn't really correlate to anything that matters.

 

Getting into Columbia is harder than CalTech? I can not believe that is even remotely true.

The average CalTech admit could easily handle any quant based major at Colombia, the reverse is far from true. CalTech has the hardest undergrad core requirements out of any school in the US.

 
PetEng:
Getting into Columbia is harder than CalTech? I can not believe that is even remotely true.

The average CalTech admit could easily handle any quant based major at Colombia, the reverse is far from true. CalTech has the hardest undergrad core requirements out of any school in the US.

You are confusing selectivity with the rigor of curriculum. Yes, Columbia is harder to get into than Cal Tech. Columbia's acceptance rate is below 10%, close to Harvard's.

Case in point - it is pretty easy to get into Georgia Tech or Purdue's engineering programs. Certainly, getting into these two schools are much easier than getting into any Ivy, even for humanities major at Ivies.

However, the curriculum at these two engineering schools is still tough as shit, and the drop out rate is really high, meaning many who got in can't handle the coursework.

Schools like Purdue engineering, Georgia Tech, or even UIUC engineering are 'easy to get in, hard to get out' type of schools. In that respect, CMU engineering or even Cal Tech are both arguably easier to get in than many of Ivies, but they're 'harder to get out'.

 

You are confusing acceptance rate with 'difficulty to get into'. The difference between 10% acceptance rate and 13% is virtually meaningless due to self selectivity of the applicant populations.

What we actually care about is the percentage of Caltech admits that would be admitted into Columbia (and vice versa). If you don't demonstrate elite quant skills, you aren't getting into Caltech, at all (virtually no other school in the nation can say this, even MIT). Needless to say, a huge portion of the people admitted into Columbia wouldn't even pass the smell test at CalTech.

 
PetEng:
You are confusing acceptance rate with 'difficulty to get into'. The difference between 10% acceptance rate and 13% is virtually meaningless due to self selectivity of the applicant populations.

What we actually care about is the percentage of Caltech admits that would be admitted into Columbia (and vice versa). If you don't demonstrate elite quant skills, you aren't getting into Caltech, at all (virtually no other school in the nation can say this, even MIT). Needless to say, a huge portion of the people admitted into Columbia wouldn't even pass the smell test at CalTech.

I see the point you are making. Perhaps you are right that Cal Tech could be harder to get in - if you suck at math/ science. But, I think Cal Tech is easier to get in - for certain niche applicants who are good with math/ science.

I think it depends on the type of applicant you are. If you are really good at math and have top SAT scores and show math contest record, etc, it would be easier to get into Cal Tech than Columbia.

Schools like Columbia don't admit kids just with top SAT scores/ math skills. They look at your EC's, 'leadership potential', accomplishments, essays, and your content/ personality along with SAT scores and other academic credentials. They adopt much more of a holistic admissions standards, and even if you are a math genius, there is no guarantee that you will get into Columbia since they're looking for people who are 'well rounded in all aspects', and who are 'the best whole package'.

On the other hand, if you are brilliant with math/ science, you can get into Cal Teh despite mediocre EC's or what not. Admissions to Cal Tech is much more number-driven, so if you have the top stats, getting into Cal Tech is more predictable and easier than Columbia.

 

For the record, if I got into both Cal Tech and Columbia, I would choose Columbia hands down, easily.

Columbia is much more of a target for IBD and consulting firms, has better location, and is more fun to attend.

Cal Tech = 4 years of fucking hell, student body is awkward, and OCR for finance isn't even that good, considering how you have to work like a dog to just graduate. All-in, going to a school like Cal Tech is a terrible deal.

Go Columbia, major in Econ, have fun, have less than half the amount of stress about school work than those Cal Tech kids, internship opportunities in NYC, study less than 1/3 of what those Cal Tech kids have to study, and enjoy stronger OCR for IBD/ Consulting. You win.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
I don't think Seedy applied to Caltech's EE program. I don't think I'm going to give him my email address.

In any case, the acceptance rates and test scores bear out that Engineering at CMU is more selective than most liberal arts at Columbia and Cornell.

I heard many horror stories about Cal Tech. Insanely difficult academics, oppressive work load, lack of social life, lack of hot girls, brutal grading/ curves, no school sports, awkward/ anti-social student body, lack of academic diversity (most are engineering/ science kids), and lack of OCR into finance/ consulting.

It is a great school if your career ambition is to go into academia in engineering/ math/ science world. But, for someone who is set on Wall Street, it would be too much of a painful process to deal with. Let's face it - you don't need to grind it out taking some of the hardest math/ physics/ engineering courses in the nation for that IBD or consulting analyst gig.

 
Sexy_Like_Enrique:
IlliniProgrammer:
I don't think Seedy applied to Caltech's EE program. I don't think I'm going to give him my email address.

In any case, the acceptance rates and test scores bear out that Engineering at CMU is more selective than most liberal arts at Columbia and Cornell.

I heard many horror stories about Cal Tech. Insanely difficult academics, oppressive work load, lack of social life, lack of hot girls, brutal grading/ curves, no school sports, awkward/ anti-social student body, lack of academic diversity (most are engineering/ science kids), and lack of OCR into finance/ consulting.

It is a great school if your career ambition is to go into academia in engineering/ math/ science world. But, for someone who is set on Wall Street, it would be too much of a painful process to deal with. Let's face it - you don't need to grind it out taking some of the hardest math/ physics/ engineering courses in the nation for that IBD or consulting analyst gig.

Enrique, i've been viewing this forum for a while and this is my first post. I just can't stand your arrogance anymore. You really have no clue how dumb you sound.

You claim you are sick of people critisizing the ivies. Well i happen to be tired of your criticism of the math/science majors. I'm a STEM major at a non target, and to be quite frank i think you can half retarded, and still get an A in an english class at Cornell. It doesn't take shit write a paper on some bullshit like an analysis of Shakespeare. But it sure as hell takes someone that has a fucking brain to solve an advanced differential equation. There is no two types of intellect as you suggest, your just tight your a dumbass that cant do math, so you claim that you are smart because you do well in the humanities subject. Typical non sense i hear from at history.

So lets not call out non targets hear and say there jealous.

Also wall street is becoming more quantitative, and the investment banking bonuses are getting cut. The HFT's are still getting paid, along with the risk managers, etc. So there is growing demand on walls street for stem majors as illini said.

you think it's unfair that Kelly students get better OCR than Columbia students? why? I think its a step in the right direction. It gives other people a chance, despite the fact that they may have not worked as hard in high school. I just wanted to point out the hypocrisy here. If you guys are truly such smart hard working people than you should have no problem starting up your own trading firm, etc. You outta be fine regardless of the fact that the OCR is less at columbia since your so smart and hard working after all.

But thats beyond the point. If i was in charge of hiring people, i wouldn't give a rat's ass about what your degree/GPA is. I would care only abpout how well you could get the job done. If iw was hiring traders i would put them in front of a screen and see how well they do. If i ran an HFT firm i would ask him to compile code and execute a strategy and see how well it does. If the person that returned 30% a year had a 2.6 sociology degree from community college, and the person that had the 25% had a 3.8 math degree from Harvard, i would choose the former because he made me more money. If i was hriing at an investement bank i would ask the candidates to work me through a DCF,LBO etc. and see how well they do the fuckin job, and make me the most money.

I understand it doesn't work that way in the real world and that's very unfortunate. But people like enrique perpetuate this nonsense that nontargets wont do a better job than targets. That's crap. I've met Harvard kids that are dumb as nails with poli sci. degrees that got hired by Goldman IBD and knew nothing about finance, and your gonna try to convince me they deserve the job over someone from a nontarget that can put a LBO model togethor, despite the fact that the harvard guy doesn't know what LBO stands for? gtfo.

 

SLE, Columbia takes Harvard's rejects. If you don't get into Harvard, you go to Columbia. Senior Patrol Leaders and Varsity Captains in the top 10% go to Columbia; District OA chairs and national organization chairs who were valedictorians or salutatorians go to Harvard. It's simply another level. And it's what drives Columbians, Browninites, and a few Cornellians crazy and makes them lash out at state schoolers. Even more infuriating to them is when recruiters think their school is a good one among many after they worked so hard to get in-

Of course, none of this really says that much about who people are which is why it's so sad to see folks get bent out of shape. Everything that you did before you hit 18 was largely a function of your parents or mentors rather than you.

 

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If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

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