Top Five Liberal Arts?

Who went to one of the top five LACs? Ie. Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Carleton, Middlebury? If you did, how did the BB recruiting process go for you? I am genuinely curious, and would greatly appreciate input. Thanks

 

Any of these places (possible exception Carleton) are great and I'd wager that your chances of a BB banking job from them are far greater than at larger schools. There are not that many people interested and BBs take a very good number of people from them. Carleton isn't so hot because of its location. Also not sure about Swarthmore; has more of an academic vibe to it.

 

I went to Williams...graduated in 2002 so the market wasn't so great. Most if not all of the BBs recruit there along with some MM banks. 2002 was a very competitive year and wasn't easy to get an offer but I managed to land in a MM shop in NYC --after getting to final rounds at a few BBs and getting rejected.

With banks hiring more aggressively now, I would assume it is significantly easier to land an IB job from a top LA school in 2007.

I think Maverick has a good point...given the small class size, the odds of landing an interview and job at some of these ibanks is decent at a small LA school with decent street rep.

 

I would say echo some others here and say there's a great deal of opportunity coming from these schools. I went to a LA ranked just below these we typically send quite a few to top-tier banks especially considering the small class size. I think part of it may be that a strong GPA at one of these LAs is considered a major asset because of the reputation for tougher grading than at some larger schools. Just my opinion.

 

Friend of mine went to Middlebury (Class of '06). Football player, smart guy. Is currently working IBD for Goldman.

Pretty much anything is possible.

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I am actually a 2 season varsity athlete at one of these schools, and the point isnt about how good the team is compared to D1, its about showing drive and committment, and that you can work as a team. But please, this forum does not need people who cannot provide respectful and constructive feedback.

 

Would Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, and other top LACs be considered "target schools"? For instance, I read somewhere on these boards that some of the top firms recruit only from HYPSM and a few others. Would a big firm like GS recruit at top LACs?

 

Williams, Amherst, Middlebury are all very much target schools for most BBs. Can't say much about other schools but these three certainly hold their own on the street.

As for it being more intelligent to attend an Ivy, it's considerably easier to land an analyst job out of an LAC. Ever considered how many people drop their resumes for a BB job at an Ivy? A couple hundred, and in some cases close to a thousand. Around 50 kids at W/A/M will drop their resumes for a BB job, and less than half will be competitive applicants. An econ major at one of these schools will take you a long way.

 

It's not the LACs, it's the kids. Most of the kids from my high school who went to LACs were rich white guys with banker dads. They would have gotten in had they gone to a bigger university too. Don't choose an LAC thinking that's going to get you into banking, the majority of kids at those schools who go to Wall Street already had connections.

 

My point is that the kids who get into banking from LACs don't get in because of the school name. The reason the alumni networks are so good is because many of the alumni in banking came from a certain social network already: rich, white, East Coast.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of students who get interviews BECAUSE it says Harvard or Princeton on their resume, regardless of their other background.

 

Yeah, but somewhere along the line somebody at some bank had to have thought that these were good schools at which to recruit.

It's a virtuous circle by now.

And I can tell you that there are very specific reasons why liberal arts students are desirable.

We are, on average, highly intelligent, multi-talented, good-looking, well-traveled, well-spoken...and humble.

 

I know a bunch of kids graduating from liberal arts schools who are sitting on their asses. This is because the recruiting doesn't seem to be great .. If you know you want to get into banking, why bother with them .. why take that risk when you know you have a much better chance if you go to an Ivy or a good undergrad business school.

 
angry_keebler:
I know a bunch of kids graduating from liberal arts schools who are sitting on their asses. This is because the recruiting doesn't seem to be great .. If you know you want to get into banking, why bother with them .. why take that risk when you know you have a much better chance if you go to an Ivy or a good undergrad business school.
Are they going to top, target LACs? LAC kids are less pre-professional than kids from top univs, and they're less interested in the banking jobs. However, the banks are interested in them (at least at the top LACs, like Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore). Off the top of my head i know GS, MS, Leh, Laz, CS, JPM, Citi, DB, and others recruit at my school. These programs took a LOT of kids - some banks took 7 or 8 kids out of a tiny class. Also, I have friends who got jobs with Bain and McKinsey.

What if the kids you know are slackers? You can find those at any college. It's not at all a "risk" to go to a top LAC for banking - if you show interest in the job, talk to some alumni, it's a pretty clear shot. I would think it's more of a "risk" to be at a larger univ where a greater absolute and percentage amount of kids want to do banking.

 
angry_keebler:
I know a bunch of kids graduating from liberal arts schools who are sitting on their asses. This is because the recruiting doesn't seem to be great .. If you know you want to get into banking, why bother with them .. why take that risk when you know you have a much better chance if you go to an Ivy or a good undergrad business school.

if you're making a choice of what school to attend based on odds of getting into a bank in terms of making it through on-campus recruiting, you're probably making a bad decision.

as for kids sitting on their asses after college, plenty of ivy kids do that too...it's called 'i'm spoiled and i don't want to go to work'.

ivy kids have a big, loose network and on-campus recruitment, LAC kids have a smaller but maybe tighter network. in the end everyone's gonna get a couple of sit-downs with banks and the smart, amicable people will get through.

to the LAC kids, do your homework, get relevant internships no matter where, network and you'll be fine.

 
gweilo:
angry_keebler:
I know a bunch of kids graduating from liberal arts schools who are sitting on their asses. This is because the recruiting doesn't seem to be great .. If you know you want to get into banking, why bother with them .. why take that risk when you know you have a much better chance if you go to an Ivy or a good undergrad business school.

if you're making a choice of what school to attend based on odds of getting into a bank in terms of making it through on-campus recruiting, you're probably making a bad decision.

That's the only thing I disagree with. There's less competition at LACs, and the alumni network IS tighter. At least at top LACs, there's loads of attention from banks.
 

I can't remember the exact number, but I read the '07 JP Morgan IB analyst spreadsheet and I remember seeing about 8 kids from Williams. The entire senior class has about 500 students.

 

That might be useful for banking. But if you want a lifelong network that will serve you in a number of careers (which most people in our generation will have), an Ivy will always be better.

 
fp175:
That might be useful for banking. But if you want a lifelong network that will serve you in a number of careers (which most people in our generation will have), an Ivy will always be better.

I give up - the non-LAC people don't seem to understand. LAC grads are everywhere, and they seem so much tighter as a group than univ alumni.

 
aguy:
fp175:
That might be useful for banking. But if you want a lifelong network that will serve you in a number of careers (which most people in our generation will have), an Ivy will always be better.

I give up - the non-LAC people don't seem to understand. LAC grads are everywhere, and they seem so much tighter as a group than univ alumni.

They can't be everywhere; the schools are too small. If you seriously think people who are considering a career in academia, politics, medicine, law, etc., in addition to finance, would have a alumni network at an LAC that is better than a HPYS alum, you are just deluding yourself.

I'm not saying LACs aren't good, but choosing one for the alumni network is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Choose it because you like it and work out the alumni stuff later.

 

I'll be an IBD summer analyst at Morgan Stanley in about a week, so I thought I would post some actual numbers.

Williams: 3 Pomona/Claremont McKenna: 3 Amherst: 2 Wellesley: 1 Colgate: 1 Middlebury: 1 Bowdoin: 1 Wesleyan: 1

So I would definitely advise going the HYPSW route (Harvard is sending 15, Stanford 10, Wharton 8, Princeton 6, Yale 4) over any of the liberal arts guys, but if it's between one of these and some other great schools that send a comparable amount of students to BBs each year (Northwestern is sending 1, Stern 1, Richard Ivey 1, MIT 2, Georgetown 2), then you might want to take the size advantage into consideration and go liberal arts. Then again, depending on interests, you might not.

 
abcibd:
I'll be an IBD summer analyst at Morgan Stanley in about a week, so I thought I would post some actual numbers.

Williams: 3 Pomona/Claremont McKenna: 3 Amherst: 2 Wellesley: 1 Colgate: 1 Middlebury: 1 Bowdoin: 1 Wesleyan: 1

So I would definitely advise going the HYPSW route (Harvard is sending 15, Stanford 10, Wharton 8, Princeton 6, Yale 4) over any of the liberal arts guys, but if it's between one of these and some other great schools that send a comparable amount of students to BBs each year (Northwestern is sending 1, Stern 1, Richard Ivey 1, MIT 2, Georgetown 2), then you might want to take the size advantage into consideration and go liberal arts. Then again, depending on interests, you might not.

Like i said, the non-LAC people just don't seem to be getting the message (are you LAC or univ?). The competition for these positions is WAY higher among HYPS and other univs than at LACs - the student body just isn't as interested (especially in doing summer internships - usually by senior year they realize they need a job, though).

Also notice that DESPITE lower interest at a LAC, Williams and Amherst each send 2 or 3 kids, which when compared to univ size (about 3-4 times bigger than a LAC) means the amount of kids they send is quite comparable to HYPSW. Also notice that the student body of Amherst + Williams combined is far smaller than the Princeton or Yale student bodies, but A+W sent 5. But I'd want to see more banks, more years; we need a larger sampling size.

Anecdotally - I know one of those people from the LACs who is going to MS, and I know it didn't take him much effort to get it. His biggest factor was just calling an alum at MS.

My point is that it's relatively easy to get a position at a top bank coming from a top LAC, and the recruiting process is less regimented and less competitive than at top univs. Plus, the alumni networks are tighter.

 

Take a look at Penn's placement stats. They're posted somewhere on the forums. They placed something like 62.5% of their kids on Wall St. A larger percentage of that probably got offers but chose consulting/grad school/something else. The numbers are probably similar at Harvard, Stanford etc. How exactly do you justify going to a LAC, even a top one, when faced with those statistics ? The larger class sizes don't seem to matter.

If somehow in high school you are already aware that you want to get into IB (this notion seems questionable to me), an Ivy seems to be a virtual guarantee that you'll make it into the industry.

 

williams grad here. from my experience, williams is just as good as h/y/p when actually in school and you're looking to land the banking gig; however, once you've graduated and if you've done other things, it isn't so. forget banking for a moment, most people out in the "real" world, have not heard of williams or amherst, but everyone's heard of h/y/p and stanford. williams was great for getting me into law school and b-school, but it hasn't helped an iota in helping me land a banking internship while in b-school. the recruiters i met all went to state schools for undergrad and none of them seemed to know williams is considered an "elite" school. it's damn frustrating when i'm around classmates and people will say "X" is so smart; he went to Stanford. I'm like wtf, what about me?!! Only the people very familiar with schools and from the east coast have heard about williams and amherst.when i was out in LA no one heard about it.

 

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