Undergrad: Can someone explain how non-business school kids prepare themselves?

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I mean, if the underlying question is where you personally should apply for college.... you can make it into IB from either HYPS or a good target school. So I wouldn't let that be your only or even main deciding factor in where you apply. You just need to figure out for yourself (I'm not saying that part is easy) where you will fit in best, where you think you'll get the best education/whole package for what you need. I do think part of the reason Ivy+ kids do well for IB is, yes, the perception (not saying it's necessarily really true) that they're smart(er)/quick(er) learners, they've already passed some filtering process to even get in. But there are advantages and disadvantages. It can be more on them to self-teach some of the accounting/finance/interview prep. Getting an undergrad degree from Harvard or wherever doesn't guarantee you a job in IB if you can't answer basic technicals. I think the people who get the most out of those kinds of educations, the ones who are really able to take advantage of everything those universities have to offer, tend to be independent, highly motivated, have a good concrete sense of what they want and how to go there. Ironically their career development offices are sometimes less helpful than the public target schools, because they have a fair number of people going into Teach for America or other non corporate stuff. Like, they're less proactive about making sure students know what OCR is, are on track for recruiting timelines, etc. So if you go to one of those places it's probably more on you to keep track of things yourself, and find the people within the administration who can help you get what you need.

HYPS students have already proven themselves as superstars capable of working hard. A kid from a state school could be very hard working as well, but no one will blame you for a Harvard hire that ends up not fitting into the company/doing the work... but if the same kid went to U Arkansas, there would be some questions. Also when you have 400 applications and interview 20, which of the (otherwise completely equal) candidates would you pick? There are some arguments about hard work and grade inflation at some schools but most would still pick a top target resume over the same resume from a random school.

In terms of accounting and finance prep, with recruiting moving into early sophomore spring, even business school kids have 1-2 semesters of accounting/finance at most. Non-B school kids just have to learn the equivalent on their own, but that’s always been part of IB recruiting. Less of an edge as recruiting gets early and B-school students take less finance.

I heard that the expectation for students who went through undergraduate business programs are higher during the technical portion of the interview. At least that’s what all the students recruiting for IB at my school (non-business program) claim.

As a prefrosh, I can't really speak from personal experience, but what I've seen from speaking with current students from various schools about recruiting (didn't consider any UG B-Schools by the way) is that Banking analyst programs are basically built to train starry-eyed 20 year olds to be machines.

This means that they just need competent people who can grind. The point of applying/interviewing is to evaluate competency and should be put in context. Which means, the kids who have experience in Finance/Accounting via UG Bschool should be good at technical stuff, while the English/Government Double Major from Brown probably should be evaluated based on softer skills. Of course, the Wharton kid who concentrated in Finance will probably have an easier time during the internship and training, but if the company did a good job vetting its candidates, the other interns should be at the same level by the end of summer.

This concept of Banking being a building block/training program in Finance is probably a reason why smaller buyside firms won't recruit out of undergrad. Why build a training program if someone else is doing it for you?

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a2093076:

even a granola Ivy like Brown

Granola Ivy?? Get into these school first dude. But to answer your question, they view Ivy kids as smarter (even though they aren't always). But since the Unis are so represented in banks, the alumnus want to give back to the school. It's pretty easy to prep for IB(only really takes a few months at most of studying), and you learn most of the stuff during the SA stint, so they just want to see if you're smart enough.

Timeless, unassailable advice from a non-target state-school grad: go to the absolute best school you can get into. It is a different stratosphere.