University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

koop:

northwestern and u of Chicago are stronger

My Q was clearly not this, but was about the represention of UIUC at BBs or MMs for that matter. Thanks for the help!

??

There's very little representation of Urbana Champ on the street esp in PE and IBD. A little better in trading in chicago at least.

There is a pretty strong representation in Chicago..not very big in NYC though

For some reason I have seen many UIUC people at Citi NY.

.

I second goalieman, I have met quite a few guys in Chicago from there. Can't same the same about NYC.

yeah, it's a feeder for chicago. very very few (read: i've never met one) from Illinois in NY

GS does every other year usually. MS posts positions but does not come down for interviews (usually conducts phone interviews). Typical firms that come down are Citi, Deutsche, Lazard, BMO, BofA ML, Blair, Baird, Houlihan, JP Morgan (sometimes), Lincoln, and a few other mid market firms. Recruting is definitely getting better here, and these roles are all for front office Chicago.

GS does every other year usually. MS posts positions but does not come down for interviews (usually conducts phone interviews). Typical firms that come down are Citi, Deutsche, Lazard, BMO, BofA ML, Blair, Baird, Houlihan, JP Morgan (sometimes), Lincoln, and a few other mid market firms. Recruting is definitely getting better here, and these roles are all for front office Chicago.

Im pretty sure you have to network you ass off to even get an interview from any of the BB's. Pre financial crisis maybe a simple resume drop with a high gpa could have gotten you a 1st round, not su much the case anymore. but I do know that a ton of banks go down for informational interviews.

Assuming you are talking about UIUC, not UIC

l

im at UIUC, had 2 superdays with two BBs in their NYC office. Got an offer for a MM IBD SA in NYC this summer. 3.4 GPA fin major. There are opportunities for NYC

Met with Duff & Phelps M&A Group and they had a ton of people from both Illinois undergrad and grad.

An easy thing to do is look at the career services website, look for the career fairs, and check the companies attending.

I did a quick check of one of the fall career fairs and saw BofA, Citi, MS and UBS.

Lazard goes to Illinois so they are pretty good.

to say, but Illinois is mediocre even for Chicago banking. I have friends who went there and are telling me this. Michigan and NW dominate the major BBs. You'll have your occasional UChicago, ND, or Indiana, but those guys are typically superstars at their respective schools. Same applies for Illinois. Unless you have a 3.8+ GPA, hard to get interviews, much less an offer, from a BB even in Chicago. NY, from what I hear, is pretty much impossible

really? what is it that UChicago is not a "target school?" I always thought they were at least on par, if not better than UMich and Northwestern...

actually I'd say they're all on par with each other, no school at analyst level has an advantage over any toher.....at associate level, UChicago is much better represented (in terms of quantity) in Chicago. However, Umich and NW will still give you a great shot. These 3 schools are head and shoulder better than other schools. However, if you went to Wharton/Harvard and want to move to Chicago, you should be able to quite easily.

actually I'd say they're all on par with each other, no school at analyst level has an advantage over any toher.....at associate level, UChicago is much better represented (in terms of quantity) in Chicago. However, Umich and NW will still give you a great shot. These 3 schools are head and shoulder better than other schools. However, if you went to Wharton/Harvard and want to move to Chicago, you should be able to quite easily.

Is Illinois primarily non target for and IB regardless of departments? eg, would you still have a good chance at trading instead of ma from a Illinois/Indiana/etc?

Generally, from a non-target chances at trading are better than the odds of getting into IB. However, what do U truly want to do?

he's wrong about the kids from U of C being "typically superstars at [U of C]." U of C is definitely a target....maybe not for NYC offices though, i dunno

i think illinois sucks. what i have seen in terms of mba grads - quite unimpressive. kids.

First about the MBA kids, Illinois doesn't have a great MBA program. Especially to prepare people for banking. In fact, I heard one story about the MBAs taking part in a corp. fin case competition against other schools (Chicago,Northwestern etc). Some of the undergrads had to step in and coach them on valuation etc. A lot of them are smart but usually know little about business (former engineers ). I hate to sound like this but a lot of the ones I have met are Asians/Europeans straight from Asia/Europe who struggle with english etc and that seems to be a huge impediment( I am one as well butbut i do OK with English/Communication etc). Needless to say they didn't win the case competition.

Now in terms of undergrad, illinois is the best accounting school in the country and we do have a decent finance faculty as well. The thing is the motivated students (say about 40% of the business student) are really motivated and usually can compete with most undergrads out there. These are the kids who typically become I bankers, Consultants and because of the accounting bias accountants at the Big 4.( I know I-bankers and Strategy Consultants are typically more more motivated that someoned doing Audit at Deloitte but you get the general idea). Now the real problem is the botton half who get OK jobs ( what one banker described to me as a regular job) and that skews the perceived quality. But it is a state school so thats something we really can't change. Plus Engineering gets a lot more money than the business program simply becase illinois is seen as an engineering school.

Now it terms of IB, each year a decent number of undergrads go into banking. I don't know how this compares to other schools but let me give you an idea about this year. This is to the best of my knowledge and there may be more people with offers. Most banks hire from Illinois with the notable exceptions of MS and CS. GS: 2 offers so far from the interns, full time time interviews happened recently not sure what happened with that. They were looking to make one more offer if it was worth it. Merrill: at least 2-3 offers from the intern class and they have another superday coming up JPM: 4 offers from the interns. I am not sure what happened with the full time interviews Lazard: 2 full time offers Citi: At least 3 offers from the intern class. Again not completely sure about happened with the full time. I know one guy got the offer from Chicago butturned them down. Another one accepted New York BofA: 4 offers to the best of my knowledge. Bear Stearns. 4 offers extended Duetsche Bank: Not sure UBS: at least one offer Along with that there a fair amount of MMs and boutiques who come here to hire. William Blair, Robert Baird, Lincoln Partners (International now I think) etc etc. Hope this helps

seems like recruiting is getting better here

From what I heard, Indiana seems to be getting more people into Ibanking than Uillinois because at Indiana it is pretty much just business school that is recruited, but at Uillinois its pretty much the whole university

Illinois is pretty solid when it comes to finance. You have to remember that it is the top accounting school in the nation, and the third best engineering school. Recruiters will find enough students who have expertise in both finance and quantitative analysis/mathematics to keep them happy.