UVA vs. UCLA undergrad

Hi everyone, I am a high school senior who was recently accepted to UCLA and UVA and hope to pursue a career in either IBD or MBB (ambitious I know). While I am still waiting to hear back from ivies/berkeley etc, these two schools are looking like definite options, and I just wanted to get some opinions on how they stack up.

For context, I am in state for UCLA, so I would have lower tuition. At the moment, I think I'm really leaning towards UCLA. I definitely prefer its campus/vibe compared to UVA (and if things don't work out with finance I'd rather be in LA than VA/the east coast). At the same time though, while UCLA is ranked higher, I know UVA (especially if I get into McIntire) is considered more of a target, and I always see UCLA getting bashed for having shitty OCR on here, so I have some reservations. Could anyone give me some insight on how these two schools compare for IBD/MBB? Also, if anyone has some broader info on the WC finance recruiting pipeline and how UCLA does against USC/Cal I would greatly appreciate that too. Thanks!

 

If you want west coast, go to UCLA. It is a west coast target, but not nearly as good as UVA on the east coast. If you want to work on the east coast, go to UVA, but going to the west will be a bit of a challenge yet doable.

“If you ain’t first, you’re last!” - GOAT
 

I’m definitely not opposed to staying on the West coast. I just want IB in general. I think if I wanted to get to the east coast I could do so post MBA. However, if UVA is better for east coast recruiting than UCLA is for west coast recruiting (if you standardized the regions basically) then that’s a concern for me I guess.

 

Circlejerk is strong, true. Everyone I know at McIntire is pretty gungho about McIntire-- wouldn't say it's a bad academic experience, most love it there actually. True some really strong students aren't getting into McIntire, but that's usually an exceptional case. Yes, certain circles have clout over recruiting at certain firms

 

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