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wharton is all over S&T at all the BBs
more than MIT?
at the BB i work at yes
I know you are probably referring to ugrad only, but if it adds any colour, on the MBA level Wharton is the most heavily recruited school for S&T. Chicago places about the same number of people, but because of class size and level of interest, Wharton averages a higher number of offers per person, on average.
I mention this because I know of a number of people who do recruiting for their schools at both the MBA and ugrad level, so what is noticeable is more the high level of Wharton presence overall.
How does HBS do? I feel like there isn't too much interest among HBS students for S&T but am just curious what the dynamic is between students and recruiters.
grouped by general frequency, then listed by current numbers (as best as I can remember)
Group1 MIT Wharton Columbia
Group2 Duke Cornell UChicago
Group3 All outliers
Do yourself a favor and transfer.
From my experience HBS isn't a "core" school, for lack of a better term, at some S&T shops. Don't get me wrong--obviously every single bank recruits there, but the school just isn't represented that highly in S&T, so students there may have to put in a little more legwork on their own.
To give you an idea, between my summer internship and full-time class (which were at two different banks), out of about 40 or so people I knew about 1 kid each from HBS, Tuck, Darden, Cornell, Duke, etc. Then about 6-10 each from Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, and Stern.
I knew people from amazing schools like HBS and MIT Sloan who basically said they just needed to put in more effort on their own to visit trading floors and chase down S&T jobs, in comparison to a Wharton or Chicago where the firms come to you in greater frequency. An example would be maybe you have a firmwide presentation by a bank at each school. Then maybe one invite-only event at a school like HBS. But then at a Wharton/Chicago you could have another 2-3 S&T-specific events hosted by each bank. So at schools like Wharton you'll just end up meeting a greater number of S&T people from banks at on-campus recruiting events, thereby minimizing the amount of time spent travelling to New York to visit trading floors.
Caveat all of this by saying my experience was with recruiting between 2004 and 2006--some of this may have changed as a result of current market situations.
i've heard the whole Chicago-Wharton story about them placing a lot of MBAs into S&T but from the stats it looks like Wharton doesn't do that much anymore:
http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mba/careers/statistics/fulltime.cfm
http://www.chicagogsb.edu/fulltime/career/index.aspx
Chicago still places about 9% but Wharton only about 2%, or are the numbers fudged in some way?
S&T much easier to get into than Ibanking?
Nathanielpowers: at the MBA level, at top schools, there is only limited interest in Ibanking. Most of the people who pursue it do it because they want to switch careers into finance, or because they couldn't land a PE gig. From the point of view, it's actually very easy to land an IBD job. S&T tends to attract people on its own merits, as more of a long-term career plan (i.e. everyone I know who ever went into banking went into it with the stated goal of only staying in a few years, then moving on; whereas with S&T more people consider potentially making it a career). Either way, from a top program, they are both equally difficult to get into. Which is to say, in a decent job market, not hard at all if you're coming from a top school. I can't comment on undergrad.
Larrydalooter: here's the difference between Wharton and Chicago. For whatever reason, the number of students at Wharton interested in S&T is significantly less than at Chicago, Columbia, etc. That said, when recruiters come and know they are dealing with a class of 800+, they tend to expect a much higher level of interest in S&T. So at Wharton the S&T club when I was there was only about 50 students. The equivalent club at Chicago was close to twice that size. But Chicago has a smaller class than Wharton. The end result is that during my year all of us at Wharton were averaging 2-5 offers per person in S&T for the summer, whereas according to my buddies at Chicago, it was more like 1-3. So it's really just a matter of numbers--both schools are viewed equally in the eyes of recruiters. All that said, you noticed about 2% placement from Wharton in S&T. For some reason, interest at Wharton (at the MBA level only) waned even further in S&T recently, and last year the S&T club had only about 20-30 active members (versus 50 when I was there). All of them were place, but the overall percentage placed dropped because fewer people pursued it as a career field. Good question, by the way. It was a question I had but couldn't get a good answer to until I actually went to school and went through recruiting.
wait, I'm talking about the Undergrad here, not the MBA??
In '07, about 8% of Wharton's ugrad class went into S&T. Almost 50% IBD.
But could the Wharton/Chicago undergrad bias come from the fact that not a lot of grads from HBS want to go into S&T? I get the impression that S&T is often decried as somewhat more low brow than the high rolling of management consulting and investment banking proper.
Naturally, I don't agree with the stereotype, but I get the sense that it exists.
DeltaHedged www.deltahedged.com
"Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved." - Niccolo Machiavelli
I do agree that there is still a perception of S&T as it was back in the 90s on campus. That said, one thing I learned from working on the Street is that college campuses, ugrad or graduate level, are a couple of years behind the power curve. They really have little clue what's going on in the real world.
Example-3 years ago few interns were interested in rotating on commodities desks, even though it was really already a "hot" desk. Then all of a sudden 2 years ago every intern wanted to rotate on the desk.
So from that point of view I think S&T will gain a bigger reputation than IBD, which is inevitable seeing that most banks employ 2-3 times as many people in sales, trading, and structuring as they do in IBD.
All that said, at the MBA level very few people at Wharton are interested in S&T. As little as 1% in some years, and never really more than 5%. The level of interest at HBS is probably similar. It's not that HBS is in any way higher than Wharton, as your post implies, but more that, while both schools are very diverse and tops in all areas, Wharton does still have more of a finance focus and HBS more of a consulting focus.
One last point--students don't really look down on S&T, they just don't know anything about it. And if they do, then they think it's too risky--as in yes, you'll make a ton more than in consulting and if you're good much more than in banking, but that's it's much riskier overall. Most MBA students are very risk-averse.....
S&T floors are more interested in putting MBAs into the Sales spot than the Trading spot, if anywhere at all. The S&T bias is towards "quants" and they'd rather promote top performers from MIT, Chicago, and Wharton undergrad. Historically, many of the senior guys in S&T didn't have MBAs, they had PhDs or a Master's in Math or Engineering. There is a widespread perception everywhere, particularly in S&T, that the MBA is a soft degree and not as rigorous as other graduate studies disciplines including the previously mentioned. HBS particularly has a reputation for having a soft program focused on management skills so they're not a core school for most S&T floors. This slant has also pervaded many hedge funds that have a similar bias against MBAs although that attitude varies depending on the strategy of the HF, undergrad major, and other advanced degrees held by the applicant. In the S&T or HF worlds applicants with Level 3, CFAs + an advanced quant degree are viewed in higher regard than MBAs.
Agree with everything abedneg06 said.
Also, in my previous post I mentioned a consulting focus at HBS--typo, I meant general management. The number of kids who do M/B/B at Wharton is the same as at HBS, and for that matter, the same as at Stanford, Kellogg, etc.
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