Why they don't let state school kids into banking (typically)

lol

funny

so a "typical" student in a state school smoke. great correlation

IBnutz, faculty of my non-target college is great. Average student of my college is f**** retarded, and that is why no i-banks ever come :(

I wish high school counselors would explain the difference between top-5, top-10, and top-15 public schools.

IBnutz:

Hey IndianBanker and you other state school guys who wonder why its so hard to get interviews (well other than because your resume has the word "technical" spelled wrong)...

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legalwriting/2009/03/at-home-this-migh…

hahaha. I remember when this happened. Though, I must say the faculty is rarely like this. P.S. I have a pretty good job lined up now.

is this real??

go gators!

Florida is hardly the best of state schools

"If this is how future business leaders are being educated, it goes a long way to explaining how we got into our current financial mess, to say nothing of giving the term "higher education" a whole new meaning."

How is this so if these public schools aren't targets?

What is the US thing with state school? Honestly some public schools are as good as the top privates (UC-system, UMich, UVA, etc).

The US is the only country where quality of undergrad students does not correlate well with quality of research and faculty in the school. Thus, someone from Dartmouth (which has next to zero impact in the scientific world), gets more currency than an equal person from, say, UCLA or UMich. Same story with the liberal arts outfits. That, for an outsider, is totally absurd.

Why someone would rather go to a liberal arts college known only in the US, and on the east coast, than go to a good state school with a wide spectrum of subjects and experts and research? Please explain guys

BTW, in many other countries, the top schools, are public (state) schools [eg: All top schools in Europe]

That video was hilarious! I bet that class was a real GPA booster (Midterm Question: In one word, what is Sun Tzu about? Answer: Strategy). Honestly though, I have to love some of the state school hating that goes on in some finance crowds. The people serious about it have self-esteem issues.

In all honesty, most state schools really aren't high enough in quality to get you a job in IB, and that is unfortunate. However, there are a good 5 to 8 that get recruited by most of the BBs (think: UC-B, Mich, UVA, IU, UNC, etc.). Not as many slots though, relative to targets.

When it comes down to it though, it is wrong to identify with your school, because you, the individual, are the one being recruited. Your own efforts and qualifications are what matter in school, and in the real world.

I heard this argument, ny23. I can certainly see the benefits of a smaller community and the networking opportunities of a small school. But the thing is, if the deal is to explore, a large university would give you many more choices. Plus, I disagree with the notion that great/famous researchers have nothing to do with your education. Lets say you want to major in economics, would you rather learn economics 101 from someone who merely knows it, or from someone who revolutionized the field?

See, Soros credits most of what he learned by his interaction with Karl Popper at LSE -- would you have that at your lac? probably not.

Note that I am referring here to the top public schools, the ones where you can have access to top faculty if you want to and actively pursue that path.

I am not disputing the fact that lac has its advantages when it comes to jobs in banking (though personally, I've never met a trader from a lac). I am just trying to understand why the US is distinct in that respect.

Some public school kids are Much Much smarter than your Harvard or Princeton Nerds. I think the reason why wall street recruits from private schools is because its always been that way due to kids of Wall Streeters attending the schools their fathers attended. Kind of like a good ole boy system. Getting into say Medical School is alot tougher(acceptance rate of less than 3% nationally)than getting a wall street front office job and Most kids accepted into Med Schools ARE from Public Schools. Something to think about...

Harvard, Princeton and the other private schools put plenty of kids into med schools. In-fact, the only real chance you stand at getting into a MD/PhD program at any of the top schools is to come from one of the best schools. Most state school kids aren't getting into the Harvard MD/PhD program.

It's a total myth that state school students can't get into IB. As you can see, I went to lowly Virginia Tech--we had at least 20 finance students get job offers as investment banking analysts in the class of 2007. Essentially, those 20-25 people were the only ones with the desire to go into investment banking. One got on with Goldman Sachs (but virtually all the rest were with regional boutiques).

The fact is, most state school students are 1) not interested in Wall Street jobs or 2) have never heard of most of them. Most of my friends are gov't consultants, argicultural researchers, engineers, architects, and civil servants, which was the purpose in founding land grant state universities--the production of engineers, scientists, researchers, teachers, etc. State universities serve their purpose; they are replete with intelligent people who are more than capable of doing monkey IB analyst work.

I think the problem is a lot of state schools do not have a talent pool that is as deep as the ivey league or top targets. I think the street does a good job in recruiting of recognizing though that the top 10 or so kids from well respected state schools can match up with their target school recruits, but it does not make sense to spend time and money recruiting at state schools that have a smaller talent pool.

www.sharpeinvesting.com

I see plenty of bankers/consultants from top public b-schools (especially Michigan Ross and Virginia McIntire)

usually people preface their public school shit-talking by saying those two, and UCB, are the exceptions

guess the op forgot or figured it was implied

anyways, funny clip

Sure there are qualified candidates at state schools, but there is a far greater percentage of qualified candidates at target schools, so why waste resources?

Pretty interesting analysis on a metric we can all appreciate

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/mar2009/bs2009032_982142.h…

i got more discussion out of this post than that clown affluenza ever gets but of course this post was kept off the main page.

As most europeans would... what I was trying to understand is why the preference for certain schools relative to the top publics.

I would think Umich Ross, UCB-Haas, NYU-Stern, CMU-Tepper, and Georgetown McDonough (however you spell that bschool) would be targets to semi-targets.

The rest like Vandy/Emory are obviously not. Biggest joke IMO is Emory's Gouizuetai skool 4 bkidz whu cant reed gudd but wanna do other things gud two.

Good article here for those interested in ivy vs. public debate

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-educati…

This whole debate presupposes unusually high intellectual horsepower as a prerequisite for investment banking. Does anyone here who actually has worked or does work in investment banking think that it requires extraordinarily high intelligence compared to, say, electrical engineering or architecture? There's not a single engineering student at a top 25 engineering school that lacks the capacity to run Excel formulas as an analyst with virtually no client contact.

The facts are simple--recruiting at the Ivies is how it's always been done. It's really not a big deal--there are literally tens of thousands of investment banks. If you can't work at Goldman Sachs, then work at some other less known place that doesn't have formal recruiting and accepts all applications. It's not a big deal.

Yeah my rant assumed (mostly correctly) that intelligence is what banks are gunning for even if a half-crazed monkey could actually do the work of a banker.

does ibanking require a lot of intelligence, especially at the analyst level? probably not. at the higher levels, I'd disagree, and I think banks do look at entry level employees as a way to train future talent, but anyways...

look at it this way: if you're a company that pays 100-150k all in to a 1st year out of college, you'll have your pick of candidates. All things equal, would you rather have somebody smart or somebody stupid? Even if firms just weakly prefer intelligence, this effect will quickly dominate school targeting decisions.

Personally, I also think that a large proportion of the equal caliber students you'll see at state schools major in the hard sciences or engineering etc. So while your point that there's not a single engineering student who can't do the excel is valid, it also avoids the fact that they're engineering students, and not people primarily interested in becoming bankers. Somebody who goes to berkeley to become a computer scientist wants to work at google, not as an IBD analyst at goldman.

So by recruiting at the top schools (ie hyps), firms are able to find more concentrated talent in the fields they're looking for talent in. HYP don't have the best comp sci programs in the world, but they sure as hell have got some of the top econ programs.

What do associates need as far as intelligence? They need sales skills. The best sales people don't even have college degrees. And the fact that state school kids don't want to do IB is a self-fulfilling prophesy to the recruiters--no on-campus recruiting breeds no interest.

The facts are pretty clear--they recruit at certain schools because it's how it's always been done. That's 100% fine. I would probably do the same thing as a hiring manager. All state school kids need to do is get good grades and apply for boutiques--forget about the BBs. It's not a big deal. It's a myth that state school kids aren't hired into IB. It happens a lot. So my advice to state school kids is to quit complaining and start researching.

Yeah, but the best bankers do have college degrees, and are usually pretty smart. Or at least the best MDs I know are bright and really know their shit...yeah they have sales skills too. But you're not selling a fucking toaster. (Or maybe you are, I guess it depends on what regional boutique you're at).

If you ever think that "the facts are clear" leads to the reason being "there is absolutely no rational reason to do something, it's just cuz that's the way it is" --you're probably missing something.