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<p>With point 6, are you suggesting that i-banks pay different salaries * for the same job* based on where the person went to school?</p>
<p>MIT is certainly excellent, but why is it “the top” undergraduate program?</p>
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<p>That’s the main reason for posting because many students are missing out this world class opportunity to make into the top I-Banks after undergraduate.</p>
<p>MIT is hands down a much better institute than any other college except Harvard or Wharton but most aspiring I-Banking students don’t know about it and might chose SPY over MIT.</p>
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<p>Because of it’s core curriculumn. You can do any major at MIT but because of it’s core curriculumn you are bound to be well educated.</p>
<p>e.g. You can graduate from Brown without many relevant STEM classes and similarly you can graduate from UCB in engineering without many Humanity classes.</p>
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<p>But an institute like MIT which not only provide the best math/physics/engineering but also allow it’s student to learn from one of the top business school should be the top destination for aspiring I-Banking students.</p>
<p>What an aspiring I-Banking student need?
- A top class math/physics/engineering education. (MIT Check)
- A top class business program for a major/minor in Finance. (MIT Check)
- A top class economics program for a major/minor/concentration in economics. (MIT Check)
- A target school for top I-Banks. (MIT Check)
- Consistent record of top I-Banks accepting it’s students. (MIT Check)</p>
<p>Why in the world I believe someone that such an institute is not the top institute when it’s come to preparing students for career in I-Banking?</p>
<p>Some one need to come up with some logic to refute that and provide a list of colleges that beat such strenghts of MIT.</p>
<p>To the OP, if you are doing banking just because you think it will be a good income you are very likely to get burnt out working those 100 hour weeks as an analyst, I am not saying to go into banking you need to love it, but at the least you need to show a strong interest in finance and economics. If it is a toss up between finance and medicine, I would pick medicine. This is a bit crude but turn on CNBC or read the WJS for a bit see if you could imagine doing it for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>No one is saying that MIT students can’t get good jobs in finance (IB or other financial services jobs). But it isn’t the target school for IB students. It just isn’t. It is a good school, no doubt. And graduates get good jobs. But it isnt <em>the</em> top school for this field, no matter how many posts you post or how many threats you post in.</p>
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<p>And I need to believe this because you are authority on this subject. Can you post any link/data to corroborate your findings?</p>
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<p>Yes, I do and if you look at MIT data and Wharton or Princeton data, you will see the max salaries for MIT students in financial services ($190K) and Investment Banking($150K) is way higher than Wharton ($100K) and Princeton($110K) and there by the average of MIT students in both the categories is higher too.</p>
<p>Flabbergasted? I was too.</p>
<p>POIH, will you believe Oldfort – given that it’s her field / profession and all?</p>
<p>It’s really OK if MIT isn’t the absolute #1 best in everything. It doesn’t detract from your D’s achievements or the institution itself.</p>
<p>You are not the authority on this subject, POIH. The small number of MIT sutdents who choose finance are a select group, whereas the large group that chose a school like Wharton may have changed their direction and goals during their college career. As an example, I know a Wharton grad who hated the corporate world and chose a different direction entirely. The small number of MIT students who choose finance (with a HUGE range of starting salaries) simply cannot be extrapolated to mean that if there were 5X as many undergrads vying for these jobs that the outcome would have been the same. Twisting the numbers to justify a belief is meaningless.</p>
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<p>That’s not what I asked. What I’m asking is …</p>
<p>Fancy IB goes and recruits for the VERY SAME JOB and hires 1 student from Harvard, 1 student from Princeton, 1 student from Penn and 1 student from MIT. For the very same job. They are all in the same entering class. Is their entry salary the same, or does the MIT person get a premium for the specialness of having gone to MIT?</p>
<p>^^^:From the data I could get from the institutes, it seems MIT students did get a premium because the hiring I-Banks are same as far as I could see. </p>
<p>Someone mentioned in an other thread that MIT students might have gone for janatorial work while wharton and Princeton students got in for I-Banking and that might explain the difference in the pay.</p>
<p>However or what ever way you slice the data but one thing that jumps out to me that only top premium I-Banks pays that high salaries and if only MIT students got those salaries so either these top premium banks only recruited at MIT or they gave different salaries to students from different colleges.</p>
<p>Pick what ever reasoning suit you but both make MIT a winner with respect to its’ I-Banking placements.</p>
<p>One thing is sure looking at all the NCG recruiting I’ve done for companies I worked for in the tech field no two candidates get the same pay even coming out of the same college. A lot depend on how student negotiate their pay with the companies. Generally students that have multiple options are in a better position to get higher salaries.</p>
<p>So one thing that might favor MIT students is that there might be more I-Banks going after few interested candidates as people have pointed out that MIT is not the institute most aspiring I-Banking students look toward attending.</p>
<p>That’s what I think the mistake is and going to MIT can actually benefit all those aspiring I-Banking candidates.</p>
<p>Those outlier salaries seem suspect to me. Without seeing the actual survey question its hard to know what they reflect. Can’t assume all college grad employment/salary surveys ask the same question the same way.</p>
<p>Maybe there is some HUGE signing bonus to take a finance job in a very dangerous part of the world. Maybe these are jobs that a person would ONLY take if they were paid some outrageous salary. Maybe its not a guaranteed salary. Who knows.</p>
<p>Every entering analyst at BB IBs makes exact same amount with same sign on bonus, period. What they may get as bonus later on is based on performance.</p>
<p>I am just going to say it again to any student who is readiing this thread or any other thread on this forum, discount everything POIH has to say. </p>
<p>IB is not a right profession for everyone, just like medicine, law, marketing, entertainment…It looks for specific type of people. Most students who go to MIT do not want to go into IB.</p>
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<p>It has nothing to do with whatever reasoning suits one’s fancy; it’s a verifiable thing. Does the same i-bank, when recruiting candidates from multiple schools for the same job, give the same starting salary to all, or do they compensate different undergrads at different levels? The answer is either yes, they give different salaries to people from different schools, or no, they give them all the same starting salary.</p>
<p>BTW, if indeed the answer was yes, they give different starting salaries to people from different undergrads, they’d want to maximize their hiring from those schools where they wouldn’t need to pay a premium.</p>
<p>EDIT: I see Oldfort addressed this above and the answer is no, they give them all the same starting salary. It’s her field. She’s a managing director IIRC. I trust her assessment.</p>
<p>Check this out from pg 25 (masters level grad salaries):</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation10.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation10.pdf</a>
Financial Services (Commercial Banking, Insurance)
N= 25
Ernst & Young, PayPal, GE Capital, Bain Capital, Peer Transfer, Santander Bank, Lightkeeper Advisors, Produban, Mizuho Financial Group, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, State Street Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, UBS Investment Bank, Fidelity, Two Sigma, Aetna, Soverign Bank, BNP Paribas, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
avg: 116,320
range: 70,000-400,000</p>
<p>**REALLY?? Starting salary of $400K? ** Is this the CEO’s son or something? I’d find that number extremely suspect and ask more questions-- not take it as gospel and spew nonsense about its meaning.</p>
<p>I would like to point out that the data POIH is looking at from MIT is a combined data set of UG and graduate. 10% of MIT UG students go into finance (which includes banking, insurance, Paypal…) vs 20%+ of Cornell students, vs 65% of Wharton students. 10% of MIT UG students translates into appropximately 20 or 25 students. For Cornell it means over 800 students. Wharton alone has 28 students working for GS (just one firm) in one year. </p>
<p>POIH wants to continue to look at salary range, not average, to make the comparison. But a more meaningful number to look at is really number of students and average salary.</p>
<p>POIH mentioned that connection and network are important. Compare MIT vs Cornell vs Wharton or any other schools with larger alumni base, which one would have more advantage? At the end of day, you don’t have to be that smart to work in IB. It is more important you could walk and talk at the same time.</p>
<p>And the average salary could be really skewed if it represents a small number of students and one, for whatever reason (could even be a student filling out the form with silly numbers) is an outlier number. It would really throw off the average, whereas with a larger “N”, an outlier score, if it existed for whatever reason, would have less of an effect on the average number.</p>
<p>Oldfort, since this is your industry, what do you make of those high end outlier salary reports? Believable or not?</p>
<p>400K is possible if the person had previous work experience between UG and master/PhD, especially if the person owns P&L for a particular product. But we are comparing apple and orange here. What you are showing is not UG, it is master/PhD from MIT. There are many graduates from other schools who make that much money after few years of experience, especially with a top MBA degree.</p>