<p>Do the big investment firms recruit at Chicago?</p>
<p>Oh yes. Tons.</p>
<p>From the undergrad or just the business school?</p>
<p>More so from the business school. But they do recruit undergrad as well.</p>
<p>Chicago economics program is probably the most rigorous and best in the country. Many of the TOP quantitative hedge funds etc recruit at Chicago. Citadel, SAC Capital etc recruit at Chicago and those two funds are harder than Goldman can ever can be. Plus you have the regular slew of ibanks giving the rounds.</p>
<p>Well I wouldn't expect to get any hedge funds out of undergraduate. Places like Citadel, SAC or even boutique IB's like Lazard, Blackstone, HLHZ very rarely take undergraduates. As long as you go to a target school you will probably have the same chance of getting the job as anyone else at a target school. Go for the big ones- Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Citi.</p>
<p>UC_benz its the opposite. As an example Citadel's program ONLY takes undergraduates and SAC also. They have their own classes taught by PhDs who have direct experience thus their traders dont go and get MBAs or anything like that. Otherwise they take lateral hires.
For places like Lazard and Blackstone stay in either Wharton or Harvard for undergrad.</p>
<p>I also know that hedge funds recruit undergrads from not just Wharton and Harvard, but also at MIT (and not just from the Sloan School, but from the general MIT undergraduate population as well). I am almost certain that they recruit undergrads at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford also. I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a few other undergrad programs at which they recruit,</p>
<p>Yes However this thread pertains to Chicago only. BTW dont forget Michigan. ;)</p>
<p>Well I know for a fact that Blackstone only took like 3 undergraduates all of last year--and I'd be willing to bet that all three of those people had connections to get into the company. </p>
<p>It's hard enough getting into an IBD let alone a hedge fund or boutique firm. I've talked to several people at schools across the spectrum that are going for interviews right now or are already in investment banking in some capacity, and the common denominator seems to be that they all say that getting into hedge fund/boutique firm is virtually impossible out of undergraduate.</p>
<p>IT is ofcourse hard but not at all impossible. And no many undergrads (relatively speaking of course) get into hedge funds/PEs. </p>
<p>And no Blackstone took more than 3. Wharton ALONE had 4 people into Blackstone undergrad.
<a href="http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys/Wharton2004Report.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys/Wharton2004Report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Go to page 5. Citadel also had 4. DE Shaw had I think one or two. And numerous other positions in hedge funds were given. Keep in mind this is STILL not the ENTIRE wharton class.
I would suggest you confirm your sources ;).</p>
<p>First of all I said "like" which leaves room for error :) And secondly, I got that number from a person affiliated with Blackstone so I trust his judgement. I wouldn't be surprised if they ONLY took people from Wharton.</p>
<p>Point well taken :).</p>
<p>it is not impossible to get into HFs directly from undergrad. actually there are folks that were turned down by the investment banks and went to a HFs instead. it seems a lot of people have a distorted notion of what a hedge fund is. right now there are so many new ones sprouting up (many of them quite mediocre and risky) that they are taking lots of undergrads. the big established guys that someone mentioned (SAC, Citadel) on the other hand are VERY tough to get into and can be very lucrative. i am saying this because i started out at a hedge fund during college before deciding to go into banking upon graduation.</p>
<p>Also, UChicago is a great school with an awesome reputation and investment firms DO recruit there. But if you are positive you want to go into finance, Wharton might be worth looking into.</p>
<p>and uc_benz, there are a lot of crappy boutiques out there to. watch out.</p>
<p>I wasn't talking about crappy HFs. I was thinking more in line with ones greater than 400-500 million under disposal.</p>
<p>Yeah I wasn't talking about the crappy boutiques. There are only about 5-10 "boutique" firms that I would consider to be major players.</p>
<p>Forget I-Banking. You need to discover the NEXT NEW THING to get rich. What will it be?</p>
<p>Investment banking has never really been the "next new thing." It has always been an exclusive career. All the way back to the beginning of Goldman, Sachs, & Co. and Lehman Brothers it has only taken people from the top schools. Investment banking will always be a big part of the economy because it practically runs the economy (businesses couldn't survive without managing/raising capital). </p>
<p>Of course, you can always live on the bubble like Internet boom 6 years ago, but 99% of the time you're gonna crash and burn if you follow a trend like that.</p>
<p>I-Banking sounds like a bore. Isn't consulting better, and pays more?</p>