That is for MBA; I am talking undergrad.
For the most prestigious post-MBA private equity and hedge funds jobs, the vast majority are filled from HBS and Stanford GSB (and some from Wharton) - this is mostly because these two schools get applicants with former HF / PE work experience though. So your dad’s list may be a bit outdated.
@Boothie007 Thabks for your interesting post distinguishing Penn (Wharton) vs Penn (CAS). IB might be a possible career for me…
At my F500 Company in the southeast (GA/FL):
God-Tier: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT
Helps you get Interviews but doesn’t wow people Tier: Columbia, UChicago (gotten more layperson recognition the last few years cuz of Obama and USNWR rankings), Penn (people confuse this with Penn State)
Solid “you’re smart” tier but doesnt do a whole lot: Duke, Dartmouth, Brown (ppl just seem to know it more cuz of Emma Watson), Cornell, Northwestern
@Boothie007 I’m not so sure. After doing a bit of googling, I came across this: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/23/penn-beats-harvard-on-wall-street.html
But who knows. I always felt that the undergrad education is really not important for most firms on Wall Street.
Lay prestige is so silly. Please don’t pick a college based on what Joe down the block thinks…
@WildestDream As mentioned previously, I’m not choosing a college based on lay prestige. I made this thrrad simply out of curiosity.
@WildestDream @MrAustere
Well we do have to assume that the person knows enough to have an awareness of these schools. That is not a completely random Joe, actually. Maybe not as knowledgeable as people here, but better than average.
@Much2learn Very true
I would guess that the reason the number of Penn grads on Wall Street is so high is that they put in a significant number from Wharton, CAS and SEAS. Probably about half are from Wharton and the other half are from CAS and SEAS.
In St. Louis, MO
WashU
Mizzou
Missouri S&T (Rolla)
… What other universities?
Seattle area
Stanford
Harvard
MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Penn
The rest of the Ivies
Notre Dame, Northwestern, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins, USC, UCLA, UCB
University of Washington
Reed
Probably heard of but can’t quite place how good the school is so unlikely to mention if asked about “top” schools
Georgetown,Vanderbilt, WashU, Rice
Likely have never heard of
Williams, Amherst, Emory
I agree with Much2learn too. I would say Penn actually under-performed when compared to Harvard, considering how MANY Penn students are majoring in business-related fields.
Also, these CNBC guys talked like assets management is the only thing that matters in the entire universe. I was in DC for 5 years and I feel that career in finance is much more attractive in the east coast than in west coast. Here in the Bay Area, asset management is not really all that; many people think they are boring, BS, or not cool. Hence, people are not really all that impressed if you say you work at Franklin Templeton, Charles Schwab, or Well Fargo. Instead, locals here gravitate way more toward opportunities at Google, Facebook, Gileads, GenetechTech, etc. Even Uber or Electronic Arts sound cooler. My guess is the only reason Berkeley did “well” is because of just the shear number. It helps when the school is graduating 500 econ majors each year and that’s not even counting those in the business school. Once you factor in the size, Berkeley lags behind all other schools on that short list.
My point is these numbers seem more a function of self-selection than anything else…
In academia/medicine/industry in the southeast (GA/FL):
Being in tiers 1 and 2 may get you an edge in getting an interview/bias in getting hired, but after that nobody really cares here in the southeast.
@Iwannahelp “I would say Penn actually under-performed when compared to Harvard, considering how MANY Penn students are majoring in business-related fields.”
This is a bit complicated. In CAS there are a significant number of econ majors, to be sure. However, they have had good success recruiting strong students in other majors that are strong in mathematics.
Most Penn SEAS students go into engineering or technology jobs. However, another a significant number go to consulting and about 1/4 of them go to finance. Often students going into finance were not majoring in a business-related field, but rather are some of the better students who were recruited away from other areas of interest. The average SEAS grad received 2.3 offers last year, so they are in demand. That is an unusually high number.
Wall street firms interview students from all of the schools. Penn does have advantages with Wharton plus Economics in CAS, but they are also taking students with demonstrated ability in completely unrelated areas of study, in spite of the headwind that many of the best SEAS students are strongly focused on tech or consulting and not easily recruitable.
I’d think lay prestige would translate to regional prestige. Pitt or Duquesne grads are well received in Western Pa., for example. In Western New York, there are three Catholic schools (Niagara, St. Bonaventure and Canisius) whose grads populate many board rooms across the region. And they share a good basketball rivalry. Hardly a blip elsewhere.
The people on this site are in the top tiny fraction of people concerning knowledge of colleges. The general public’s ignorance of colleges cannot be overestimated. I live in Michigan, and most people think Purdue is private, they have no idea what or where Northwestern is, and while they know Harvard is good, almost none could locate it on a map.
There is a high school “quiz bowl” type show on a PBS affiliate in the northern half of the state. A few months ago they had a category where the contestants (all top students in their schools) were given the name of a college & they had to name the state it was in. Their first guess for Yale was Maine, then Vermont; they thought Auburn was in Texas; and I think Syracuse drew nothing but blank stares. So what the man on the street thinks about colleges is literally “not much.”
I agree moooop and Middleman68. I think a lot of students here are projecting their own biases/preferences unto the general population. Beyond Harvard, there are very few “lay people” who would grant schools like Brown, Cal, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn (Wharton or otherwise), Rice, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, etc…their due consideration outside of their respective regions.
@moooop, the people where you live in MI don’t follow B10 sports?
@MurphyBrown, what generation/region are you from?
Going to HS in Chicagoland in the '90’s, no one I knew considered the U of C to be superior to NU, but rather, on the same tier.
Go by alumni accomplishments, and that’s also the case: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html
If there even is a gap, it certainly isn’t as big as the one between Columbia and NYU.
@mooop “The people on this site are in the top tiny fraction of people concerning knowledge of colleges. The general public’s ignorance of colleges cannot be overestimated.”
True the average Michigan person will have an order like Michigan, Michigan State, Michigan Tech, Oakland, Wayne State, Grand Valley State, Western Michigan, etc.
That is why I added earlier that we would have to assume that the person knows enough to have an awareness of these schools, which is not a completely random Joe. Maybe not as knowledgeable as people here, but better than average.