<p>I read conflicting opinions about Columbia as a school to get out of to launch a career in Wall Street right out of college.</p>
<p>Some say great things. Some say prestigious private equity type places recruit only from HYP type schools, and Columbia is NOT included in this exclusive list. </p>
<p>Please give me your honest opinion based on experience/real life observation, not "patriotic" declaration of why Columbia is perfect. No need to preach to the choir: I think very highly of Columbia because of their strong core, I am now evaluating the practical side.</p>
<p>Harvard and Wharton are undoubtedly tops for getting recruited for WS. After those two, you would have a cluster of other elite schools and Columbia is one of them. Regardless of where you go, if you don’t do well whereever you go, you can forget about it.</p>
<p>This doesn’t contradict. Depending on the firm columbia is probably #3-#6 on the pecking order. Harvard and Wharton have access to a few more top firms, but Columbia students have a massive array of opportunities, from top consulting, top investment banking, top sales & trading, top wealth management and recently top quantitative investment management divisions / firms. </p>
<p>When two schools have access to a firm, the playing field levels out considerably. Once in a second or third round interview your school does not matter, it’s every man for themselves, as I usually put it: “the market is efficient” - you can’t really bs it, and nothing much on a resume like high GPA, club leadership or past experience can save a candidate. So Wharton might have more students at X, but they also had more competition and it be tougher to stand out. It’s only when a company or division doesn’t recruit on campus that you are at a disadvantage. Here Columbia does worse than only H and W. </p>
<p>Barring those two we probably have the most divisions open to us. We have many corporate finance classes to prep for I-banking, we have an awesome engineering school which takes kids with social skills and gives them great quant and analytical skills, we have a diverse student body in a driven environment which bodes well for consulting. And the smoother you are the better you do at Columbia / New York, so we have kids with the finesse for something like wealth management. Few schools have enough of these kids in each category to command attention from a top division at a top firm.</p>
<p>Given this, if you think you’ll grow more at Columbia, then come here, it’s better to be 85th percentile at Columbia than 60th percentile at W or H.</p>
<p>thanks for the thorough reply. How about internship prospect while in college? Does Columbia give a good access? </p>
<p>The whole issue of campus recruiting: If a firm does not recruit on campus, let’s say in Columbia, does it mean that they will not hire anybody from that columbia, or does it mean that they are not actively recruiting on columbia campus, but individuals can apply independently? In this day and age, everybody has access to job information through the company web site, unless it’s some kind of a super secret mission they don’t let the ordinary people see ;-)</p>
<p>if you are talking about summer jobs, then my post applied equally to summer jobs as to full time hire.</p>
<p>if you are talking about fall or spring internships, there are several opportunities. You have to take a bit of initiative, but I know tons of kids who have worked with an investment bank, small p.e. shop or small hedge fund during the year, the work isn’t great but the networking is awesome and it looks good on your resume. </p>
<p>At worst it tells a firm that you’re 1) smart enough to be at the firm, 2)driven enough to get the job and work 10-15hrs a week off campus while still managing coursework 3)really interested in working in finance</p>
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<p>no not exactly, firms are self interested and if you are a ground-breaking candidate your school obviously doesn’t matter. But breaking into firms that don’t target Columbia is really really difficult and very few kids are able to do so. It’s the same for any other school that isn’t a target, you’ll feel happy about this, because columbia is a target for most divisions that recruit on undergrad campuses and when other schools are left out, it gives you an edge. A good division at a good firm will target ~10 schools. They do first rounds on campus and at least for first rounds you are only competing against columbia kids which could be good or bad depending on the division.</p>
<p>^silly sill rachael, just because a few banks blow up and the economy is in recession, doesn’t mean the world stops needing finance. Finance spreads risk across people and takes money (resources) from less productive sources to more productive uses, there is always a need for this, there is always money to be made in doing so. wall street will be hiring in a couple of years just like they used to, so the op’s question is not only pertinent it’s a valuable questions to be asked since many of you (readers) are going to sell your soul to some pathetic, sleazy, unethical, high paying corporation.</p>
<p>it’s rare that this happens to any thread, but confidentialcoll is so spot-on that additional comment here is hardly needed. I’m just chiming in so you won’t think he’s a voice alone in the wilderness.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, though, I think there’s a larger point at work here. Firms don’t “naturally” prefer a particular school - say, Harvard, or Wharton, or Princeton - over all others, unless a whole lot of people at that firm went to that school. The difference is in the quality of the applicants for particular jobs. Some schools simply have a greater quantity of superior job seekers when it comes to finance.</p>
<p>What that means is, however good you are, you’re not going to be at a disadvantage being at Columbia or Penn CGS vs Harvard. If there are 10 guys better than you in your class at Columbia, and 30 guys better than you at Harvard, and Goldman is makes 5 offers to Columbia students and 15 to Harvard students, the competition level was the same - the raw numbers changed but your odds of success didn’t. See where I’m going with this?</p>
<p>My point is, go wherever you feel there is the best fit with the culture and the other students and the curriculum and the social life. Within the top handful of schools, the best opportunities will be available to whoever is really and actually prepared for them and qualified for them.</p>
<p>Let me also add that pretty much all the big firms that matter and hire in droves from the Ivy Leagues come to Columbia (I’m talking about the Ibanks and consulting firms)</p>
<p>PE firms are less conspicuous, except for the big ones again, but, like denzera said, that may be a function of alumni rather than Columbia’s perception. But, it’s totally possible to get into a firm that doesn’t recruit on campus (it’s not ‘really really tough’ in all cases–I did it, somehow–the consulting firm i work for doesn’t recruit at CU at the undergrad level)</p>
<p>will wall street and consulting jobs continue to be as attractive to college students as they were a couple of years ago? it seems to me (as an outsider) that the salaries and bonuses are going to decline and stay down once new regulation is implemented and the ibanks can’t generate the kinds of profit that they used to so there will be less incentive for some of the best and brightest to “sell their souls”. Was the hyper-attractiveness of wall street jobs simply a product of the last bubble? </p>
<p>(forgive my ignorance…you all know i know nothing about this stuff)</p>
<p>^wall street jobs were attractive before the bubble, and the bubble only increased the number of jobs available and perhaps the bonuses at a high level. Entry level jobs in 2012 should look the same as they did in say 2004, the bonuses are not huge. Analyst I-bankers make ~$100,000-$120,000 per year and work about 5000 hours per year, that’s $20-25/hour - considering overtime and that you have no life, that pretty shtty if you ask me. It’s not like people in finance are arbing it, they just either work their a$$es off or do difficult quantitative stuff that requires a lot of training and a less common set of skills. In the grand scheme of things, the money that a first year analyst makes is a pittance when compared to the exposure, prestige and exit opportunities they get from top firms. Finance bonuses at a high level might be hit longer term, but this hardly dulls incentive to work at a top financial firm after college.</p>
<p>well, look. i’m going through the process right now. in a sense, the “big ones” (your KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle - on the LBO side - and Draper Fisher, Sequoia, Battery Ventures, Kleiner Perkins etc on the VC side) are never recruiting, and simultaneously are always recruiting. What that means is, they are never actively seeking to drive up interest and reach out to students, because they just don’t have to. They never post jobs anywhere, they never stage campus recruiting sessions, the most they might do is an info session at HBS. And yet, they are “always recruiting” because when the right person, with the right background, approaches them in the right way, they are always willing to hire a guy who will make them a lot of money and is a sure bet.</p>
<p>I know people who became VC and LBO analysts straight out of columbia. I know people who transitioned there after a few years at Goldman or McKinsey. there’s no magic to it, you just have to be damn good, dedicated, and have a plan you’re executing against.</p>
<p>“They never post jobs anywhere, they never stage campus recruiting sessions”</p>
<p>Not entirely true, I’ve applied to KKR, Blackstone and Carlyle through CCE (or Lionshare, as I believe it’s now called). They recruited at CU, at least before the bubble–not sure about now. </p>
<p>In any case, the VC’s and LBO firms (and PE divisions of the Big Ten…or seven) actually prefer you to have a few years of Ibanking and consulting under your belt first unless you have a degree in finance (Columbia’s closest is Financial Engineering) or solid and demonstrable buyout experience.</p>