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<p>who ever asked you to?</p>
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<p>why don’t you come up with something, genius.</p>
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<p>An alternative theory could be that the same student would have the same (or at least very similar) finance job opportunities coming out of either Columbia or NYU Stern. More than anything else, significant differences in job placement (if any) can probably be accounted for by the differences in student quality between the two schools. If, like you said (and I agree), engineers have a “leg up” over non-engineers, then this would help explain more of the “advantages” that Columbia grads have over NYU Stern grads, since some of the former and none of the latter are engineers. It’s not clear that if we control for student quality and engineering (vs. non-engineering) status (not to mention other possible variables), there would be left any significant differences.</p>
<p>^no, that was my theory, I merely said NYU students need a higher gpa to get interviews and jobs. If student quality is an important variable, and if Columbia is taking in superior students, then my theory that you need to be relatively better at Stern than at Columbia still stands. Maybe it’s easier to do better at Stern, but my claim is that the average Columbia student places slightly better than the average Stern student.</p>
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<p>If true, this is consistent with a number of “alternative” theories, not just the one of which you tried to claim “ownership” after the fact.</p>
<p>my claim was always about placement and how well the average student at each of the colleges places, hence “schools that do well with investment banking recruiting”. You might have misconstrued it, too bad.</p>
<p>NOW your claim seems to be that the school (except for whether or not it is a Wall Street recruiting target) does not play a causative role above and beyond the quality of its students. But the fact that you placed some institutions (such as Amherst and Williams) with virtually identical student profiles in different tiers suggested otherwise.</p>
<p>“How well the average student at each of the colleges places” does not speak to the causal efficacy (or lack thereof) of the colleges themselves. This is something that couldn’t have possibly been “misconstrued” because you it was not spelled out one way or the other.</p>
<p>OBJOBS- in my experience what confidentialcoll is saying is correct. I’ll provide my data when I get back to my own computer.</p>
<p>Per post #26, please delete “you” from the last sentence.</p>
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<p>yes, I never said the colleges caused people to do better. The way placement success is measured for top colleges at top banks is merely through representation, that’s the way b-schools are evaluated as well. Any attempt to tease out the causal efficacy of colleges in finance placement is futile, there are just too many variables which need to be accounted for before we would be able to isolate the effect of a college on a student, so your complaint is merely academic.</p>
<p>I just spoke with a few friends who started at MS, GS and Barcap this year and last, they were given the following ordering in terms of firmwide representation:</p>
<p>1&2) Harvard, Wharton
3&4) Columbia, Princeton</p>
<p>Many of those were working in investment banking</p>
<p>Columbia is also not highly pre-professional, only 10-20% of the student body is actually interested in finance.</p>
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<p>Where did you get the 10-20% figures? And how are you measuring “actual interest?”</p>
<p>the 10-20% is a number that comes from the graduate student survey that is completed each year. publicly cce usually just mentions that finance is the number one potential career path for students usually followed by things like education, law, consulting, engineering, IT and medicine. but if you go in to a counseling session, they say almost verbatim the 10-20% number when talking about finance (or at least i should say they used to when i was around).</p>
<p>yup exactly, I got it from our career center when I spoke to counselors there, and it also gels well with my experience over 4 years. actually interested is people who care enough to apply to finance positions on our career website and then interview. you should probably stop scrambling to challenge every normal claim I make.</p>
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<p>[Selection</a> bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias]Selection”>Selection bias - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I would say that anyone who’s sufficiently motivated can get an IB job from either school. Once you get the interview, I don’t imagine the name of your school makes a difference. If the interviewer likes the NYU grad more, he’s not going to hire the Columbia grad just because of the name.</p>
<p>The appreciable difference comes in the interview selection process. I imagine that some firms value the finance/accounting training that one gets at Stern, while others just want a smart person they can train. (Not saying that Columbia students don’t know finance, or that Stern students aren’t smart. It’s just as an example.) I think it would be difficult to determine the exact proportion of employers who prefer one to the other. </p>
<p>Hence, one of the few meaningful things that separate these schools is the number of hyper-selective firms that recruit there. For example, Jane Street recruits at most of the Ivies + CMU, Duke, MIT. No NYU here. Blackstone recruits at Harvard and Wharton, not sure about Columbia and NYU. So instead of picking apart the existing anecdotes, I suggest that you (objobs) provide non-anecdotal information that shows that these hyper-selective firms don’t recruit more at Columbia than they do at NYU.</p>
<p>“An alternative theory could be that the same student would have the same (or at least very similar) finance job opportunities coming out of either Columbia or NYU Stern”</p>
<p>This is completely and utterly false. What is the difference between an NYU student and a Columbia Student? The Columbia student got into NYU.</p>
<p>Columbia students are simply more qualified than NYU students - the school’s selectiveness and prestige are greater - just look at admission statistics - and being in the Ivy League helps.</p>
<p>CollegeCall is right. 10-20% of the students at Columbia are interested in Finance. Nearly EVERY student at Stern at NYU wants to do Finance - even if the two Universities were the same in prestige/recruitment - Columbia would have the better shot since less students apply.</p>
<p>And no we can’t be purely objective about anything. There is no set of statistics that quantifies “prestige” - and interview performance is subjective thus LISTS are subjective.</p>
<p>Of course OBJOBS you’ll ignore everything I say and post some Wikipedia link to a logical article to point out some fallacy in my argument without offering any of yours. This is not a negative burden of proof debate - you need to actually back up your own assertions or for that matter actually MAKE some assertions.</p>
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<p>You misinterpreted my argument. By the “same student,” I mean a student who has gotten into both schools. For example, this could be an admitted student who is deciding between his or her Columbia and NYU Stern acceptances. It’d make no sense to use the SAME student in this thought experiment if s/he were only able to get into one or the other school, right? </p>
<p>I am fully aware that the average quality of students is different between the two schools. In fact, I said that it is mostly this difference which makes up any of the significant difference between Columbia and NYU Stern in finance job placement: </p>
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<p>Finally, I don’t necessarily subscribe to this “alternative” theory. I just said that it was a better alternative than confidentialcoll’s would be sarcastic response which is to “sit here and tell high school students interested in finance that going to any college anywhere doesn’t make a difference to their future job prospects.” confidentialcoll then demanded an “alternative” theory, so I gave a plausible one: </p>
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<p>confidentialcoll then tried to take “ownership” of this “alternative” theory and claimed that it was his or hers all along by saying: “no, that was my theory.”</p>
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<p>More than 10-20% of Columbia students are “interested” in finance. The 10-20% represent Columbia undergraduates “who care enough to apply to finance positions on our career website and then interview.” So confidentialcoll excludes those who may have real interest in finance but do not apply due to low GPA or whatever. It seems that Columbia is more “pre-professional” than s/he let on before.</p>
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<p>A higher percentage of students at Wharton also wants to do finance. So would Columbia have the “better shot” since fewer of its students apply?</p>
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<p>No, you ignored (or at least misinterpreted) what I said.</p>
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<p>This seems highly presumptuous. I am not going out of my way to defend NYU or anything because I have no affiliation/bias for or against the school, but this is false. There are plenty of Columbia students (including some athletes and legacies) who probably couldn’t get into NYU (Stern), if they applied.</p>
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<p>Obviously, if a school is not a recruiting target, then it would be at a disadvantage when it comes to representation. But these “hyper-selective” firms make up a very small percentage of the finance industry. </p>
<p>My main argument, however, is that the “subjective lists” in question tend to conflate representation with recruiting. Some schools may not be as well represented as others due to factors that have nothing to do with recruiting. For example, Amherst and Williams are peer institutions with virtually identical student profiles but they were placed on different tiers re: placement. Is this due to different recruiting? Possibly, but more likely, Williams grads may be more interested in i-banking than Amherst grads. So this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who are more interested will be more likely to be recruited. Given that certain schools are recruiting targets for the same firms, what accounts for their difference in representation controlling for any differences in student quality? Do the schools themselves play any causal role in helping their students get hired? Until we can honestly answer these types of questions, these “subjective lists” amount to not much more than self-congratulatory pats on the back.</p>
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<p>nope, I have friends at every bulge bracket, I just happened to ask at 3 of the best, I could easily have asked at UBS or Credit Suisse or citi etc. </p>
<p>My theory was always about representation (placement success), I never ascribed reasons to it, thus your ascribing reasons to my observation, was not an alternative theory but a more specific subset.</p>
<p>Also I said either you tell people that there is a hierarchy when it comes to wall street recruiting and this is it, or you tell people going to any school doesn’t make a difference. Your “alternative” was: going to any school doesn’t make a difference, because differences in placement can be explained by differences in student quality. So are you in fact saying it doesn’t matter where you go? - this was the only alternative I cited. </p>
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<p>You are never going to be able to honestly answer these questions (if you come up with a way please do share). Lacking such absurdly accurate causal links, most people reasonably assume that better placement stems from a combination of student interest, student ability and recruiter interest in the school. Since you can’t tease out where the success stems from, when you observe higher placement rates you assume that recruiter interest is likely higher. Under limited information this is the best realistic conclusion you can make, the alternative is it doesn’t matter where I go.</p>
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<p>no anyone with a real interest still applies and interviews if they get any, because it costs virtually nothing to drop resumes online and then give 25 minutes to meet an interviewer. low gpa never prevents someone from applying to finance altogether. Students with any GPA above ~2.5 (which is pretty much everyone at Columbia) can get a first round interview in some back office division somewhere. When I say 10-20% are actually interested in finance, i mean the other 80-90% prioritizes engineering, law, medicine, journalism, publishing, public health, music, architecture, literature etc. over finance to the extent that they don’t bother applying because they don’t want to be in the industry. This would be in line with a place like brown or cornell SAS + engineering. At Columbia people are willing to be unemployed for a little while or start with demeaning work to be in their industry of choice. Do you think more than 20% of Columbia is interested in finance?</p>