Cornell AEM vs. Northwestern Economics

Career Opportunities & Internships Investment Banking
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<p>Perhaps my department was more democratic, there was a variety of undergrad backgrounds among the MBA hires there. Most of them went to "good" undergrad schools, but that included Top 25 liberal arts colleges that my firm did not recruit at for undergrad hires, in addition to the usual suspects. And some other colleges that were not so great, actually. Nevertheless, those people must have done something right to get themselves into top MBA programs. And get hired at our firm. But I think probably a higher than random proportion of a top MBA school class comes from good undergrad schools in the first place, so it would be no shock to have them well represented, even without a pervasive "old boy" network in effect.</p>

<p>I only really know the undergrad schools of people who were in my department. And I only knew those since their bios would be in our proposals. And the ones I inerviewed too, I guess. I can't speak for a broader group than that.</p>

<p>I actually saw the "old boy" network work in reverse; star associate found out we were going to make an offer to this guy who'd attended his college, told powers that be that the guy had lived on his floor at [HYPS] and was an absolute twit.</p>

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<p>I would agree that it's ridiculous to be basing college decisions off of perceived differences in IB placement years before it may have any relevance to you. </p>

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But I think probably a higher than random proportion of a top MBA school class comes from good undergrad schools in the first place, so it would be no shock to have them well represented, even without a pervasive "old boy" network in effect.

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<p>Depending on what you mean by "higher than random proportion", this certainly makes sense. The class where I got an MBA (which would be considered somewhere between the #4 and #8 school depending on what your criteria is) was ~ 1/3 from Ivy, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Williams, Amherst of those who attended an American UG. I would say for those that went into IB, this ratio was probably even higher.</p>