<p>They also have one in San Francisco, Boston (I think), and Ireland…I think Dublin or cork :/. So yes, there are firms around the top colleges! Although I think when people normally say top colleges they really just mean the top fifty. I doubt an employer in sny field would hire an MIT graduate over a UM Ann arbor graduate simply.because of the school. My dad actually has a funny story about this. Having never gone to college one of the best career paths he thought he would be able to break into was entrepeneurial ship so now he owns, runs, etc. his own business coaching company many of you probably haven’t heard of it so I won’t mention the name. He gets clients from many schools and at one point he had a Harvard MBA as a client. I know, it’s a weird situation when someone who never went to college is teaching a Harvard MBA but my dad didn’t think so. At the end of their business relationship the Harvard’s MBAs profits doubled! It just goes to show that experience will always out do even the best of academia.</p>
<p>They have an office in Cambridge, MA. They tried to recruit a BIL a few years ago (he declined).</p>
<p>It still astonishes me how the words “investment banker” inspire such awe on this site.</p>
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<p>Probably because of [Buttonwood:</a> The golden rules of banking | The Economist](<a href=“The golden rules of banking”>The golden rules of banking)</p>
<p>“It still astonishes me how the words “investment banker” inspire such awe on this site.”</p>
<p>I don’t think many people realize what being an analyst at one of those firms actually entails. There’s a lot of grunt work in Excel, and you don’t have a personal life the two years you’re in an entry-level analyst program.</p>
<p>Yes. It makes a difference at certain companies, in certain areas, at certain jobs. If you want a job teaching in the public schools in some area, unless you are certified in hard to find subjects, like high school math or science, you have a distinct advantage coming from the state university system, really the old teachers’ colleges. I did a quick survey at our school district when we lived in the midwest, and some astounding 70% came from those school. That with a high GPA gave you the best chance of getting these very competitive positions. </p>
<p>Also, if you want to practice law in most of the firms in the area, top 13 is not the way to go. You are not on Wall Street. The best way to get any job in those firms is to have clerked with a local judge. My friend’s daughter wants to move back “home” but can’t despite an impressive resume, very nice salary at a top law firm, degree from a top law school. She would be hard put to find a job that pays a fraction of what she is earning where she is–she has two clerkships with two major judges there. That is what she is getting the big bucks for. DOesn’t do her a bit of good in the Midwest. </p>
<p>So, it isn’t just the ivies and other such “name” schools that command the job market, It depends on what you are seeking. It’s true that Google has a disproportionate number of new hires from Stanford, but is that a surprise? It is a top school, the kids are prescreened and many of them will have some connection there already and there is an infrastructure for hiring from there. By the way, college GPA is a big deal in getting hired at Google. </p>
<p>Studies have shown repeatedly that those who turned down admissions from these most selective school do just as well as their peers who accepted them. There is a very strong pre selection thing with these schools as well as family connections that can help get jobs. </p>
<p>As you move up the ladder in most companies, even those that tend to recruit at the most highly ranked schools, you will start finding people who have gone to every college one can imagine. The proof of the pudding is in its eating, and so it is with work experience.</p>
<p>In Silicon Valley, venture capitalists hire from top schools. The rest of the landscape is pretty infinitely variegated. That said, I was hired at age 40 to go back fulltime because, despite my lack of tech background, I had Princeton and Columbia on my resume.</p>
<p>I’m an intern at Google and the people here come from a pretty wide variety of schools. CMU, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford are the predictably most represented, but I was looking at a spreadsheet of what schools the other interns was coming from and was pretty surprised in that there was a huge range, including flagships, lesser known state schools, and even some schools I had never heard of. I think one of the differences is that there is targeted recruiting at schools like Stanford (on top of it being a self-selecting group), whereas students at other schools really have to seek out those opportunities</p>
<p>My new employer is the largest, best known company in my field. I just looked up the senior management – about 25 top positions. The only person who graduated from a brand name school (Williams, Michigan law) is the general counsel. The rest comes from state schools, not even flagships!</p>
<p>^^ Top schools produce better technical workers, perhaps?</p>
<p>My daughter is a rising senior at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. As the Wall Street Journal article link in a post above demonstrates, it is a top choice for recruiters for large firms. I was skeptical, to say the least, when I first read that UIUC was the third-ranked school for recruiters because I, like many others, I suspect, thought that my older daughter who graduated from a “top” school would have had not only more support when attending her university but also would have been actively recruited pre-graduation, given her school’s reputation. (Both daughters are in science fields.) It turns out that my UIUC daughter has been the lucky recipient of much, much better career development than the other daughter ever was and UIUC appears highly invested in her job success. She and all of her close friends in her major secured well-paid internships this summer at Fortune 500 companies scattered around the country. My daughter tells me that it is common that many of them will have offers for full-time employment starting in May 2013 by next month. (Fingers crossed that my DD will be one of them.) Thus if her experience is any indication of the current job market, a flagship state school with strong career development is arguably more successful at placing students (and placing them almost a year ahead of graduation) than many of the brand name schools. I am happy to concede that this many not be true in investment banking but the hard truth is that many of those I-banking jobs are gone and not coming back anytime soon.</p>
<p>But honestly, do that many kids choose a college based on possible future earning potential? My son, a recent high school graduate, chose MIT because he ultimately thought it was the best fit of his choices. But he doesn’t think past tomorrow, so certainly he didn’t chose it thinking about the advantages or disadvantages of an MIT education on his career (which he hasn’t a clue about) . Surely he can’t be the only one not looking ahead?</p>
<p>Im sure there are others not looking ahead, remember that most of us on here are teenagers 
but at the same time this forum attracts the highly motivated/obsessed students and in order to become that enamored by the college application process many (including myself) look to what happens AFTER those four years rather than what those four years will bring. Ive already realized I want a job involving charts, figures, and heavily math oriented without being a computer job.</p>
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<p>Stanford is also local to Google’s headquarters (i.e. convenient to recruit from) and has plenty of grade inflation.</p>
<p>" I am happy to concede that this many not be true in investment banking but the hard truth is that many of those I-banking jobs are gone and not coming back anytime soon."</p>
<p>Although the top investment banks from NYC recruit more extensively at the Ivy league and other highly selective schools, you can still land a job at one of those firms coming out of UIUC. You’ll need to have excellent grades and be well-prepared in interviews, but it’s still doable.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why some people think you can’t get into firms like Goldman Sachs from UIUC. Jon Corzine ran the entire company at one point in time, so it’s apparent that having an Ivy league background isn’t everything to that organization.</p>
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<p>Undergrad at UIUC, but he got his MBA from U of Chicago. Having an MBA from a top biz school is another way into high finance.</p>
<p>"Having an MBA from a top biz school is another way into high finance. "</p>
<p>He attended the less selective part-time program though. My friend got into the same program awhile back, and his undergrad GPA was only a 3.2.</p>
<p>I think time has changed in IB and sales&trading. Many years ago it was easy to move from support to the front office - look at Jamie Dimon. Nowadays, many firms have policies in place to not allow back office (trade settlement) people to move to the front office, to prevent front office people from tampering trades.</p>
<p>IB entry level jobs are a lot more scarce now, and IBs are a lot more selective where they recruit. I went through the back door to get into banking many years ago. MBS and a lot of structure products were booming. They couldn’t get enough math/CS students in, so they were not as choosy.</p>
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<p>The investment banking ship sailed with the shepherd back in 2007, yet the sheep are still following the shepherd out to sea.</p>
<p>AvidStudent - out of curiousity, what will you be doing when you graduate?</p>