While that is true for LACs, many people graduate with liberal arts degrees from large universities.
A Math and CS double major from a top-LAC will do very well in the quant world; an Econ and Math double major will also do very well.
My point was that it would be perfectly understandable if, at a company with 60,000 employees, one never encountered an Amherst or Wesleyan graduate. Their entire graduating classes would be a drop in the bucket at a place like Google, for instance. That doesn’t mean they aren’t hired in disproportionate numbers.
@circuitrider, agree that hires in disproportionate numbers is likely as the same was seen from many LAC’s when comparing # of PhD students/thousand.
@barrons, that’s from a WSJ pool in 2010, and while its shows where recruiters went to get the largest # of fish, it doesn’t note that they were the best fish…
I think @barrons link refers to recruiting to business related jobs. It would make sense that this list is dominated by large state universities and includes some privates with strong undergrad business programs. It’s about volume and cost effective recruiting (yield) .Although the positions most certainly include IB and consulting, they’re not limited to those genres. There’s likely a huge factor of corporate accounting / Big 4 accounting (assurity, tax, valuation - not consulting)positions that wouldn’t be recruited from LACs .
The challenging thing about this thread is defining “business”. The LAC crowd connects that with IB and high end consulting (MBB). These are great industries. They are also extremely competitive and heavily recruited by a sliver of top schools. So first you have to get accepted by one of the top schools and then be one of the top students at that school. Very narrow approach to getting in to “business”. Those same firms recruit at the top UG business programs, perhaps not with the same velocity, but they do.
What about the guy/gal who wants to work in the finance or accounting dept of a F500 to learn FP&A or some treasury functions? What about the same cat who wants a career in supply chain management? Brand management, marketing? Big 4 exposure before MBA? These positions are heavily recruited at the UG business. (Pepsi/ Frito Lay, P&G, GE, UT, Google, Amazon, IBM, all Big 4 and many of the big banks ). I’m sure they recruit at LACs too but the elite LACs have a culture built around the pipeline to the street. Not everyone wants to do that, in fact most people don’t.
It seems that what type of job or where the student would like to start their career matters to the answer. Many of the NESCAC schools place plenty of grads on both Wall Street and into consulting as was mentioned already in both Boston and New York. Those type of companies do recruit on campus and hire those students regularly.
However as @rickle1 said, I think it might be easier to find a job in finance at a top 500 due to shear numbers going to an undergrad business school but the school of choice still does matter.
Bottom line: If you are 18 y/o and your ambition is to become an accountant straight out of college, NESCAC or the Ivy League (with the possible exception of Wharton) would be a waste of time and money.
@circuitrider Why is that?
Because at four classes a semester at a NESCAC school you will need far more than a one-year MBA to get the 150 credits you need to sit for the CPA exam? What about the wisdom of blowing $50K on an MBA to learn things you could have learned as an undergrad? Cuts both ways.
Or are you merely pointing out – erroneously – that anyone can be an accountant?
^Lots of NESCAC and Ivy graduates wind up taking courses in accounting, either during college or post-grad. But, it isn’t usually because they want to be CPAs; it’s because it is widely believed that it will give them a leg up in the interviewing process for analyst and consulting jobs. Also, because being able to read a financial statement is just a good, all-round skill to have.
It also includes other sectors like engineering, sciences (many firms have inhouse research) computer science and the like–not just “business”. Every business has to make/provide some sort or product or service.