<p>Both physically and in terms of professionality (if that's a word), one of the big factors in undergraduate schools for aspiring I-Banking majors (or financial engineering like me!) seems to be a close relation to Wall Street, like NYU or Columbia.
Unfortunately, the schools which first caught my eye, like Brown or Northwestern, don't seem to have the close relation to Wall Street. I'm wondering if it'd be better to consider switching my sights over to more professional-finance-oriented colleges like Wharton, Columbia, etc.</p>
<p>How overcomable is distance from Wall Street in those top finance career opportunities?</p>
<p>All jobs are regional first then top schools then targets then everyone else. That goes for law and everything else too. Go to the school in the region where you want to work. Not all “Wall Street jobs” are actually on Wall Street. Also target the schools that are known for financial engineering.</p>
<p>If you want to do banking or other wall street jobs, you should definitely look into schools like Columbia/Wharton over Brown or Northwestern. It’s not the distance but the fact that Columbia and Wharton get much more recruiting from banks and other wall st. firms. </p>
<p>Location only matters for regional offices. Firms will recruit at all the targets (the top ones being Harvard, Wharton, and Princeton) for their NYC headquarters. If you go to a target they will send recruiters to your school for on-campus interviews as well as reimburse you for any traveling expenses you incur for final round interviews at their offices.</p>
<p>Based on kids that I’ve talked to who have interned with people like GS, JPM, MS, ML, and BoA, and gauging how representation lies at most schools, I can easily say that Columbia and NYU are out-represented by multiple schools.</p>
<p>Of course, some of these are Harvard and Wharton, but my friend who worked in IBD at GS last summer told me Cornell, Northwestern, Dartmouth, and Duke all outnumbered these schools. Further he told me that in his division (of which there were 6 kids from Cornell), there was only 1 from Stern, and 2 from Columbia. </p>
<p>Of course these numbers alone mean nothing, as you have many other factors to take in (junior SA positions tend to favor UG B-Schools, Cornell is much larger than Stern or Columbia, etc), but the point I am trying to make is that you can definitely break into the industry by attending a school outside of NYC. Make no mistake: Columbia and NYU Stern definitely benefit from being in the city, but when compared to various advantages other schools have, I’d say it really doesn’t make a huge difference. Also, remember that going to to a school in the city means that everyone you meet and their mothers will want to work in banking, and I’d be willing to bet my right nut a higher percentage of Stern kids want to working in banking compared the percentage of AEM or Sloan kids that do. </p>
<p>I would however recommend attending a school at least in the Northeast, as friends from Haas and Stanford have both informed me how difficult it has been breaking into NYC (although they’ve had great success in SF). </p>
<p>Moral of the story: as long as you go to a good school (Brown and NWU are both targets, though Brown is comparatively lower on the scales than other schools), do well, and prepare yourself, you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>It would be misleading to say that Columbia is not sought after by BBs as Cornell is, for example, based on representation at BBs. Not just because Cornell is larger. Compared to Cornell and many other schools with greater representation on Wall Street, Columbia students are more interested in working for nonprofits, going into law, medicine, etc.</p>
<p>Alright, that’s all good to know! I guess, I’ll just apply to Columbia, Wharton, Northwestern AND Brown, maybe throw in some HYP also. Not NYU, sadly: their financial aid policy doesn’t fit my needs.
Thanks guys!</p>
<p>Just so you know, virtually nothing you will learn in financial engineering (I didn’t even realize you could study that as an undergrad) will have anything to do with investment banking. By all means go ahead and study it, I think it’s very interesting material and will keep your options open for more quantitative finance jobs, but I hope you don’t have the impression that it’s what you need to study if you are honing in on investment banking.</p>
<p>I completely agree with you. As I said in my post, there are many factors attributing to Columbia’s smaller representation on Wall Street, none of which are either Columbia’s lack of a name brand or Columbia’s lack of a strong student body. My point was that schools not in NYC have their own advantages and as results have shown have ended up in top positions on Wall Street. </p>
<p>I meant in no way to discredit Columbia or NYU Stern and I’m sorry if I came off that way.</p>
<p>There isn’t any advantage in terms of location for the “top targets” These are Harvard, Wharton, Princeton. Then comes Dartmouth, Yale, MIT. After that probably Columbia and Penn CAS. </p>
<p>Northwestern does surprisingly well. The only school that perhaps gets a boost from being in New York is NYU-Stern. If Stern were not in NYC it wouldn;t be a target at all, due to location it is.</p>
Not NYU, sadly: their financial aid policy doesn’t fit my needs.