<p>I will be applying to colleges this year and am hoping to be an economics/math major. Im assuming that the financial world will return to normal by the time I graduate but how do banking firms look on top 10 LACs vs top 25 Universities when hiring.</p>
<p>My S attends Colgate. In the last few years he has known several fellow students offered I-Banking jobs. But that was before, so who knows.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>I also attended Colgate with a math econ major and had three IB analyst offers as did several of my friends there. From what I saw from my and friends' analyst classes, I would say that after the eight Ivies, Stanford, Duke, MIT, Georgetown, UVA that LACs such as Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Haverford, Colgate, Middlebury, Hamilton, Colby were among the most represented.</p>
<p>As long as you network, you will be fine. I chose between Vandy, Colgate, and Hamilton, and was basically told there would be marginal differences between those three in terms of landing a banking job, since recruiters don't tend to really visit them. I met a guy at a private equity firm, and he stresses to me to network, network, network. Once you get your foot in the door, there is little difference between a kid at Yale and a kid at Colby.</p>
<p>I recently read about the retirement of Andrew Lahde, a hedge fund manager with one of the best track records. He went to Michigan State for undergrad, and then UCLA for MBA. If you look through many of the better hedge fund profiles, you'll see that although there's a large percentage from HYP, there's also a lot of folks from no name schools. (like not even top 300 schools sometimes)</p>
<p>Sometimes, it's not the top name schools that makes you successful. It's all about whether you have the talent or not. And those type of skills can not be taught in the classroom. I now look at college as places that has the subject areas that I am looking for, like Economic Sociology. All that matters is to do very well in your classes and network like crazy. Even at Harvard.</p>
<p>lol I couldn't help but laugh at Andrew Lahde's retirement letter. And as for this topic, the WSJ feeder list (although ridiculously old) paints a good view of the targets/semitargets of most investment banks. Don't look at it as a ranking, but rather as a list of schools that have the potential to place into top wall street firms and other graduate programs. </p>
<p>You will notice that the higher ranking LACs are almost all represented.</p>
<p>^Yeah, that retirement letter was pretty good.</p>
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I chose between Vandy, Colgate, and Hamilton, and was basically told there would be marginal differences between those three in terms of landing a banking job, since recruiters don't tend to really visit them.
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<p>Don't get me wrong, though. The easiest, most effective way to get an offer is through on-campus interviews. Two of the three offers I received stemmed from companies that conducted interviews at Colgate. Maybe, not as many companies recruit there any more. </p>
<p>However, there is something to be said for the person who pushes their way into the industry against more difficult odds. It's not the most pleasant process, but probably comes under the category of "whetever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." The guy from Michigan State that manages to get himself into the industry may appreciate it more or have more drive than the guy from Harvard, who didn't realize there was any way it wasn't going to turn out well for him.</p>
<p>In my opinion the guy from Harvard had to have done some amazing extra curricular and worked hard to get top grades to be accepted into Harvard. Very few people would question the average Harvard student's work ethic and drive considering the 8% acceptance rate in to the club.</p>