Investment Banking Majors/Recruiting

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>Hey Guys,</p>

<p>So the other day my Fed Challenge advisor set up a meeting for 5 of us to visit a Hedge Fund on WallStreet and Deutshe Asset Management. The Chief Economist and a Managing Director at Deutshe sat down with us and talked about the state of the economy and gave us a tour for about 2 hours. Needless to say, after the visit I was hooked. I never ever really considered an I-banking job before- mostly because I heard about the insane hours and didn't really care much for selling my soul for money. But now I'm extremely extremely interested~ What they do are so dynamic and interesting (meeting with CEO's?- well as one analyst told us anyway). </p>

<p>So I've heard quote unquote "Wanting to be an Investment Banker is a right of passage @ Columbia". To what extent is this true? The MD at Deutshe said they actually just hired 2 people- from FU because they valued "quantitative skills". This has me a bit worried- are Fu kids landing Investment Banking jobs easier than College kids? I want to be a Econ/(math/stat/oper.research) major. Any advice/comments/criticisms (ranting on how I should not worry about this yet) from the usual suspects (Denzera, cu2007, cu2002)? Thanks guys!</p>

2

<p>These jobs are practically the only ones the career services office is well equipped to provide, regardless of one's school affiliation. More old boy network than other professions, I imagine. College people with even a concentration in econ are able to snap up one of them.</p>

3

<p>If you excel in your math/stats/quant. courses as a College student, you should have no problem landing a "quantitative" i-banking job. I know of quite a few econ majors landing big name i-banking jobs easily.</p>

4

<p>Fed challenge? Sweet. I might see you at the competition.</p>

5

<p>Put things into perspective. He's a big dog making 8 figures and doing the cool, fun stuff. That's not going to be you for a long time, if at all.</p>

6

<p>It is college application all over again. Why major in econ, not math, physics? Is it because econ is easier? Did you take the hardest courses possible? What's your leadership quality?</p>

<p>It does take a different (not special) breed of people to be in investment banking. You are either suited or you are not. If not, you will be absolutely miserable. If you are, you wouldn't be able to work anywhere else. Try to do some internship before you commit. It is true that it is much easier to get in with a connection - similar to legacy. But it'll be up to you to keep the job. If you are not good at it no one can save you. It's not true that it wouldn't be you for a long time. If you are good it's not unusual to make MD when you are in your mid 30's, and that's not always achievable outside of investment banking. Someone told me that they like their associates to be highly leveraged so they would work their a*s off. Coming out of Columbia, I am sure you will all be highly motivated with all of your student loans.</p>

7

<p>One doesn't necessarily have to be an inherently successful i-banker to take an entry level position; the vast majority go into the field knowing they'll only fill out their two year contract and then move on to something else. Very few expect to stay in the game; for most it's quick cash and more worthwhile in terms of experience and connections.</p>

8

<p>my TA at a columbia summer econ class i took worked as an i-banker at goldman sachs for two years and blackstone for a summer, he told me that they are not hiring based on major and that what they are truly looking for are hard workers with solid quantitative skills (this does not mean you should aim for it by taking a major which adheres strictly to this.) Many of his coworkers had majors in biology, and other fields that one would not expect to lead towards i-banking. Once you're hired many of the companies immediately put you in an intensive 2-8 week training program to completely adapt you to their methodology and way of doing business.</p>

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<p>You don't need to major in economics or finance. Many science and engineer majors get hired because they are very analytical and are trained to be problem solvers, especially engineers. Totally agree with stud64k. They are just look for hard workers, ones that could take the beating.</p>

<p>As an analyst, cash isn't quite there, your hourly rate probably would be less than minimum wage (considering how many hours you would need to work). Of course not all analyst programs are the same, and Goldman is certainly one of the best, Deutsche is questionable. I would look at American banks, their analyst programs(undergrad) or sales and trading programs(MBA) tend to be more structured.</p>

10

<p>Wow. The MD you met with, during the time he spoke with you, probably made about $10,000. Must be a pretty sweet program there to get a guy like that to explain stuff to you.</p>

<p>As an analyst, you'll make about 60k salary, and probably work an average of 80-hour weeks (i.e. averaging out to 9am-11pm 5 days a week, plus an average of 10 hours on the weekends). That's about $15 per hour, which isn't that hot (but most people couldn't just arbitrarily choose to <em>double</em> the number of hours for which they get paid such a wage, so there's some benefit there). But at the end of each year, you'll get a huge bonus, which the past 3 years has been about 50-80k on the Street. So after your first 12 months you may have taken home as much as 120-130k, and once that bonus check clears your hourly wage is really more like $30.</p>

<p>C07 is right, though - most people do this for the experience and connections. The experience is useful when applying to things like business school, the connections are useful when trying to start a business or get a job (most decent job switches and meaningful improvements in careers are done via connections - generally speaking managers don't post a job unless they're having trouble filling it). You'll have instant credibility in the business world as someone who A) knows what they're doing, and B) busts their ass for their job. It will say things on your resume that you could not possibly convince someone of just in a verbal interview. There are many perks to counterbalance those long hours.</p>

<p>Anyway, there's only so much the bunch of us can tell you about IB on these boards - I don't think there's a banker among us (and if there is, that person is crazy and needs to get back to work). The absolute best place on the web to find information you're looking for is:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ibankingoasis.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ibankingoasis.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>A bunch of interesting characters on there, but that's where a whole lot of analysts and associates at ibanks (and hedge funds, and even a few management consultants) hang out. Go read there for a while until you get a sense of who these people are and what they think about.</p>

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<p>What is FU?</p>

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<p>The Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS)...Columbia's engineering school</p>

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<p>ibanking also has a lot of room for advancement. my TA made 120k a year for his first two years and was offered 240k a year to stay, but he chose to leave to start up a consulting firm b/c of how intense the hours were (avg ~80-85 hours a week, 90-110 on weeks when he was doing an IPO which if i remember correctly was only a little over a month each year)</p>

14

<p>Okay this has been eating me up for days and I am glad I found this thread. I really want to know which of these schools is the best for placing kids into Consulting and investment banking:</p>

<p>Cornell Engineering-IEOR
Columbia SEAS- IEOR
Dartmouth Enginering
WUSTL engineering- Systems engineering</p>

<p>I plan on doing the 3/2 engineering program, but for Cornell I can only do the program with Ithaca College which from what I can tell is pretty lame, but the other programs offer many schools I can complete the program with. Any ideas on which is the best program for someone interested in IB and consulting and finance/tech jobs in general? </p>

<p>I think the real competition is between Cornell and Columbia because teh other two don't stand a chance. Please respond.</p>

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<p>Learn the terminology- no one calls it "Fu." You call is "SEAS." 'nuff said.</p>

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<p>cornell and columbia would be the two that would be the most heavily recruited. the large firms - the IBMs and Accentures, or the big i-banks - might recruit a little more at cornell, because their engineering program is more well-regarded as a whole. but for variety, i doubt they are superior to Columbia's offerings in IB and consulting, for one simple reason: no decision-makers at any highly profitable firm want to travel all the way to Ithaca to interview people. The partners at my firm, for example, ruled out dartmouth and cornell from recruiting this year, simply because it takes too darn long to get over there, and we get plenty of more-than-qualified applicants from top schools as it is. Heck, we didn't do Yale undergrad because our yield has been very low there, and several Yale undergrads somehow talked their way into being allowed to apply for us through the yale School of Management career office. They were both awesome candidates, predictably enough, and got offers... but cornell was never on our radar. There are many smaller firms out there, both in NY and CT (home of hedge funds galore), who for logistical constraints only want to recruit in or near major cities. and Columbia is tops in that regard; heck, most of them are within a half hour's drive from us. So there's a nontrivial edge there. It sounds minor, but i've seen it make a big difference.</p>

<p>Also, Columbia just started a Financial Engineering degree in the IEOR department. It probably looks marginally better.</p>

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<p>This i-banking feature in today's Eye might answer some questions, though I've heard anything "Paul Owen" states is to be taken with a grain of salt:</p>

<p><a href="http://eye.columbiaspectator.com/index.php/site/article/wall-street-indiscreet/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://eye.columbiaspectator.com/index.php/site/article/wall-street-indiscreet/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Paul Owen sounds sufficiently full of himself to fit right in with the culture. I'm sure his $145k figure is $65k salary + $80k bonus, which was the top bin for analysts at some firms last year, and I like how he's just assuming he's going to get that. As well as, you know, that if he sticks around he can make VP or MD. At partnerships like law firms and consultancies, if you can bring in the money, you can be a partner - there's no head-to-head competition necessary, so it's more collegial, and the question is whether you're good enough, not whether you're better than everyone else. At a Citigroup or something, it's a pyramid - there's only one Managing Director for healthcare M&A, and it takes a lot of luck, popularity, ass-kissing, sleepless nights, and cut-throat competition to make it there.</p>

<p>More importantly, there are many parts of the financial world where such qualities are not as highly prized as more in-depth social skills such as sales, getting along with clients, and good judgment. Take private equity, either the LBO side or the venture capital side... if you're a coked-up jackass like Paul, you probably aren't going to be instilling much confidence in investors / LPs. So the "Exit opportunities" he salivates over may not be fully available to him, and for that matter may not be appealing to everyone. Very very few bankers retire at age 30 to go join a band. Heck, few of them still have their health by that age.</p>

<p>I know several people from my class who are, from the sounds of it, much smarter than Paul and working in IB. They do it partly for the money, partly for the competition, partly for the exit opportunities, and partly out of masochism. Many of them hate it, some want to get out, others have been hospitalized. His opinions may change drastically when he realizes that he has no time to go out and do lines with strippers, because his entire weekend has been eaten up by an IPO deal, 3 weeks in a row.</p>

<p>Caveat emptor.</p>

<p><editorial> as always, the best thing to do is leverage world-class quant skills. Good-to-very-good traders, hedge fund people, etc can work a mere 50-60 hours a week and make a killing too. Or management consulting, or even IT for a place like Goldman or a hedge fund, which will pay you $90k+ straight out of college and only expect you there 40-50 hours a week and time on the weekends only once in a blue moon. Or Google, which started my friend off at $78k and will give him a grant of $15k in stock, priced at his date of hire, after his first year there. People who are smart and want to be rich go into IB, but many people who are REALLY FREAKING smart and also want to be rich have creative ways to balance having a life with their strenuous but well-paying work.</editorial></p>

<p>Sincerely,
biased math nerd
</p>

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<p>Lol awesome</p>

20

<p>do IB really make that much more money, if you consider the hours you put in?</p>

<p>suppose you held two jobs at 40hours/week
instead of IB at 80 hours/week
...doesn't it amount to the same anyway?</p>