<p>I already posted something similar to this on the “investment banking” thread, but I was curious if anybody on the Brown forum specifically had any info.</p>
<p>How does Brown do in terms of investment banking hiring? I know that they do get some interviews/positions at big firms but are these given only to the top Brown students or is it simply because jobs like this don’t match the personality style of Brown students?</p>
<p>I am definitely not sold on banking as my dream career or anything, it has just always interested me and I probably do want to attend a school where I could get a job in the industry if I had a solid gpa, could get an interview/internship, etc.</p>
<p>If anybody has any information, I would greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>brown does fantastically when it comes to IB hiring. true, some of the boutique banks that come to recruit at b-schools (stern, wharton) don’t come to brown (e.g. lazard, moelis etc.)… but by far and large, all the major bulge bracket banks come to recruit at brown, along with a healthy number of private firms that are started by brown graduates. you also need to consider the fact that competition for IB jobs at brown is comparatively not as fierce as it would be at the aforementioned business schools, just by the virtue of the number of applicants. don’t get me wrong, it is still extremely competitive, but it’s not like everyone in your class is gunning for that Goldman summer analyst position.</p>
<p>regardless of the school you will attend, i think that you need to be a top student wherever in order to get the IB interviews. no easy way out, buddy.</p>
<p>I was never into finance so I don’t know for sure, but from all my friends who do it, I hear we have really good placement. (Of my 3 closest friends who are into this stuff, 2 of them just graduated and are now working at Citigroup and Barclay’s, the other is a rising senior who is a summer associate for Barclay’s)</p>
<p>I’m still in high school, but I have a family friend who went to Cornell. Not too many BBs came, but he interned two summers. That pretty much guaranteed him a job when he got out of school. Definitely intern as early as you can. I caddy at a course in NJ co-owned by the former CFO of Goldman. There are only 80 members there, 2/3 of them working for Goldman. Most of them didnt didnt go to Ivies, but got internships early and worked extremely hard in their first few years. Good Luck.</p>
<p>I also know a couple of people who are now hired at Goldman and Morgan. Oh and they were doing engineering/cs up until junior/senior year, before they switched to econ. Both did an internship in the summer before. 70.000$ starting salary…not bad, I think? Definitely go for internships.</p>
<p>Anyone I’ve known who has wanted to do this has had success in finding a position. I’ve only known about 4-5 people, but still, they all seemed to work it out, and all had those 70-100K starting salaries.</p>
<p>To be truthful I also know a couple of people who didn’t get the kind of top offer they wanted, and ended up at grad school at harvard and yale instead…ugh, the humility, right?</p>
<p>Yeah, now that you mention it, I think two of my friends who were looking at IB ended up in consulting at boutique firms instead… again, how terrible!?!</p>
<p>haha okay. well comforting news…my mom said if she is going to invest that much into an education i better get a good job. hahahaha but it truly does sound like a cool career.</p>
<p>so if i do well i should have solid options upon exiting brown??</p>
<p>Without question, although I will say, investment banking is far from a “cool career” for many. It often is a miserable 2-3 years working 80+ hours a week until you’re drained before your contract is up and you go off to grad school or a different firm now that you have the experience in the trenches.</p>
<p>If you mean lucrative, yeah, I-banking definitely can be. Competitive? Sure. Hard work? You better believe it. Cool? Not for most, though some people do love it, most people I know who are doing that kind of thing work for the money to enable them to live the way they want when they’re not on the job.</p>
<p>It’s early to worry about a job, but suffice to say, students who do well at Brown have many fantastic options.</p>
<p>What degree from Brown do you believe best puts in an advantageous position to get IB jobs? </p>
<p>Originally, I had wanted to go into Economics, but saw that there was an Econometrics Class requirement that I would rather avoid since math is not my strongest skill. I’ve since looked into the COE concentration and thought about pursuing it.</p>
<p>Can you give me any insight into the distinction between Economics and the COE concentration? Is COE looked down upon compared with Economics when applying for those top IB jobs? </p>
<p>Thanks so much man. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>i know that wasn’t addressed to me, but math isn’t my strongest point either but I thought stat was easy. So maybe you wouldn’t have too many issues with econometrics.</p>
<p>I really don’t know enough people who have done IBing to know how either degree is looked at, but I do know that econ is not business or finance and is not a pre-requisite to IB jobs. However, if you’re afraid of math, I wouldn’t recommend the IB path-- lots of spreadsheets, from what I understand.</p>
<p>Clay- im not a brown student… But I took AP Stats at my high school…which was a rigorous class, but I just didn’t have any problems with it like i did have some in pre-cal and other higher level maths.</p>
<p>dRho - if you don’t like math, IB isn’t for you. If you don’t like statistics, IB isn’t for you and economics isn’t for you. At least one semester of econometrics is a core in every school’s requirement for the econ major. Virtually every senior year economics thesis utilizes lots of econometrics. Virtually every job in economics (including finance, I’d think) and every economic scholarly article has data in it and requires data analysis (econometrics). So yeah, you may want to stay away from the econ major, I guess?</p>
<p>FWIW an introduction to Econometrics course covers only basic statistical concepts, and it in no way the equivalent of a statistics course - you may find you actually like the applications of statistics, rather than just learning the formulae and applying them to data that has no importance to you.</p>
<p>I took APMA1650 and APMA1660, which covers a decent amount of statistics (not sure how it compares to MATH1610 and MATH1620, though), and, while it was not always easy, I felt it was easier than some of the problems in the low level math courses I was tutoring in, though certainly more rigorous than the basic intro to Econometrics course my roommate took. He got an A in the course while not understanding why what he was doing worked (he was unhappy about this).</p>
<p>Courses alone does not make you a strong IB analyst candidate. In general, those financial institutions like seeing challenging coursework on the transcript, and satisfactory performance in mathematics courses is one way to do this.</p>
<p>However, in no way that not being mathematically inclined should stop you from entering IB. Come on now, you are not going to use statistical regression for your traditional corporate finance jobs.</p>
<p>i think coe requires econometrics also…econ 1620 (intro econometrics) wasn’t that bad, we didn’t really cover all that much. i heard however that they are increasing the econometrics requirement going forward, i think making it one semester of regular stats, and then one econometrics, but i’m not sure.</p>