<p>lol well even if the shallowness revealed is true, Columbia is quickly on the rise. It started out, for example, ranked 18 or something like that in the 1980’s, and now its number fo 
Its’ projected selectivity for undergrad admissions this year is also like 6.9 % or something, which is as low as Harvard’s. Its location in NYC also gives it A LOT of room to expand (the new establishment of research buildings is an example) and research opportunities. Giving a few more years, I wouldn’t be surprised if it passes both Princeton and Yale (Harvard may be a bit of a stretch) in “prestige” or “brand name” or whatever these recruiters are looking for</p>
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In selectivity perhaps, though we should remember that Columbia still practices ED admissions. The chance of Columbia surpassing any of the HYPS schools in “prestige” or “brand name” isn’t very likely.</p>
<p>no, kwu, i am a pre-frosh with enough humility to know that she might not be able to maintain a 3.8 gpa. i might be working day& night and only pull a 3.1 while the guy next to me sleeps through class and gets a 3.9. i just wanted to know if it was true that a 3.7+ was a GIVEN if you wanted to be in the field. thanks for the judgemental reply! <3</p>
<p>just to toss in my two cents, u.s. news which does consider recruiting for jobs among other factors did rank columbia above stanford. while it may never be greater than HYP, i still think that especially in the financial fields, columbia has great connections as far as new york goes. i know they started a financial engineering undergrad at SEAS and a financial economics undergrad a columbia college, which i have overwhelmingly heard have drawn wall street-types to columbia.</p>
<p>it is one of the first universities to offer not only the financial engineering grad program, but one of the first with the undergrad. given strides like this, i would not doubt that a columbia education will definitely get you far. </p>
<p>from my experiences to talking to grads and recruiters, it seems that what it comes down to is how you used your college. internships are HUGE and while it may be extremely difficult to get the best ones, it really is a necessary thing if you want to be considered. i have talked to a grad from NYU that was able to beat out students from HYPS landing a job at a consulting firm because of this internships.</p>
<p>so id say that it really matters how much you use your college and there are definitely going to HYPS students that might just rely on they school and “crew” and find everything difficult.</p>
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<p>What is this passive-aggression?</p>
<p>This thread is all about judgment, about how Columbia is a second-rate school relative to the big fish in the pond. When you enter the real world, every aspect of your person and resume will be scrutinized down to the finest detail. You can’t run away from judgment. You’re going to have to deal with it one way or the other. And the way to do so is not to ask whether you will be safe with a 3.0, but to resolve to get your act together from the get-go so that the sharks at HYPS don’t eat you alive.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t waste too much time worrying about this.</p>
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Obviously the opportunities you take advantage of matter. A HYPS/Wharton grad demonstrating no interest in finance and doing no summer internships at an IB will probably be beaten for an IB position by an NYU Stern or Columbia kid. However, the HYPS/Wharton kids who do seek IB careers also take advantage of the resources and participate in the internships necessary for their desired path, so your point is essentially moot.</p>
<p>I’m curious to read the methodology for this study because it doesn’t seem to reflect my experience or the experiences of many of my friends who work in finance, law, or consulting.</p>
<p>For investment banking jobs (analyst roles right out of college), Columbia is one of the most represented schools out there (ahead of Stanford and Yale) and on par with Harvard, Wharton and Princeton. I worked at JPMorgan after Columbia, and Columbia was the most represented school in my analyst class after Wharton.</p>
<p>For IB Associates (after business school) Columbia and Wharton are the top two most represented business schools on the street…just about every year. Princeton doesn’t even have a business school, Yale’s is still building its reputation, and Harvard students tend to focus more on consulting than banking. Stanford students tend not to flock to Wall Street either. They focus more on tech/VC jobs and are more likely to stay on the west coast.</p>
<p>The only area where I can see Columbia not being as represented as the others would be consulting jobs right out of college. I think McKinsey is the only top 3 consulting firm that directly recruits at Columbia. Bain and BCG I’m not sure? Having said that, I know plenty of my friends who got great consulting jobs at all three right after graduating from Columbia.</p>
<p>At the B school level, Columbia again is one of the most represented along with Wharton and Harvard in consulting.</p>
<p>For law, firms care about where you went to LAW school…not undergrad. They recruit at the top law schools (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia). Again, here Princeton doesn’t have a law school, and Penn law is ranked lower than Columbia.</p>
<p>So in every case except consulting at the undergrad level, Columbia not only is a presence, but also is more represented than many of the other schools mentioned in many instances.</p>
<p>Anyway, to all prospies out there, Columbia is not considered “second-tier” by anyone I have ever met working in or recruiting for these industries.</p>
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<p>I don’t know where you get this paranoia from, but it sounds exactly like someone who hasn’t entered the real world. I promise you that there isn’t a league of HYPS sharks anywhere and if there is, it includes Columbia sharks as well. I’ve witnessed first hand close friends with average grades 3.3-3.5s get prestigious front office jobs in bulge bracket investment banks and top 10 consulting firms, with either good ECs or good summer work experience. </p>
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<p>this thread is about whether or not Columbia is a big fish in that pond, and I fundamentally disagree with the researcher that it might not be. she bases her research on a few anonymous anecdotes, and we have no clue whether her questions were biased or whether she simply omitted anecdotes that disagreed with her intended conclusion, there can be so many biases at play while she executes her qualitative research it’s not even funny.</p>
<p>She never says you will be left out of a job because you don’t got to HYPS. She claims the chances are higher from hyps, but she’s wants to judge probability without using any statistical basis - clearly a piece of thorough and well thought out research from our harvard and yale alum - I bet there was no bias there as well.</p>
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<p>bcg, mckinsey and booz all recruited from campus, interviewed and hired many people this year.</p>
<p>bain recruits on campus actively.</p>
<p>Oh I just wasn’t sure which other consulting firms recruited from Columbia at the undergrad level. I knew for sure McKinsey did, but it sounds like they all do. In that case, I can’t see any area at all where Columbia might not rival or surpass the other schools in terms of recruitment and representation in any of these industries.</p>
<p>Like I said, I have never encountered anyone who works in or recruits for these “elite” industries who would ever consider Columbia “second tier.” And if you are dead set on doing something like investment banking, I would say Wharton or Columbia are you best bets at both the undergrad and B school level.</p>
<p>This article is definitely off. There is definitely a hierarchy for recruiting, but its not limited to HYPS. For banking and consulting, the list is more like this in my experience:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard, Wharton, Princeton, Stanford</li>
<li>Dartmouth, Yale, MIT, Columbia</li>
<li>Penn, Duke</li>
<li>Williams, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Michigan (Ross), NYU Stern</li>
</ol>
<p>Lol, academics don’t matter, just crew. I see they don’t like ping pong, but I bet beer pong drives them wild.</p>
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. </li>
</ol>
<p>I think this is pretty spot on except I would probably switch (based on my experience) Stanford and Columbia for investment banking. I would also add University of Chicago to the list and maybe UC Berkeley (decent representation in the San Fran offices of many banks).</p>
<p>Hm, this is kind of strange. So elite businesses don’t judge necessarily on the strength of an institution’s business sector, but rather on the overall “prestige” of the school? Cuz I know stanford and Princeton are good schools and all, but I thought it wasn’t really known for business…whereas UC Berkeley has probably a top five business program in the nation…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t put Columbia in the first Category based on what I’ve seen. To be honest I’d say Dartmouth might have the best chance in the second group of being in the first. But I agree Stanford might also be in between the first and second group. </p>
<p>Anyway collegeftw elite business jobs could care less about the rank of a schools BBA program (outside of Wharton). For the most part prestige (or old-school reputation) wins every time. And prestige isn’t what you think it is. For example, for business WashU is probably the worst recruiting school in the top 15 by a wide margin no matter how selective it is. The best recruited schools (HYPS, Dartmouth, Columbia…Wharton is the lone exception) don’t even have an undergraduate business schools.</p>
<p>Also interesting side notes abound. For example why does Dartmouth do so well, but Brown or Penn CAS less so? It has lots to do with years and years of reputation, Dartmouth has just built it up in spades.</p>
<p>agreed that dartmouth is surprisingly missing from a lot of these conversations (no mention as far as i can see in the abstract or the newspaper pieces on the article). i think dartmouth (like schools it seems more directly to be in comparsion with - amherst/williams) have very strong business relationships, but the smaller size, and weaker name recognition tend to harm it in the arena of public opinion. even though like will and amh, dartmouth folks are very nepotistic and have that down so they have a good network.</p>
<p>but there is, at least as far as i am aware, just a difficulty in numbers and in ‘raw’ presence that unless you are a dartmouth person you don’t quite realize the size and scope of dartmouth’s presence on wall street. i say this with complete deference, but you will never see dartmouth as making up a large class size anywhere, if even percentage wise they might have a higher representation.</p>
<p>1) ^ lol thanks that clarified it a bit. But what about MIT then? At first when I read the article that Northwestern professor put up, I thought ppl disregard MIT because its just a science/math school…but if top businesses recruit within the context of a school’s selectivity or “old school prestige” shouldn’t MIT be up there with HYPS?</p>
<p>2) slipper also why do you think Dartmouth grads have more chance of landing elite busienss jobs than Columbia…?</p>
<p>3) okay not to feed into the petty hierachy that’s apparently been set up, exactly where does Columbia land as of the moment? I know in the past years Columbia was always seen a bit subpar compared to HYPS (+ maybe MIT, Wharton, Caltech) but now its like ranked 4th and the possiblities of it staying put in top 5 are a lot higher than it dropping (increase in applications, realization that more acceptees have to come from top 10 percent of class, higher avg SAT scores, NYC exploding with opportunities, etc.)…?</p>
<p>3) well the reason tiers are better than strict ranking is because it is more realistic.</p>
<p>in a sense you could say columbia is 2nd tier, 1st tier, or 3rd tier, depending on how you want to structure your tiers. also it depends how myopic a world view you hold. is this about ‘all jobs’ or just ‘elite jobs,’ and then of course what constitutes an ‘elite job.’ what firms are considered elite, and which ones are not.</p>
<p>the truth is, if you graduate from any of the above schools you have a massive head start on most of the country, in part because getting into those schools meant you were already pretty damn smart, but when you add that with connections and networking, it really does bode for a successful and happy life. </p>
<p>the ultimate question - which school will make you happiest? that seems to be behind most of these faux-rankings. the truth is, and this is why i prefer to think ivy+ms (minus cornell) as the true first tier, all these schools are of relative similarity in terms of the station of life you will go into. i love cornell, but it tends not to produce the same kind of high wired folks (in fact i would say cornellians tend to be a lot easier being satisfied with less lofty goals), but the other schools they are built for the kind of uber wealthy, captains of industry types. and in that they are so similar that to tease out which is better is silly. all ‘could’ make you happy, if you so choose and if economic well being (aka outcomes) is your primary measure of a collegiate experience.</p>