<p>At the top levels of business (high finance, elite consulting, etc) the staff is overwhelmingly educated at the top 15 or so schools.</p>
<p>gabriellah and slipper1234,
Re undergrad hiring patterns on the Street, I think one will find a broader universe of schools represented than you are communicating. I suspect you are focusing mainly on the CorpFin/M&A side of the I-banking world and the difficulties of entering that world without prior internship or an elite college resume. I mostly agree with you about the dominant patterns, but exceptions aren’t that rare and students from schools like BYU, Indiana (Kelley), Colgate, etc. are found in top-tier programs. I don’t think anyone would consider these as Top 15 schools, but they produce some excellent graduates and they do have others around Wall Street who have greased the wheels a bit for them. Their paths were probably more difficult, but the quality of their work when they get to the job is every bit as good. </p>
<p>Finally, it is my impression that the very best of the collegiate undergrads are trying to get to the emerging power firms (hedge fund, private equity, etc). Their hiring numbers are comparatively small and almost entirely driven by the historical relationships that their partners have had with a small subset of schools. In these cases, the school name can be an enormous factor in even getting a look, but it is certainly no guarantee of an offer. I believe that the partners making the decisions of where to recruit do so mainly based on their own histories and their perceptions of the quality of a school’s graduates and not a college’s PA score, eg, a school like Dartmouth would be favored over a school like Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>hawkette -
are family connections much of a factor in these situations?</p>
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<p>The uber elite buyout firms like KKR, Carlyle Group, Blackstone, etc. are wall-to-wall Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton grads with very little deviation from the absolute top tier schools represented.</p>
<p>Take for instance blue chip PE firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, where 30 out of 38 investment professionals are HBS grads.</p>
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<p>I really think that’s inaccurate. For the most part, people don’t even know what grad school is. People wouldn’t even know “Harvard College” – at best, they’d know “Harvard University,” but most probably just “Harvard.”</p>
<p>re # 182, I would imagine most people do not get to senior positions at a place like this via being hired out of undergrad and staying on forever there. They get to where they are via accomplishments further down the road.</p>
<p>For example, in a firm that does a lot of hospital finance many former hospital CFOs, who may perhaps have been educated at less-elite grad programs, wind up getting themselves into investment banking through the working relationships they develop with their bankers. Maybe then they wind up at a place like this after a stint at a major firm.</p>
<p>There are a few ways to wind up as a senior banker, but the most typical way is to get recruited out of a top MBA program, and then succeed at your firm. Another is to be a highly successful client and make the right friends, as per above. Another is to be a lawyer who works intimately with bankers, and they get to know you through that relationship.</p>
<p>None of the above paths depend directly on where you do undergrad. However your undergrad work has to be of a nature as to allow the future grad degree, or professional success, that gets you hired by the bank.</p>
<p>AS for the 2 year analyst programs for undergrad hiring, these mostly recruited from top schools, at least at my firm and the others I’m familiar with.</p>
<p>Monydad, my point was not that these senior members were poorly connected, or that they didn’t do hard work to get where they were going all along the way, but rather that they did not need a prestigious undergraduate degree to get there. </p>
<p>Judging from the data and anecdotes above, it’s entirely possible for one to become an investment banker despite a no-name school. Not an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, it sounds like, but an investment banker nonetheless.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs is one of many investment banking firms, and investment banking is one of many, many, many career paths. My general question was out of the thousands of students who graduate from top 15 schools every year, how many actually make a career for themselves at one of these elite firms? The broader question is, for those of us who are graduates of generally considered “prestigious” schools, how many of us will enter a job field where our prestigious degree is one of the primary reasons we got hired?</p>
<p>(From my own life, I can say that my prestigious-degree, prestigious-school brother suffered because employers were looking for less-prestigious degree; my mother learned the hard way that she wouldn’t get hired without somehow minimizing the YALE on her resume; my dad, another Ivy grad, works for a lot of Michigan State/Ohio State grads).</p>
<p>ohio_mom,
Re your question of family ties, the answer is …it depends. I won’t say that it is not a factor, but the kid has to be reasonably competent and it depends on the parent’s role at the firm. For example, I think people would be willing to cut a few corners for children of senior level people at a firm and give them a push in the hiring process if it was close, but nepotism does have its limits and the child needs to be good or the parent’s career may also be damaged. </p>
<p>the_prestige,
I see the private equity shops as you do, particularly so for the graduate school hires. It would be very difficult for a student coming from a second-tier or lower school to find their way into one of these firms, absent some exceptional personal talent/knowledge of an important industry or some strong personal connection to the firm. However, if the deal boom resumes and these firms continue to grow, I would expect this to evolve and a broader range of undergraduate schools would ultimately be represented. </p>
<p>For hedge funds, there are also very selective, but the universe is not quite so blue blood as HYP. Quant skills have been favored (until a few of these firms ran into big trouble earlier this summer) and this favors those from more technically oriented disciplines and colleges, eg, MIT. However, there are a lot of very, very smart kids in a wide breadth of colleges and the resume fixation of the private equity world is not as prevalent among some of the hedge fund community. Furthermore, the hedge funds are more broadly distributed geographically (although concentration is by far highest in NYC and Greenwich) and this leads to more willingness to utilize locally grown talent.</p>
<p>Hawkette: Dartmouth does have an excellent MBA business program, which is highly respected on Wall Street. I am sure that their offerings filter down to the undergrad degree. But Hopkins, with its Business and Entrepreneurship minor, which is very comprehensive, does well at these firms, too. However,there is no question that even among this top tier of school, that there is a hierarchy, starting with Wharton, and HYP. MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley do well, too, as do the rest of the Ivies.</p>
<p>gabriellah,
Dartmouth’s Tuck School indeed is excellent and has, on several occasions, ranked #1 by WSJ among MBA programs. But the program is about 1/4 the enrollment of HBS and Wharton and thus those programs have far greater numbers on the Street and createh hierarchy that you reference. The student quality is excellent at all, but I don’t think that UC Berkeley has the same profile on Wall Street (in NYC) as the others that you mention.</p>
<p>As for Johns Hopkins, I will defer to you as you know much more about that school than I but my experience has been that, while their graduates would be well-respected, this is not much of a feeder school to the Street and there are not large numbers of graduates there. For example, I would consider Georgetown as having a stronger presence on Wall Street.</p>
<p>"Monydad, my point was not that these senior members were poorly connected, or that they didn’t do hard work to get where they were going all along the way, but rather that they did not need a prestigious undergraduate degree to get there. </p>
<p>Judging from the data and anecdotes above, it’s entirely possible for one to become an investment banker despite a no-name school. Not an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, it sounds like, but an investment banker nonetheless."</p>
<p>Yes, but the other paths I described are not easy either, and they can’t be planned for. You can aspire to become the CFO of a hospital,etc., but what proportion of people actually get that job? These people actually came through a harder path. They actually had to work their way up a ladder someplace and be outstanding at a number of positions along the way; then get selected for that one CFO job. When they started their careers, probably few of these individuals really expected to be investment bankers one day. It’s just the way their careers evolved, as a result of being outstanding, as it turned out, among a crowded field.</p>
<p>Now it Is possible to get in to a regional bank, as a BA, and with credentials only from regional schools, and advance from there. However these firms have very few entry level jobs. Most of their hiring is experienced people with clients who can bring business.</p>
<p>"The broader question is, for those of us who are graduates of generally considered “prestigious” schools, how many of us will enter a job field where our prestigious degree is one of the primary reasons we got hired?</p>
<p>(From my own life, I can say that my prestigious-degree, prestigious-school brother suffered because employers were looking for less-prestigious degree; my mother learned the hard way that she wouldn’t get hired without somehow minimizing the YALE on her resume; my dad, another Ivy grad, works for a lot of Michigan State/Ohio State grads)."</p>
<p>All of the above is true; I have experienced all of it myself.</p>
<p>In some ways grads of flagship state U’s actually have an advantage in getting hired, at the regional level. And virtually everyplace is a region, outside of some circles in the Northeast maybe.</p>
<p>If you aren’t shooting for the few areas were this sort of status-game is being seriously played, or graduate/professional degree programs that you perceive to be similarly status conscious, the pedigree can be a handicap as much as an asset. </p>
<p>Hopefully you are attracted to what a school will actually provide/impart to you itself, in enriching your experience for these four years and making you a better person, and not just these future prospects which can be ephemeral, or worse.</p>
<p>Hawkette: The difference between a Hopkins PA at 4.6, and a Dartmouth PA, at 4.3, is not going to make any sort of difference, here, as both schools have outstanding ratings, and Dartmouth is a school of tremendous reknown. If there is some sort of historical difference in the hiring patterns between either of these schools, it probably would have more to do with the students’ level of interest, in terms of numbers of grads from the individual schools who are pursuing this path. However, from Hopkins, this is rapidly changing.</p>
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Haha! Totally! Homer is well known as a great defender of Vassar!
“I had it with your Vassar-bashing, young lady!”</p>
<p>Another funny moment was when Lisa had a nightmare that she had to go to Brown for getting a 0 on a test.. and Otto, the bus driver, was an alumnus of Brown in the nightmare.</p>
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<p>Name recognition and self-selection are also factors. Being a native Californian, I’m aware of how great the Berkeley/Haas name is but relative to other top schools, Haas isn’t entirely on the same level – in fact, I would argue that only HBS and Stanford are the only truly national names when it comes to b-schools – with Wharton being a possibility. Self selection plays a huge role due to Haas’ proximity to Silicon Valley and Berkeley’s engineering cachet among the engineering world – applicants are more likely to want to go into tech/entrepreneurship. Those who want to end up in Wall St. are more likely to go to finance feeder schools… namely Wharton, Chicago GSB, CBS, and Stern.</p>
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<p>Beg to differ. If one had to short-list two b-schools with the greatest national (international) prestige, it would be HBS and Wharton… then Stanford. Bear in mind that in a typical year Stanford GSB is still a fraction of both HBS and Wharton.</p>
<p>Still, you are splitting atom sized hairs at that point. In the end, those are the Big Three in the US: H/ S/ W. Internationally, you’ve got the non-US Big Three: INSEAD/ IMD/ London Business School.</p>
<p>Again, you people are analyzing these schools because you are familiar with the specific fields, etc. I would say that in the microcosmos of your world, the above is true. </p>
<p>On the other hand, i have never heard of London Business School, INSEAD or IMD. I learned about Wharton from CC ( I knew of U Penn ). In the microcosmos of my life, those places did not exist. So much for their prestige in my world.</p>
<p>One can make as many lists as one wants:
Prestige Rankings -according to high school students from ( fill in the blank with a country )
Prestige Rankings- according to graduate students
Prestige Rankings- according to residents of ( fill in the blank with a city, state, region)
Prestige Rankings- according to ( fill in the blank with a profession )
Prestige Rankings - according to people who never attended college but wished they would have.</p>
<p>You get the idea. I am surprised no one has written PRESTIGE RANKINGS FOR DUMMIES. A lot of you are really making some great contributions to such a title.</p>
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<p>But reading that statement in isolation, and knowing absolutely nothing about you but that statement, one could easily conclude that you are not that knowledgeable about business schools. The fact that you had never heard of Wharton before coming to CC, tells me all you need to know.</p>
<p>Now, granted, if you have no interest in business, who cares really? You shouldn’t. If you have no interest in business, have no aspirations to enter business, etc., then it doesn’t matter. But, if you do have aspirations to enter the business world, i’d say you should probably brush up on which schools are the leaders in their fields. </p>
<p>For instance, your handle suggests that you are a movie fan. Out of the general public, I’d be willing to bet that not that many people have seen or care for movie classics like Citizen Cane or Casablanca or 2001 Space Odyssey or [fill in the blank]… (I happen to love Michael Mann’s work and think that HEAT is one of the greatest films ever… but I digress…) The point is to a layman, they don’t really care about the nuances of film as an art, they just don’t. They probably don’t know that NYU and USC film schools are among the best in the nation. See my point?</p>
<p>As for business, I would note that international (read: non-US) businesses and markets will continue to play a much more important role going forward in an increasingly global economy. Given that, certain b-schools (such as INSEAD, for example, which has an alliance with Wharton and campuses in Europe and Asia) are extremely well positioned to leverage that trend.</p>
<p>Again (and I know I’ll say this constantly until I am blue in the face), let’s not confuse “familiarity” with “prestige”… just because you haven’t heard of Wharton doesn’t mean it isn’t prestigious.</p>
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<p>Don’t think that class size has much to do with it. HBS/Wharton (and plenty other b-school) grads know Stanford quality without being Stanford alums. And I’m not mistaking familiarity with prestige either.</p>
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<p>Actually, in this case size matters. If all Wharton had over Stanford was class size, I’d agree. But as it is, in terms of job placement, prestige / brand name strength in the marketplace and strength of the alumni base – if anything, I’d say Wharton makes at least a strong case for any one of those factors and is certainly stronger in the last category (alumni base) – Wharton’s alumni base is much broader and deeper than Stanford GSB’s due to sheer size and tradition (just been around longer).</p>
<p>At any rate, as I said before, we are now splitting hairs. I’ve already acknowledged that Harvard / Stanford / Wharton are the three best US b-schools… trying to whittle that short-list into 2 schools, I’m not sure what the point of that is, and frankly, if any school had to fall out of that triumvirate, it would be Stanford not Wharton.</p>
<p>^ FWIW, the UK-based Financial Times has ranked Wharton the #1 MBA program in the world pretty much since it began its ranking of global MBA programs several years ago:</p>
<p><a href=“http://media.ft.com/cms/9753d360-a6ee-11db-83e4-0000779e2340.pdf[/url]”>http://media.ft.com/cms/9753d360-a6ee-11db-83e4-0000779e2340.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba[/url]”>http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba</a></p>
<p>Obviously, other rankings may differ, but this is an indication of how strong the Wharton name is worldwide.</p>
<p>Plus, the Wharton faculty is the largest, most-published, and most-cited business school faculty in the world.</p>