<p>
</p>
<p>She’s just telling you Chicago students and parents exactly what you want to hear. And you all buy into it hook, line and sinker. She whispers sweet nothings in your ear and you cannot get enough of it. “Intellectual,” my eye.</p>
<p>Objobs, just how do you take a post (from someone who may or may not know anything) that equates Chicago with Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT, Penn (non-Wharton), and two different schools at Cal, for Wall Street finance jobs, and turn it into a NEGATIVE for Chicago? When hyeonjlee was talking about “state schools”, I don’t think anyone would take that to mean Cal, or Michigan or UVa, either.</p>
<p>She was a lot closer to the mark than you are.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, if we’re going to split hairs, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn all have stronger Wall Street placement than Chicago. So does Cornell AEM, for that matter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Huh? UVa was definitely one of the “state schools” that she was talking about and comparing to Chicago with respect to WS recruiting. Here’s the original post to which she was replying:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064960500-post1.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064960500-post1.html</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It wouldn’t surprise me if that were true, since all of those colleges have far more people from the New York area who want to return to the New York area than Chicago does. But how the heck can you make a flat-out assertion like that? Do you actually have data to support it? Do you know how many people at each college were looking for jobs on Wall Street?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone has the data to rank colleges’ Wall St. appeal like that. Individual firms know how many people they have hired from particular colleges, and may have a sense (but are not likely to keep good records) of how many inquiries/resumes they get from particular colleges. College career offices come up with numbers that make them look good, but there’s no consistency to them or independent verification, and they don’t take into account supply, either. And no one aggregates data across all colleges and all firms, large and small, that constitute “Wall Street”. So absolutely no one can make the kinds of statements you are making with any degree of assurance.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there is something of a feedback loop that goes on here. I don’t know whether you have actually worked on Wall St.; I have. Parts of it (not all) are definitely an old boys’ club. If you are sufficiently plugged in, going to the University of Bridgeport is fine, but that doesn’t mean that a penniless, unconnected kid who goes to Bridgeport is going to get an investment banking job straight out of college. Lots of these colleges have fairly large numbers of applicants whose jobs have already been hardwired for them – especially places like UVa or Georgetown. That doesn’t mean that they are the best places to go if you want a career on Wall St. It just means that if you have a job waiting for you on Wall St., going there won’t make you lose it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s kind of my point. Ivy alums are more “plugged in” the “old boys’ club” than Chicago alums.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is partly what makes her “advice” so preposterous.</p>
<p>There are two kinds of “plugged in”, though. Going to the same college as the daughter of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company doesn’t make you attractive to Wall Street. SHE is going to get a job there, if she wants it; YOU aren’t. There are colleges, however, from which Wall St. firms actually recruit talented, unconnected young workers in meaningful numbers, simply because they are talented (and perhaps because alumni ties ensure that the pipeline stays open).</p>
<p>The Ivies have more of the first type of plugged-in people than anyone else, but they (or at least some of them) also do a good job of the second type. No surprise there. But Chicago plays in that game, too, and plays well, because out in the world – not your taxi driver in Shanghai, but the world 30+ floors above ground-level in lower Manhattan – people actually respect the education that happens there.</p>
<p>I’m confident that HYP do better than Chicago, sure, across the board. Dartmouth? Brown? I’m sure their numbers are better, but I’m not sure their numbers are better if all you are looking at is smart, unconnected kids who want to work in finance in New York. No college is a guarantee for those kids, and all of the ones we have been discussing provide real opportunities to some. Maybe there’s some difference, maybe not, but the effect on any individual is going to be small either way. And they are all going to be a lot better than Ohio State.</p>
<p>JHS Dartmouth is practically HYP in terms of Wall Street placement. You can’t assume its lower than a place like Yale. Scores of unconnected students from Dartmouth get on the street. I think you’re assuming too much.</p>
<p>That’s probably right re Dartmouth, I agree. The problem is that there are no generic cases. Columbia, Cornell, and Penn are stuffed with New Yorkers, so of course there’s going to be a well-functioning pipeline for jobs in New York (which may or may not be available to unconnected kids to different degrees). Brown is famously big on “celebrity” students. Some of the glamor may rub off on non-celebs, but how much? How many Brown kids aim at Wall St.? Some, certainly, but fewer than at some other schools.</p>
<p>Anyway, my point remains: It’s silly to talk about differences among these schools as if we actually know anything much. We know some big things, but not much more than that.</p>
<p>This thread has sort of been hijacked and gone a little off kilter, but here’s my 2cents</p>
<p>I work for a hedge fund, having been educated at Yale (u/g) and Wharton (MBA). Out of college I worked for a major, what we used to call, bulge bracket investment bank. I actually now do recruiting for my firm, though, frankly we did not do much hiring this year (picked up one kid from Harvard and one from Columbia).</p>
<p>When you talk about the large ibanking firms (firms that are gonna hire several dozen or more college grads each year), then going to any of the ivies, Stanford, UChicago, MIT, and Duke will stand you in good stead. All the ibanks will be at virtually all of these schools will be there to recruit. It will be up to you, your grades, your achievements, and most of all, your personality to get you a job. In many cases, Harvard and Wharton grads may get a little more attention, or more recruiting schedules, as they are seen as having the largest bodies of ibanking-ready recruits, but students there will also find more competition from their peers.
UChicago is very respected on Wall Street and you’ll find Uof C grads all over the place. UofC does have the rap of producing grads that are less socially smooth than their peers at Harvard or Princeton, and social skills count a lot in many sectors of banking. (You gotta be able to charm the clients in the long run.) You see probably less of them than you do some of the ivies. It is absolutely true that Dartmouth punches way above its weight in Street recruiting; Dartmouth folks take really good care of each other and really help each other network. Much more so than any other school. You also see a lot of Williams folks on the street for much the same reason. (Stand outside any investment bank at lunch – you’ll see tons of young, handsome, kind of jocky males and perky, pretty blond females; places like Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams produce them in abundance. No, Virginia, the world is not fair.)</p>
<p>When you get to smaller firms, hedge funds, PE firms, etc., hiring needs are much smaller and firms are likely to factor in convenience. A lot of smaller firms in NYC, for instance, might go to Wharton and Harvard, maybe Princeton or Yale, but almost always to Columbia and NYU-Stern. Columbia gets visited by a lot of smaller firms for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>For the same reason, if you are open to working in Chicago or Minneapolis after graduation, you can probable do no better than the U of C. Starting in Chicago and moving later in your Career to NYC or LOndon or Asia is not a bad plan at all.</p>
<p>But the original poster was asking about Oxford vs. Chicago. I can honestly say that at least in finance, the best bankers I have worked with over the years are not Harvard and Wharton trained, but Oxbridge trained. There is something about Brits and their love of globetrotting and their negotiating panache that makes them particularly good bankers in my opinion, the present financial crisis notwithstanding. The British style of education makes them particularly quick on their feet in meetings with clients, at least I have found it so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is an odd comment. I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that UVa alumni/ae are less “jocky,” “handsome,” “perky” and “pretty” than Dartmouth, Princeton and Williams alums? If you’re trying to say that UVa alums are generally less represented on Wall Street than Ivy alums, we’ve already established that. Besides, we’re not comparing UVa to the Ivies but to Chicago. UVa alums are definitely more “jocky” and no less “socially smooth” than Chicago alums. Nor are they any less represented on Wall Street. </p>
<p>I have no affiliation/bias for or against UVa. If anything, I find that its relative lack of socio-economic diversity for a public university leaves something to be desired. But to dismiss UVa just because it’s a state school seems presumptuous. From a ROI point of view, it makes no sense to recommend Chicago over UVa to a Virginia resident who would have to pay twice as much, especially because the former has no distinct advantage over the latter when it comes to WS recruiting.</p>
<p>^ Um, I don’t think that’s what mancune meant.</p>
<p>[Yes</a>, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus]Yes”>Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Check annual rankings for i-banking products for US market. You find more European and Japanese Big WS firms and WS boutiques than US WS firms.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The beauty of the comment in question is that it could be interpreted as referring to either or both “Virginias.” It could be seen as a clever, yet subtle way to take a dig at UVa. But you’re probably right. I doubt that there was that much “method” to the said poster’s “madness,” as it were.</p>
<p>Again, you haven’t established at all – and you don’t know, and I don’t know either – that there is ANY substantial Wall Street recruiting for non-privileged students at UVa.</p>
<p>Let’s put it this way: For the past 30 years, more UVa grads than Harvard grads have been Senator from Massachusetts. So does that mean that UVa is better than Harvard as a path to become Senator from Massachusetts? Um, no, not unless your last name is Kennedy. Then it’s an OK path.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I never accepted this false binary distinction of yours between so-called “privileged” and “non-privileged” students. Not just at UVa. Or Chicago. At ANY school. To even remotely suggest that “non-privileged” students will forever remain “non-privileged” is absurd. Many students/alums who start out “non-privileged” (because they do not have the family ties or whatever) can become “privileged” by establishing connections via networking during/after college. That’s partly why people go to college in the first place. At the very least, there exists a continuum of “privilege.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Neither does the other Chicago parent. But that didn’t stop her from making the unjustified claim that when it comes to Wall Street recruiting, Chicago degrees “absolutely make a difference vis a vis” UVa degrees.</p>
<p>Well, I DO know that Chicago is a place where non-privileged students get recruited. Of course, that’s one of the points of getting an education, and especially of getting an elitist education. </p>
<p>I was not making a “false binary distinction”, nor was I suggesting that the categories of privileged/non-privileged were immutable. (Well, priv./non-priv. is probably a false binary distinction in the sense that there are probably 4-5 relevant categories, not just two, but two will do for discussion purposes.) Networking your way to meaningful contacts during college is a great trick if you can pull it off, but if you are good at that you are going to succeed anywhere. I’ve seen a few people do it, but it requires either or both of at least two things: (a) extraordinary talents and achievements, like being a sports star or significant leader, and (b) an institutional culture that supports social mobility on the basis of talent. Networking after college requires being at least in a good enough position to do that and to benefit from it.</p>
<p>One of the important things the Ivies have going for them is extremely strong institutional culture that supports social mobility on the basis of talent. Chicago has that, too, very clearly, without having the extensive alumni network or proximity to Eastern financial centers that the Ivies have. The same is true with variations for Berkeley and Michigan. I’m just not so sure about Virginia. That’s never really been my impression of it, or of the people I’ve met from there who wind up on Wall St.</p>
<p>No college gets you a job. The best a college can do is to get you a sympathetic interview with someone who will seriously consider hiring you on your own merits. Chicago has the power to do that, and does. Maybe UVa does, too, but I don’t feel like I know that.</p>
<p>heyyy guys this thread should have nothing to do with UVA…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here we go again…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is getting silly. On the undergraduate level, UVa is no less selective than Berkeley and Michigan. Like Berkeley and Michigan, UVa also has a highly regarded undergraduate business school. And as for “proximity to Eastern financial centers,” which school do you think has the edge?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re right. I am done with talking about UVa. I don’t even know why I am defending UVa since I don’t have any affiliation there. Nor am I particularly fond of the school. But I call it as I see it. </p>
<p>I only linked the thread from this sub-forum re: UVa vs. Chicago to point out that the “advice” you’re getting from some Chicago parents may not be informed, let alone useful and reliable. Good luck trying to elicit objective words from these people.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree about the “elitist” part.</p>