<p>Even if wall street does recruit at Cal (a claim i’m skeptical about) i doubt they do so at a frequency that’s higher than the top east coast business schools (e.g. Wharton, Stern, etc.)</p>
<p>this is seriously just something i’m actually wondering about, but what positions are available for students with only a BA these days, specifically from Haas? i.e. how does Haas do in job placement? Are there any numbers on this as opposed to just unsupported claims?</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/BusAd.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/BusAd.stm</a></p>
<p>You might be forgetting that SF is an enourmous wall street hub, surpassed only by NYC, and maybe around Chicago though I think that city focuses more on consulting, not sure. Investment banking is a popular graduation job for Haas people. There is no way that UCLA compares to Cal when it comes to wall street / investment banking. It might be because LA just isn’t a financial center like SF and NYC are.</p>
<p>First off, when you’re talking about the undergraduate level, rankings for graduate business schools are not particularly relevant. Instead, you should look at undergraduate business program rankings, in which Cal Haas is #3 in US News behind Penn Wharton and MIT Sloan (USC is #10). </p>
<p>Secondly, even my friends who graduated from UCLA and USC agree that there are many, many more opportunities particularly in investment banking and management consulting when you come out of Haas compared to their schools. My friend from USC Marshall straight out told me that if you want a decent ibanking job, even just on the west coast, you should go to Cal.</p>
<p>Perhaps one way to illustrate the difference is that the top bulge bracket firms from the east coast will typically only recruit at two schools on the west coast: Stanford and Haas. UCLA and USC won’t even be considered most of the time.</p>
<p>Your point about east coast schools doing better than Cal is a bit misdirected. First, the top east coast schools (ivy’s, etc) are already, as a whole student body, better regarded than Cal. So of course it will be easier. Second, simply by being on the same side of the US as Wall Street gives those schools an advantage through connections and geographical proximity. It’s a testament to Haas’ reputation that those firms will travel all the way to the west coast to only recruit at two schools, Stanford and Cal.</p>
<p>With regards to only having an undergraduate degree, at the analyst ibanking level, that’s where the firms will typically recruit from. If you have an MBA it means that you should be interviewing for the associate level, or you are overqualified for the position.</p>
<p>^agreed 10char</p>
<p>I don’t understand why UC Berkeley is ranked high on practically every college rankings list except for USNews’.</p>
<p>It seems like some folks are concerned that stopping at BA degree won’t get you anywhere, but that is a myth.</p>
<p>Unless you’re planning to work at the back office which is responsible for risk and profit and loss controls (you know, such as making business models which requires heavy math, and I mean Math104 - Real Analysis kind of math), working at a trading room in marketing or sales division or at the middle office which checks all the transactions technically doesn’t even require a college education to do the job; you just need to have some good sense of business (i.e. quick decision-making, ability to learn fast) and how to make customers/your boss happy.</p>
<p>What I would do is make bunch of friends at other schools so they can recommend you to get your first job when you’re out of college. If you don’t have the ability to make friends, (I mean <em>a lot</em> of friends/connections and remembering/recontacting each one of them) you shouldn’t be doing business in the first place.</p>
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<p>[Best</a> Undergraduate Business Schools 2011 - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>Here Haas was ranked #13. In addition, as state funding declines, unless Haas starts/already has started, becoming self-sustainable, you can expect that ranking to decline anually, and the reputation of the program to suffer as a result. </p>
<p>i’m limited in making comparisons between UCLA and Cal purely due to the fact that, for some odd reason, UCLA’s business school offers no undergraduate program, and hence, doesn’t get into the rankings. In addition, my knowledge of business program rankings is fairly limited. That being said, in the ‘job placement’ portion of the ranking i listed, Haas gets an A+, so there’s only so much i can say.</p>
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<p>well if we’re going to be looking at anecdotal stuff:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12096159-post50.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12096159-post50.html</a></p>
<p>while looking this stuff up, i learned that UCLA has a “Board of Visitors” which works with their Econ department, it seems with things like recruiting. However, it seems that the internships that are available are extremely competitive since they only select 15-20 people out of maybe 270.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that Berkeley has a better business program, and probably representation, than UCLA does (as i’m sure UCLA does for film) but that doesn’t mean that UCLA’s program isn’t good either. I retract my original claim about the quality of Haas, but i still reject the claim that UCLA and USC get ignored in place of stanford and Cal (since there’s no evidence for it.)</p>
<p>^ Look, no one ever said that UCLA’s program “isn’t good”, or that “no one recruits there”, but it’s simply anecdotal knowledge and consensus that much more recruiting/activity for finance and banking happens at Haas, and that Cal kids are at a significant advantage when it comes to WS jobs for both East and West coasts. If anyone is serious about these jobs: UCLA can get you the job, but theoretically any school can, and you’re placing much more luck and headache into the process by not attending Haas instead, perhaps even for jobs in SoCal.</p>
<p>Oh and very few people take the Businessweek rankings seriously… Notre Dame and Emory over Wharton? Come on.</p>
<p>^caltanner, you stated that really well, hit a lot of the points I was going to make</p>
<p>beyphy, for your point about businessweek rankings, there have been lots of debate about their questionable methods. I don’t want to get into too much about that, but just know that generally professionals/recruiters in finance tend to disregard those rankings. I’ll give one example though, the student surveys constitute 30% of the ranking, when only having a 33% response rate. The students themselves judge how good their school is, not knowing the experiences at other schools. As you can imagine some schools have more pride, leads to higher response rates, etc, you can see the problems that creates.</p>
<p>Now, I’m sorry if it seemed like I was saying UCLA is a bad school or has a bad business program, because they definitely don’t. Like caltanner said, it’s possible to break into finance through UCLA, but the Haas students have a great advantage.</p>
<p>I think you should maybe read this thread: [HAAS</a> | WallStreetOasis.com](<a href=“http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/haas-0]HAAS”>HAAS | Wall Street Oasis)</p>
<p>There is quite a bit of overwhelming anecdotal evidence there to support our claims… but I’ll highlight a few quotes if you don’t feel like reading it all</p>
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<p>beyphy, as far as the CC thread you posted: "As far as i-banks - Bruin Consulting’s exec board this year has one going to JP Morgan, another at a more boutique M&A shop, last year we also started one at RBC, UBS has a guy or two at Goldman, and the list goes on. They do recruit, but you have to be on top of your game if you want to get in. " That list really isn’t impressive by Haas standards. If you take a look at the employer list that someone posted earlier you can compare…</p>
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<p>The problem with anecdotal evidence is it’s hard to tell what’s actually based on experience and what’s based on nothing but preconceived notions. How many of those people are actually familar with what the banks that recruit at UCLA/USC? i would imagine few, if any.</p>
<p>There’s anecdotal evidence, and some rankings, which say that Berkeley is more prestigious than Stanford; Many people would dispute this. I don’t doubt that Berkeley has better recruiting than UCLA, but the impression that’s being offered is that you have nearly limitless doors open for you at Cal, but if you go to UCLA or USC they are much more restricted. i’m just not sure how true this is.</p>
<p>While the acceptance pool and quality of undergrad students is very similar between UCLA and Berkeley, I don’t agree that the quality of undergraduate education between UCLA and Cal is negligible. </p>
<p>Cal has a superior faculty, a much better business program, a much better Computer Science program, a much better engineering program, and overall (save psychology and philosophy), a stronger humanities/social science program than UCLA. </p>
<p>At UCLA for example, people consider the Political Science major as a joke (Alexandra Wallace should prove this point). But this is definitely not the case as Berkeley. Although it certainly isn’t as rigorous as the hard science majors, Pol Sci is a major you have to work for if you’re aiming for close to straight A’s.</p>
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<p>Dude, the business world and recruiting are fairly subjective and preconceptions dominate. It’s ABOUT the notions, the prestige, when it comes to hiring. Bankers simply don’t have time to scrutinize each and every resume. They take about 30 seconds to scan your resume, and ultimately the name and ideas of your school are associated with you.</p>
<p>Your second point, many of the users on wall street oasis have been through the recruiting process themselves, they SEE who else is there on interview days, they KNOW what schools their co-workers come from.</p>
<p>Stop trying to make this into a science man, you just can’t. Not with something like this. You have to rely on anecdotal evidence. I’m really not sure what more to tell you. If you really can’t trust the general consensus of working professionals then there nowhere to go.</p>
<p>Perhaps your best alternative would be to start to learn which banks are the most prestigious, then compare the list of banks that Cal students go to versus those that UCLA students end up at. Here’s the Cal list: <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/BusAd.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/BusAd.stm</a></p>
<p>Unfortunately with finance, for the most part prestige = reality. In the banking community, UCLA is not nearly as prestigious as Cal, undergraduate or graduate. This probably has to do with the “eliteness” of the Berkeley name, due almost entirely to the graduate program, plus the existence of the Haas undergraduate program, which is among Sloan and Wharton in prestige. It might also be that UCLA is seen more as a “public state school” than Berkeley, if that makes sense (LA, Hollywood, beaches, sports, hotter girls vs nerdy engineers, silicon valley, SF finance? who knows). This coincides with a disparity of opportunity between both schools, for both recruiting and advancement in the financial world. Bankers are ***holes.</p>
<p>Finance is probably so prestige-oriented since it’s really not intellectually difficult to work as a banker. Banking is ultimately a crazy-hard-working sales job, where the name of your school matters, because it’s an easy way to brutally, quickly filter down the myriad of applicants. In addition, clients in the banking world will want to know why a 20 year old is advising them on a billion dollar deal, and the more prestigious and “serious” his/her alma mater, the better.</p>
<p>Oh and just about no one is going to say that Berkeley is more prestigious than Stanford, except for grad school, when most people suddenly seem to treat them as equals, and sometimes even give the edge to Cal.</p>
<p>Ilikebananas,</p>
<p>I think you made a mistake. In fact, I can’t believe you essentially turned down a full ride at UCLA for Cal. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re going to get a superior education at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Oh and I agree that UCLA would have been a better choice, sorry.</p>
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<p>i guess it’s just a pet peeve of mine to trust anecdotal claims (since they seem so open to flaws/misinterpretations) i think you’re right though on trusting the consensus of working class professionals though. Like i said, since i’m unfamilar with this, i’ll trust that you’re correct and you know what you’re talking about; while still reserving the ability to change my mind if i discover evidence for the contrary.</p>
<p>If you didn’t like the community at UCLA, you probably won’t like the USC community all that much either. </p>
<p>Plus Berkeley has such a huge student population and amount of clubs/organizations that you’re practically bound to click with at least a few people. Berkeley also has better employment prospects after college than does UCLA partially because of its greater prestige. </p>
<p>I agree with you about the campus though, especially around Sproul it looks kind of sketch. But the dorms aren’t that bad and there’s froyo and a Subway on campus so for me that more or less makes up for it :D</p>
<p>Some of you guys are not very nice. Have you even attended both schools? There’s no such thing as a bad decision unless you think it is a bad decision.</p>