<p>@jkeil911 :</p>
<p>Stanford (and Duke) are in top football conferences as well. That doesn’t seem to have hindered them much.</p>
<p>and for much longer Stanford and Duke have been national academic leaders. And whether or not the ACC can be considered a football conference is up for grabs. Stanford’s in a conference with other first-rate academic institutions like UCLA and UCB–that would be University of Colorado at Boulder (Go Buffs! Beat Cal!). It could be argued that Duke is as well. What has Vandy for academic competition? Like Northwestern, Vandy is a small private uni focused on undergrads more than grads that somehow finds itself surrounded by huge public institutions where football attracts the undergrads. Vandy’s a johnny-come-lately as far as the ivy alum are concerned.</p>
<p>@bamboolong:</p>
<p>Um, recruited athletes are in a separate category by themselves. I can assure you that Vandy’s recruited athletes won’t have better stats than Northwestern’s. In fact, I’m pretty certain that they are worse.</p>
<p>“and for much longer Stanford and Duke have been national academic leaders.”</p>
<p>jkeil911, I have no horse in this race, but how has Duke been a “national academic leader” for longer than Northwestern? Northwestern is a much older school, and it has just as many (if not more) preeminent programs than Duke. </p>
<p>Also, I’m not sure how the strength of the athletic conferences matter. The Pac 10 has other great schools (like Berkeley, UCLA, etc.), but the Big 10 is no slouch either - Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. are all very well respected public schools. </p>
<p>Additionally, I’m not sure there is any “drag” on Northwestern’s reputation. To this end, you state the “drag” is because Northwestern isn’t in the Ivy League, but all ivies aren’t equal. Are you comparing Northwestern’s recruitment to Harvard, Princeton, etc., or to Cornell, Brown, etc.? NU probably compares well to Cornell, Brown, etc. </p>
<p>Finally, in terms of recruitment, once you’re accepted into both schools, ask for the hard data from the Career Offices. You should be able to see just how many NU or Vandy students get into the employers of interest for you. The word on the street is that NU has more established networks, and this may be true, but recruitment patterns can change over the course of ~10 years. The bulk of bank recruitment is done by relatively low-mid level employees. If NU and Vandy have comparable placement now, in 5-10 years, they’ll have comparable numbers of those engaged in the hiring process on the employer side. </p>
<p>Note, though, that while recruitment patterns can change somewhat quickly (read, over the course of half a generation or so), academic reputation changes very, very slowly. It’s funny, if you look at academic rep scores now, 10 years back, 20 years back, 30 years back, etc., they haven’t changed all that much. NU generally outpaces Vandy in this regard, and probably will do so for a while, just because of the slow-to-change nature of this system. </p>
<p>It wasn’t my purpose, @Cue7, to demean the reputation of Northwestern or the Big 10 in my post, or to suggest that within the ivies there is no differentiation of reputation, but to address the relative prestige of NU versus VU. My rationale could be wrong for the differences in rep btw Vandy and NU undergrads, but I wasn’t addressing the concerns that you have with my post.</p>
<p>With the rest of your post I am in agreement.</p>
OP, how strong is your quantitative aptitude? You may also look into MMSS and Kellogg cert at Northwestern. The quant skills at these prized programs would serve you well in a variety of career. I don’t know if they matter for IB recruiting and maybe PurpleTitan can comment.
I don’t know about you but many students aspiring to get into IB have very superficial understanding of what IB is about. They found themselves miserable in the fileld. Make sure you do enough research to know what you’ll get into.
RE Post #10 No evidence of this on LinkedIn. In fact financial services would be a more common career path for Vandy grads than Northwestern grads, where it ranks #13 compared to #5 for Vandy.
In the overall investment banking rating on LinkedIn, Vanderbilt is ranked higher, but neither are in the top 25 for corporate finance, which is a separate category.
OP if you pick a college based on Bulge Bracket jobs you will be miserable. The jobs you are taking about are very small and get smaller every year. Also many have to do with connections. As an international student working in the US, I would say your chances are very small no matter where you go, even a top undergraduate business school.
" I have no horse in this race, but how has Duke been a “national academic leader” for longer than Northwestern? Northwestern is a much older school, and it has just as many (if not more) preeminent programs than Duke."
Agreed
^ NU has never reached the highs that Duke has. In the years before the lacrosse scandal, Duke was arguably one of the hottest schools in America. It was ranked 3rd by US News in 1999 and was in very high demand.
Also, technically speaking, Duke is the older institution (it traces its roots to Trinity College which was founded in 1838).
If working for a BB is the OP’s end goal, I am not sure that either school is optimal. Schools like Cornell, Michigan (Ross), Penn (Wharton) etc…are more heavily recruited.
Agreed - for BB banking Wharton, Ross and other top undergrad programs are great in feeding kids to banks in large numbers.
Northwestern is very strong in feeding to MBB though - just search McKinsey NU grads and you will see a very large list.
Also the kids at NU who have been really passionate in entering finance have had had no trouble getting jobs at places like Blackstone Real Estate, AQR, 3G Capital, Citadel, Point72, Elliot Associates, etc. They are a smaller group than the consulting crowd but you won’t be particularly disadvantaged.
OnTheBubble,
You cited LinkedIn. So I went there and searched for “investment banking” and “investment bank” while filtering for both Vanderbilt and Northwestern. I got a very different result from you - in both searches, Northwestern has more. 345 vs 168 for “Investment bank” and 3,624 vs 2,269 for “investment banking”.