I am trying to figure out which school is the best for finance.
Currently, I am looking at:
UPenn
NYU
Cornell University
UVA
Emory
Carnegie
Boston College
Notre Dame
Chapel Hill
USC
Michigan
The current order is the payscale from highest to lowest salary. However, I don’t really trust payscale too much, because I believe the sample size is quite small. What do you guys think? I don’t care about tuition, location etc… I only care about the prestige, recognition and salary for a finance major.
@clan123 I guess I short narrow my search down more. You are right; Upenn, NYU and Cornell are my safe top 3. After that I am not sure what to choose. For example, UVA seems to be really good, yet Emory supposedly makes more after graduating. From what i’ve read about the two I can’t see why Emory would be better.
@clan123 of course, but someone going to the “more popular” college is going to allow me to start off in a better position and give me a head start over people from other colleges.
@Vincent1997 Penn is definitely the top school for finance, with for undergrad and grad school (i.e. MBA, PhD). Especially for undergrad, there is no comparison to Wharton.
“of course, but someone going to the “more popular” college is going to allow me to start off in a better position and give me a head start over people from other colleges.”
That line of thinking has been debunked, as clan123 said, it’s going to come down to what you do, how you network, interview, negotiate that will determine more wrt salary than school. However that doesn’t apply to grad schools so if your goal is a well paying job in finance, you’ll need a MBA from a top school. In that case your goal should be how to get into Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, et. al. for b-school. So you wouldn’t need a business major, which opens things up. You can still get a job in finance after undergrad by majoring in say economics or stats.
@theloniusmonk Cornell graduates for example get paid an average of 20k more after graduation in finance vs. UMich. I will put the same effort into job finding and networking at either school, yet I am very confident that a top school will make it easier. My plan is to get a bachelor from one of the best undergraduate schools. After that I will work for a couple of years and start my master. For the master degree, I am looking at Harvard, Upenn or any of the other ivy’s.
Salary numbers give a general indication but they should not be used to select one school over another. If Cornell alums are working in NYC, they should be paid $20K (well maybe more) than an UM alum is working say Chicago. Similarly is the question salary or total compensation? A Berkeley graduate making 75K at Google who has 1000 stocks that vest over four years has more wealth than a grad in NYC making 100K with 25% bonus.
If you’re that much into prestige then you’re better off at an ivy, but note that for MBAs, only two ivies are better than Chicago, Kellogg and Stanford.
^yes definitely true. Stern also has good placement and its location is very helpful but you wouldn’t get the well rounded ivy league education you would get at Penn and Harvard. These two tend to dominate on Wall Street but also provide a great undergrad education. Also Yale and Princeton are top places if you want top wall street opportunities paired with a quality education, even though they do not offer a finance major.
“I only care about the prestige, recognition and salary for a finance major.”
The name of your undergraduate institution, indeed, matters, and it helps you open the door. Also, your GPA at your undergraduate institution is also important.
Although the starting salary for similar front-office functions at the same wall street firm tend to be similar, the payoffs can be very different when you become seasoned.
Also, if you go to those wall street firms’ websites that list their managing directors’ profiles, you would notice that quite many of them actually only have an undergraduate degree and have it from a rather moderate undergraduate institution.
The profession at wall street is not a 100 meter dash, although attending an elite undergraduate program does make your life easier.
Networking is very important. It is probably even more important at a smaller (but very good) shop.
Nothing wrong about making good money, but be a good person.
My kid is a sophomore at a highly-selective university that is not on your list. His minor is finance. He just landed an internship with Moelis. His competition in the third (final) round of interviews were kids from Berkeley, Penn, etc. He believes that a couple of things landed him the job. 1) Networking. He says that people working at the company from your university want to increase the presence of alums at the company, and can help you get noticed. 2) Being Ahead of the Learning Curve. He self-studied and was able to answer “technicals” far beyond the scope of his one finance class, so far. He pointed out that another kid picked by Moelis is an undergrad at University of San Diego, not exactly a powerhouse of finance. He wowed them too. The Berkeley and Penn kids appear to have been passed up – at least, they weren’t the first ones to get an offer after the third-round interviews. So, just going to a university with a top-rated finance program may not get you where you want to be.