<p>As a Yale and Wharton grad (BA and MBA, respectively) who has worked and recruited in the finance industry for going on two decades, I can assure you, a Yale degree does not disadvantage you in the least relative to its other main competitors. Harvard and Princeton may send somewhat larger numbers of grads to Wall Street, but that is because they both have larger pools of students who are the type who might be attracted to Wall Street kind of work given its increasingly quantitative flavor. Harvard, and Princeton even moreso, have more engineering/math/physics/stats types == which Wall Street and hedge funds seem to have a need for. That said, the competition for these jobs is even fiercer on these campuses. If you are a quant at Yale (and there are many of them) the doors are open as wide to you as well.</p>
<p>Of course, besides the quants, financial firms love jocky types with great personalities to go out drinking with the clients. I suppose, since Yale has sort of cut back on the corps of recruited athletes in recent years (at least, that’s what I heard) maybe there are fewer of those running around Yale these days than at legendarily jocky Princeton and Harvard. Who knows.</p>
<p>If you don’t fit into one of those categories, then someone in your family better be awfully rich and well-connected, if you are targeting the biggest, most craved firms in Finance. Or else you better lucky.</p>
<p>Wharton undergrad is a special case. It is almost always the first name the major financial firms think of only because it is the only prestigious school that comes with 500 seniors who can already crunch all the relevant equations. That said, if you are at Wharton, the competition is very tough – there are just that many more completely trained and finance-rabid people clawing at the same doors as you. Trust me, I know the school intimately. I honestly would not recommend to anyone I loved or cared about to pursue a Wharton education at age 18. From a long-term perspective, I believe a broader education is more valuable at that point in your life.</p>