College Rankings - Ease of Placement
This list ranks colleges by how easy it is to place from the school. It takes into account per capita placement, competition, culture, and recruiting as nondiversity.
Tier 1 - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford
Tier 2 - Dartmouth, MIT
Tier 3 - Columbia, UChicago, Wharton
Tier 4 - Penn CAS, Brown, Duke, Northwestern
Tier 5 - Cornell, Williams, Amherst, Caltech
Tier 6 - Georgetown, Michigan, Emory, WashU, Notre Dame
Tier 7 - UVA, Berkeley, USC, UT, Vanderbilt
Tier Hardo or Bust - NYU Stern, IU Kelley
Debatable list, but placements aren't important regardless. Rearranged in order of prestige - you're welcome
Tier Apex - Wharton
Tier 1 - Harvard, Yale, Caltech
Tier 2 - Princeton, Stanford, MIT
Tier 3 - Columbia, UChicago, Penn CAS
Tier 4 - Dartmouth, Duke, Notre Dame, Georgetown
Tier 5 - Cornell, Brown
Tier 6 - Michigan, Stern, UVA, Williams, Amherst
------ Doesn't really matter past this point so going to lump them together for convenience----
Tier 7 - Berkeley, USC, UT, Vanderbilt, IU Kelley, Emory, WashU, Northwestern
Much worse list than OP’s. If you’re ranking schools by prestige just use USNews lol:
Nobody, even in finance, considers Georgetown and ND to be more prestigious than Cornell, Brown, and Northwestern.
i chose georgetown over both cornell & northwestern - am i screwed?
Sorry you didn’t get into Princeton, but bagged CalTech, LowCaliber
Hi LowCaliber, just wanted to let you know that I have the urge to kill myself every time you post or comment
Rudy is your favorite movie huh
Putting Williams on par with UVA & Michigan should be criminal. And you’re not 6’3 bud. You’re probably 5’7. Being on this website all day, I would expect that you’d at least have accurate info.
Never heard of a caltech grad ever lol
No one in Caltech would ever want to do banking. They are way too smart for that.
Washu down 1. Since when was it better than Vandy?
Gtown up 1, Wahsu down 1, Caltech shouldn't even be on the list, NESCAC down 1 maybe, Wharton up 1
yes man, totally agree. Wharton should honestly be tier 1 since this is a finance forum, insane placement by simply looking at a career report, and best pre-professional atmosphere.
I disagree in terms of ease of placement. I go to Wharton and recruiting is already insanely competitive going against all of the Wharton kids, but you also have to understand that there are CAS, SEAS, Dual Degree (Huntsman, Vagelos, M&T) kids also recruiting, along with students that have insanely strong nepo/connections or diversity (so, so many women at Wharton gun for IB). All of this makes it difficult to compete for the top BBs, any EB, or buyside job. I’m not saying that you can’t get a IB job from Wharton (lol) but I’m saying that I have to do SO much more compared to a kid from another target school with less comp.
UIUC Gies should be on this list. Sneaky underrated and a top target for Chicago IB.
Cmon now.
The overall school isn’t too interested in IB, but kids who do want IB can place well very easily in Chicago. UIUC also has very strong brand name.
I might be biased but NYU Stern should be top in terms of ease of placement lol half those guys go into banking or PE
Im a current sophomore at Stern and can attest to the exact opposite. The school is genuinely a hardo hellhole and fucks your gpa with the stern curve so you cant even transfer. Every club is so competitive and toxic, you literally have to grind techs freshman year to even have a chance. Dont even let me get started on how alumni don’t respond to emails and how hard recruiting as non diverse from stern is.
idk buddy everyone i know placed very well lmao, we’re in the same class
Bro the stern curve is literally 30% A/A- which is 3.7+, plus more than half your classes aren't stern curved bc of gen eds and electives, if your gpa isn't good enough for transferring either you fucked up and should've taken easier electives or you're below top 30% of your class, at which point you're probably not qualified to get into banking lmao (since only like 10% of people make it). Removing the stern curve and letting half the fucking school have a 3.8+ won't solve jack shit because banks aren't suddenly gonna open up more seats.
There's way more seats than club members, and clubs regularly cut tons of people in their programs, so the people who are in when recruiting comes around are naturally among the top candidates without considering club connections. And yeah the response rate sucks but that's only because everyone at stern is concentrated on gunning for the same few roles and firms, if you look literally anywhere other than top BB/EB the alumni are pretty good.
I'm in your class and went through the same recruiting cycle as you, almost everyone I know who wanted banking got it. You can chalk some of it as luck, but the Stern curve is literally a direct comparison of you against the rest of the class, and if it gives you a shit outcome then really what does that say about you as a candidate.
to be honest, Cornell is definitely in Tier 4 since per capita placement is in the same ball-park as northwestern and Brown just by looking at the percentage from PeakFrameWork. The school also has arguably a more expansive and stronger network across the street. It does have a larger undergrad size, but everyone knows that it is more of a tech-inclined school. More people at Cornell pursue STEM than at any of the other schools on this list, aside from Stanford, Princeton, and MIT, arguably. I am a non-diversity Asian male at Cornell, and what I see is that similar profiles all landed in great BB/EB, even PE/HF as long for top non-diversity males, and in the worst case landed with a MM. If we want to take into account positions like SNT, Cornell is top target given its strong STEM program and network.
Dartmouth and Chicago should be moved a tier down. Even-though the two schools are relatively small in student size, they have so many students pursuing business linked majors like Economics while volume on the Wall Street is not comparable to that of Wharton and Columbia. Simply put, Dartmouth is not above Wharton, and Chicago is not in the same league as both Columbia and Wharton. These seem conflicting. This is what I would recommend:
Tier 1 - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton
Tier 2 - MIT (lack network but high prestige and zero competition for ib), Stanford (lack of network in East Coast, tier 1 for west coast)
Tier 3 - Penn CAS, UChicago, Dartmouth, Duke
Tier 4 - Cornell, Brown, Northwestern
(Agree with the rest of the list)
U missed Stanford
Wharton up 1 and cornell up 1
NYU isn't truly hardo or bust, be for real.
Hardo or bust should be reserved for state schools / non-targets.
tier 1: hysw tier 2: penn cas columbia mit tier 3: uchicago (deflation + chicago offices) northwestern a/w (inflation + high per capita$
you miss p in tier 1
Brown?
mb p is tier 1 if not high tier 2… i saw someone say online that evercore doesnt actively hire from pton dont know the validity
brown might be tier 2/3 j bc i think less people are going there for ib. worst i see is tier 4 j bc recruiting prolly isnt as strong there
move wharton to tier 1, move cas up to tier 2, move w/a to tier 3 because per capita placement esp for eb
Shit list. How many kids were sent from Tier 1 to Natixis? Ya that’s what I thought.
Just commenting here even if unrelated.
Does anyone know why I am not able to star my own discussion anymore? I’m new to WSO, have started a discussion but now an error pops out when I try to do it.
What am I missing?
I’d bump Georgetown and Michigan up a tier and drop Amherst down. I think both are stronger as schools and for recruiting purposes than Amherst.
You have no idea what you are talking about, but many don't when it comes to LACs (this is not a shot at you; there is an information gap concerning this topic). Regarding schools, Amherst/Williams > Georgetown/Michigan every day of the week for academics and "prestige." Academically, they align with the Ivy+ for undergrad education and Med/Law/MBA/PhD placement. Again, not from a name-brand perspective but from an educational one.
For recruiting, once you enter the real world and escape the echo chamber of your school/wso, you will see how top LAC alum are fanatics for their kids and will pull harder than almost anyone (especially regarding buy-side recruiting). There is a strong argument for A/W to be moved up to tier 3 for ease of placement.
Guilty as charged on not knowing anything about LAC’s. Good on them for placing their students well if they actually do. I’ve just never really had a lot of exposure to them or the whole NESCAC world. I know a lot of people who were successful from Ivy+ schools (mainly Cornell, Duke, Penn, some Columbia, and a few at HYP), and then from places like Michigan, Georgetown, and NYU. Going back to high school (I’m from the NYC area), those are the places where a lot of the academically qualified people I knew went (some also went to semi-targets like Emory, etc.), so I’ve never really had any insights there. Then again, I don’t really know as many people who went to Dartmouth or UVA, and both are obviously great for finance. At the end of the day, it comes down to your own social, and literal, geography.
As someone who chose Amherst over both Georgetown and Michigan, I sincerely hope you're wrong.
HOOK EM MOTHERFUCKAS 🤘
I chose USC over UMich. Was that a mistake?
both are similar umich def is a target but comp for pe/ib is egregious in itself
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