Which of the Following Is Closest to Your High School Rank What Does This Mean

For high schoolers interested in pursuing careers on Wall Street, school selection is extremely important. The majority of recruiting that happens for Wall Street banks occurs at what are called "target schools."

investment banking target School Definition

Target schools are the schools that banks actively plan to recruit students from. These schools will often have on campus recruiting which mean that there will be networking sessions and interviews that occur at the university.

2017 Bulge Bracket Banks – Target Schools

Generally speaking, target schools are ivy league or ivy league equivalent schools but in recent years prestigious state schools have been improving their representation at banks making these schools a good alternative to the Ivy League.
According the WSO Investment Banking Industry Report, we have found the top ten target schools in 2017 to be:

• University of Pennsylvania
• New York University
• Harvard University
• University of Cambridge
• Cornell University
• The University of Texas at Austin
• Columbia University
• Duke University
• University of Chicago
• University of Michigan

These top 10 schools represent ~22% of all recruitment and hiring of bulge bracket banks in 2017.

The below picture, a screen shot from the WSO Investment Banking University Report shows the percentage of the recruiting class that comes from each school. You can find out about the recruitment from various schools in the report.

However, there are many other universities that make up the remaining 78% of all bulge bracket bank hires. Some other notable universities include:

• Yale University
• University of Cambridge
• University of Virginia (UVA)
• Boston College
• Duke University
• UCLA
• London School of Economics
• Princeton University
• Georgetown
• Northwestern University
• Arizona State University
• Brigham Young University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Penn State University

These firms all place well on Wall Street and are targets at particular firms. For example – Penn State is a target school at Bank of America Merrill Lynch but not at JP Morgan. This is not just true for non-ivy league schools. WSO's research indicates that Harvard, UPenn, NYU, and Duke were the only schools in the top ten listed schools that were targeted by all big banks. You can read more about this statistic in the WSO industry report.

2017 Boutique Bank – Target Schools

While perspective bankers often focus on the JP Morgan and Bank of Americas of the world, there are many other banks looking to hire quality undergraduate candidates. Some of these other notable banks include Houlihan Lokey, Lazard, HSBC, SunTrust, Evercore, BMO , Piper Jaffray, RBC , Moelis, Jefferies, Macquarie, and Rothschild to name a few.
Some of these firms have a more regional focus and also look to other schools aside from those mentioned. Some of the schools targeted by these firms include:

• University of Western Ontario
• Indiana University
• Vanderbilt University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Southern California, USC
• UCLA
• Dartmouth
• University of Illinois at Urbana
• University of Waterloo
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This list is by no means exhaustive and you can find more about university placement onto Wall Street through the WSO Investment Banking University Report.

Learn More About A Career In Investment Banking In WSO

• Investment Banking Interview: Walk me through a DCF
• How to Explain that I Didn't Get Return Offer in Interviews
• How To Correctly Insert Future Internship/Position Into Resumehttps://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/how-to-correctly-insert-future-internshipposition-into-resume

Want to Learn More About Investment Banking Recruiting?

The Investment Banking University Recruiting Report shares 7 key takeaways based partially on the data discussed above and sheds light on the schools that banks are recruiting from. This is an extremely helpful resource when looking to determine which schools to apply to.

Investment Banking University Recruiting Report

Which of the Following Is Closest to Your High School Rank What Does This Mean

Source: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/comprehensive-list-of-target-schools-for-investment-banking

Share this post