Not surprisingly, Harvard University and New York University are the top feeder schools for a career on Wall Street, according to Wall Street Oasis’ 2022 Investment Banking Industry Report.

There are myriad factors that go into selecting the best MBA program for any particular student. Debt-conscious students might look to schools with the best ROI. Prestige-minded students might look for high rankings or schools with a stellar brand.

There’s location, price, and schools with the highest average salaries after graduation.

For those lured by the sky-high salaries in investment banking, the 25 top schools on Wall Street Oasis’ 2022 Investment Banking Industry Report should be on your radar.

WSO is an online community, news site, and career center for people working and aspiring to work in finance related fields. Its Investment Banking report collects data from employees working in the field to determine which schools the 10 large Bulge Bracket Banks target in their hiring and recruiting. Not surprisingly, Harvard University and New York University are the top feeder schools for a career on Wall Street.

Patrick Curtis

“The top feeder schools for investment banking rarely move,” Patrick Curtis, founder and CEO of Wall Street Oasis, tells Poets&Quants. “NYU has such a broad reach into almost all of the bulge brackets, and even for just the notable boutiques and middle market funds. The location is a huge advantage for NYU kids, because they’re able to meet people face-to-face, have coffees, and just network. Being in the city, right there, is a big advantage.”

REPORT METHODOLOGY

WSO has almost 900,000 registered users who report a trove of data on the companies where they work. WSO’s 2022 Investment Banking Industry Report takes this user-reported data to show which colleges and universities the 10 Bulge Bracket Banks recruit from the most. These banks include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.

WSO’s reports are constantly changing based on new information users report to the WSO Company Database. The report we are looking at today is up-to-date as of this month and includes year-to-date data as well as data for the prior two years. Because of this, some of the latest trends reported by users won’t start showing up until later reports. (WSO uses Bayesian statistics to create percentiles for companies with few observations.) Read more about WSO’s report methodology here.

TOP FIVE SCHOOLS ACCOUNT FOR MORE THAN 15% OF BIG BANK HIRES

Out of 2,578 WSO reporting users within the Bulge Banks, 91 are graduates of Harvard University. NYU was just a smidge behind with 90. The next three top feeder schools were the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) at 86, Columbia University at 70, and Cornell University at 70.

When totaled together, these schools account for 15.7% of hires at the top 10 Bulge Banks.The top 12 schools on the list make more than 25% of big bank recruitment and hiring.

While Northeastern and Ivy Leagues certainly have an advantage in big bank recruitment, if you click through the chart above you’ll find other schools sending their graduates to Wall Street. The University of Michigan is eight on the list followed by the University of Texas at Austin. There are also several West Coast schools – UC Berkeley, University of Southern California, and UCLA – along with the University of Chicago and University of Virginia landing in the top 25. London School of Economics also makes the list.

In all, there are 99 feeder schools ranked by WSO in its 2022 report. See the full list here.

NEXT PAGE: Where graduate of top feeder schools go to work + Top feeder schools of mid-level banks

Located in New York City, NYU students are well positioned to network with top Investment Banking firms.

WHERE GRADS OF TOP FEEDER SCHOOLS GO TO WORK

NYU was the top investment banking feeder school every year between 2012 and 2020, according to WSO annual reports. Harvard University overtook it in the last two years, but NYU finished in a close second.

In the 2022 report, NYU is particularly strong at Goldman Sachs (31 graduates) and Citigroup (13). Harvard also had its highest number of graduates at Goldman (30), but also had strong showings at Morgan Stanley (14) and JP Morgan (17).

In fact, Goldman had the highest number overall of hires than any of the other banks with 497, with 28 graduates from UPenn, 16 from Colombia and 12 from Cornell.

“What’s interesting is that you can go bank by bank and see which schools they really like to recruit from and see where there is an alumni pull,” Curtis says.

TOP FEEDERS AT MID-LEVEL BANKS

WSO’s report also measures the top feeder schools at other notable banks such as Houlihan Lokey, Evercore, Jefferies and RBS.

In this category, University of Pennsylvania comes out on top with 69 graduates across 25 mid-level banks. NYU is close behind with 68, followed by University of Michigan (54), The University of Texas at Austin (45) and Duke University (44). Harvard drops to 10th on this list with 32 graduates.

Diving deeper into the data, you can see which firms target different schools. Houlihan Lokey seems to favor graduates from New York University and the University of Southern California, with 12 grads each in this year’s report. Evercore’s recruiting suggests strong connections to University of Pennsylvania (12), NYU (11), University of Western Ontario (10), and the University of Michigan (10). And Jefferies has 17 grads from Duke University.

ADVICE FOR STUDENTS NOT AT A TOP FEEDER SCHOOL

If your heart is set on a career in investment banking, knowing which schools banks like to target for the bulk of their recruiting and hiring is valuable information. But what about for students already enrolled in a school not on those top feeder lists?

“What I always say is it’s hard to get one of these jobs even at a target school. At a non-target school, it’s a little bit like swimming upstream, but it doesn’t mean you can’t get there,” Curtis says.

“Keep your GPA high, and if you are at a liberal arts college, try to make your background a little stronger in financing with some online courses. More importantly, you just have to make genuine connections with people who work in the industry, even if it’s just a few alumni. Reach out to them, have a phone conversation, follow up with them.”

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