Being at a target school can be really helpful to your career choices. There are a lot of highly competitive jobs and majors that almost need you to be at a target school. Today, we'll be discussing the most competitive jobs and the target schools for these jobs.
Ok, this is just a quick note, but when the Ivy+ is mentioned, it means the following schools: Ivy league(Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Cornell), Stanford, MIT, Caltech, UChicago, Northwestern, Duke, JHU, Vandy, UCLA, and UCB. This is including 2 public schools in Cali. With that out of the way, let's get into the targets.
MBB consulting is one of the most difficult jobs to get. Top targets for MBB is Ivy+, with special emphasis on Harvard and UPenn. UMich, UVA, UT Austin, USC, and a few other schools are real targets. Some Ivy+ schools that are not targets are UCLA and JHU, as these are more healthcare and research schools, and target other career fields, but dedicated students in these schools will still be able to get jobs in MBB.
Ivy+ are all targets, along with GTown, NYU, Notre Dame, UMich, UVA, UT Austin, USC, BYU, SMU, IU, Emory, UNC, and basically every school thats a top business program. The top Ivy+ schools in consideration is UPenn Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale. Basically, any school in proximity to a top IB hub(NYC, SF, LA, Chicago, Houston, and increasingly Atlanta and Miami).
MIT, Stanford, Caltech, CMU, UCB top the list of Ivy+ and engineering schools that these top firms regularly target. Ivy+ schools as a whole will all be good for FAANG+, but not all for quant. Quant jobs are extremely competitive to get. There are also top CS schools that place well into both quant and FAANG+ programs, including UIUC, GTech, UMich, and plenty of other top programs.
This grad school segment mainly focuses on law and medical. Obviously, any Ivy+ will be a great option, but almost any large, well ranked state school will place well, so this is not an area that is not overly challenging. Instead, GPA, Research, and other areas of the application will be more important.
The buyside of finance is becoming increasingly available to undergrads, but it is still very competitive. It's pretty much only available to Ivy+ and maybe a few other schools. It still requires a lot of internships and a really strong network. These jobs are mainly still reserved for HYPSM and Wharton.