The best investment banking schools will be ones that can send a large amount of students to top investment banks. They should also have a high student retention rate and provide students groups or programs that are designed to prepare you for an employment in finance. Cornell, MIT and Columbia all meet this criteria along with having prominent alumni from the industry and extracurricular activities like Booth’s finance society and Stern’s famed finance program, which provides the opportunity to learn about the real-world problems of investment banking.
They also tend to have a strong alumni network within the field, which is helpful for networking. They are usually close to a financial hub for small or regional investment banks. They also have top-ranked accounting and finance programs.
When choosing a school, you should also take into consideration your personal interests, the type of career you wish to pursue and what positions you’re interested in working at an investment bank. The hiring process for investment banking is heavily influenced by the school’s reputation and the number of top performing students that the school produces each year.
Think about universities like NYU or UMich for undergrads. They have a solid reputation in the business world and are renowned for their impressive graduation rates and alumni networks. In Europe you should think about HEC Paris and Oxford Said Business School. In Asia, consider HKUST and CUHK as well as Chinese universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua and Fudan.