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Stanford University
Stanford University is one of the highest-regarded universities in the world and is famous for its presence in engineering and technology. Stanford is well known for its entrepreneurial culture and producing a disproportionate amount of unicorn startup founders.
Stanford is also home to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which is consistently recognized as one of the best MBA programs in the world. Stanford does not have an undergraduate business school.
Despite having the same cachet as many top Ivy league schools, Stanford's undergraduate investment banking placement is relatively weaker. Stanford ranks #19 on our investment banking target school list, qualifying as a semi-target school. This is not because of Stanford's lack of pedigree.
We anecdotally observe that Stanford undergrads tend to be more interested in technology and venture capital roles as opposed to investment banking roles.
Stanford may not have the school size to warrant a huge # of Total Hires into investment banking, but Stanford has an incredible Elite Firm % of 62%. This suggests that the undergrads pursuing investment banking from Stanford often have access to the very best firms.
Stanford sends the highest number of hires to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, widely considered to be the top two investment banks.
We can see a further display of Stanford's pedigree when we examine its volume of private equity placements. Stanford is one of the few west coast schools that consistently sends graduates to NYC and to international cities for investment banking.
Our investment banking target school list is a complete rank of 60 schools and analyzed >60k LinkedIn profiles of professionals who worked in investment banking between 2008 and 2023. We filtered the data to examine U.S. hires into the top investment banks.
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