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re: Nobody can get into Texas or Vanderbilt, but what the next hardest school to get into?
Posted on 5/6/26 at 11:10 pm to charliethehun
Posted on 5/6/26 at 11:10 pm to charliethehun
I work in water treatment chemical sales (boilers, cooling towers, wastewater applications).... Most in the field have an engineering or a degree in a technical field but some of the dumbest mf'ers that I've ever worked with graduated from Texas.... Don't understand what the big deal is....
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Posted on 5/7/26 at 9:02 am to tide06
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Texas is a great school but it’s no better objectively than Vandy
We were talking about undergraduate programs. In US News undergraduate business rankings, Texas is #6, just behind NYU, tied with Carnegie Mellon and in front of Cornell. Texas is ranked higher than Vandy in undergraduate CS and Engineering. It is difficult to find a popular undergraduate program where Vandy is ranked higher than Texas.
Look, I'm not saying Vandy sucks. It is elite and a strong argument can be made for Vandy over Texas in multiple scenarios.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 9:18 am to SneezyBeltranIsHere
Posted on 5/7/26 at 9:21 am to SneezyBeltranIsHere
When you dig on that data set you end up with some anomalies like BYU at 13 that tells me some of these firms being referenced aren't top Wall Street type groups.
Now its entirely reasonable to argue that investment banking is decentralizing, but you simply arent getting hired from Indiana (14th) at the top banks.
Same holds for the top NYC and the top international law firms: if you arent graduating from Yale/Harvard/etc you arent getting a sniff.
Now its entirely reasonable to argue that investment banking is decentralizing, but you simply arent getting hired from Indiana (14th) at the top banks.
Same holds for the top NYC and the top international law firms: if you arent graduating from Yale/Harvard/etc you arent getting a sniff.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 10:23 am to tide06
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Now its entirely reasonable to argue that investment banking is decentralizing, but you simply arent getting hired from Indiana (14th) at the top banks.
This is going to sound rude, but you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I am involved with hiring in this world. IU Kelley sends lots of people to IB firms/Bulge Bracket Banks. US News has IU Kelley tied at 8th for undergraduate business with Cornell.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 10:45 am to SneezyBeltranIsHere
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I am involved with hiring in this world. IU Kelley sends lots of people to IB firms/Bulge Bracket Banks.
Which firms? Wall Street?
I graduated from Fuqua at Duke and we were only getting peripherally recruited by the top tier places. It was clear we were secondary options to the true top tier schools like Wharton, etc.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 11:00 am to tide06
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Which firms? Wall Street?
One in particular on Wall Street, yes.
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I graduated from Fuqua at Duke
I know plenty of people with Duke MBAs (and undergrad Economic degrees from Duke who have the Finance concentration) who are killing it on Wall Street.
Did your undergrad degree come from Bama? That might be the limiting factor for you.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 12:45 pm to SneezyBeltranIsHere
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I know plenty of people with Duke MBAs (and undergrad Economic degrees from Duke who have the Finance concentration) who are killing it on Wall Street.
I never had any interest in going the Wall Street path, my work background was already in an alternate field and I had no interest in relocating to NYC.
I also didn’t say anything about it being impossible to get there from Duke. A number of firms were recruiting frequently while I was there. I said it was less of a recruiting priority than the top echelon schools like Wharton.
My statement was in relation to IU or BYU grads getting recruited to the top houses or law firms, that simply wasn’t something that was happening with any frequency at least when me or my family members who went law were going through the recruitment process a decade plus ago.
Maybe it’s changed?
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Did your undergrad degree come from Bama?
Never even came up other than wanting to know how gameday weekends were at a school that won a bunch of championships.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 12:58 pm to tide06
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at least when me or my family members who went law were going through the recruitment process a decade plus ago.
We weren't talking about law.
Here is what you said earlier:
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Now its entirely reasonable to argue that investment banking is decentralizing, but you simply arent getting hired from Indiana (14th) at the top banks.
IU Kelley placing well in IB is not new.
LINK
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Indiana University is a well-rounded public research university that has very solid placement into investment banking. With a consistent number of hires and strong representation at almost every top investment bank, Indiana is ranked #22 on our investment banking target school list.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 1:07 pm to Buster83
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If there is not that many applying then it will drive your acceptance rate up.
This.... a major driver of low acceptance rate is a high number of applications. There are only so many spots available. Schools tout exclusivity based on acceptance rate, but in a lot of cases they inflate their application numbers by making it easy (and cheap) to apply with low/no app fees, test optional standards, no essay requirements, and use of the common app. The more applicants, the lower the acceptance rate. (NOTE: This is not the case with Vandy - and probably not with some of the other "top" schools - but pretty quickly it becomes a factor for the rest of us. It is really easy for graduating seniors to blast out a dozen or so applications. In 2000, the average number of applications sent by a student was between 1-4, now it is 6-7.
And where do they blast those applications to? Well Perception is a big driver. This is why football is so damn important to schools. Winning football grabs the attention and sounds like a lot of fun for an 18 year old. I see lots and lots of kids in St. Louis who have no connection what-so-ever wearing gear for Alabama, Auburn, Texas, LSU, etc. Very few wearing Iowa, Purdue or Indiana (3 schools that have a solid alumni base here - but not surprisingly the Hoosier gear is much more common this year). Location/Good weather is also a factor. Southern schools are getting a lot of applications from out of state, just like the population in general is migrating south. Many of those applicants don't have much chance of acceptance - but they have nothing to lose by applying.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 1:11 pm to SneezyBeltranIsHere
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We weren't talking about law.
Same principles apply to big law as wall street when it comes to recruiting.
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IU Kelley placing well in IB is not new.
Them not being equal from a recruiting standpoint to HBS or Wharton isn't either.
Posted on 5/7/26 at 4:03 pm to LOTOTiger
I don't like that the rankings rely so much on acceptance rate rather than results. Remember in 2010 when Kansas State accidentally misreported it's acceptance rate as 2% rather than 98% and it suddenly got ranked alongside the Ivy League schools?
Posted on 5/7/26 at 10:24 pm to Henry Jones Jr
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I had a buddy that got in to UPenn, North Carolina, Duke and Dartmouth. He got waitlisted at UGA and it’s likely because he was an out of state student
He got waitlisted because UGA saw his admissions profile and knew he was capable of getting into better schools.
In addition to selective admissions, it’s now all about admissions “yield rates”. Schools have started not accepting and just waitlisting candidates that are highly likely to enroll elsewhere (e.g. at the better school they also applied to as their first choice), in order to make their conversion rate of offers to enrollees as high as possible.
The WSJ had an article about this just last week or so: WSJ article link
Posted on 5/8/26 at 8:41 am to Demosthenian
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He got waitlisted because UGA saw his admissions profile and knew he was capable of getting into better schools.
This is accurate, in fact I think it was actually the recruiting folks at Univ of Georgia that explained this to us when we visited with my daughter. Schools are finding that while they wait out decisions for the really high achieving / highest qualified students (who they likely will not get) - they are losing others that are almost as qualified because they are waitlisted. Probably have teams of data scientists and Phd's in statistics cranking through this stuff to optimize the offers they decide to make. This is another reason they do the early acceptance process - to try and sort some of that out early in the process.
Posted on 5/9/26 at 11:47 am to charliethehun
Def depends on your major too
Posted on 5/9/26 at 5:11 pm to charliethehun
Florida is a better school than Texas.
Posted on 5/9/26 at 5:36 pm to El Jefe de Tu Mama
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Florida is a better school than Texas.
Except there are zero programs where florida ranks above Texas
Posted on 5/9/26 at 5:53 pm to Chris_topher
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University of Mississippi (Ole Miss): ~96%–97%
My company has kids from just about every SEC school and Ole Miss kids are by far the most unprepared consistently. This actually makes a lot of sense why.
On the contrary, always impressed by A&M grads despite my dislike of the university.
Posted on 5/9/26 at 6:20 pm to charliethehun
Forbes has Vandy 11, Texas 46.
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