eFinancialCareers Names Top MBA Programs for Investment Banking Jobs

Finance job directory eFinancialCareers released a new ranking in early September, looking at the Top 35 MBAs for Getting a Job in Investment Banking, based on data from their CV database. Even though the site points out that “more business school graduates are shunning finance for technology and industry” and that “banks are recruiting fewer MBAs”, eFinancialCareers has gone to the trouble of telling us which MBA programs are most likely to result in investment banking jobs. 

Columbia Business School and other Ivies top for investment banking jobs

“The results will be relatively predictable to many”, states the introductory text to the eFinancialCareers list. Indeed, it should come as no surprise that “colleges in the Ivy League predominate in the top 10”. Columbia Business School was the one number school for investment banking jobs. Three other leading US business schools (all Ivies) made it into the top 5 list: Wharton, Yale SOM and Harvard Business School. Although Columbia is top overall, Wharton graduates are the ones most likely to land investment banking jobs with Goldman Sachs. Two other Ivy League Business Schools also made it onto the list with Cornell Johnson at number 15 and Tuck at number 20.

Several European business schools also made it onto the list. London Business School, which told eFinancialCareers it accounts for 40% of MBAs securing jobs in London each year, took the number four spot. London Business School is also popular with JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, since LBS is their number one choice for filling investment banking jobs. Cambridge Judge, IESE, INSEAD and ESADE were the other European business schools that made it into the top 20.

While HEC Paris and other French business schools did not make the top 35 list, eFinancial Careers mentioned that French banks like SocGen and BNP Paribas tended to recruit primarily from business schools based in their home country. Those two banks were allocated less weighting in the ranking (see methodology section below) which groups investment banking firms into tiers, prioritizing tier one banks such as Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. This weighting system may be the reason why most of the schools represented are located in the United States and Europe.

Asian business schools CEIBS, IIM-Ahmedabad and Nanyang Business School were the only schools outside of the US and Europe to make the list. IIM-Ahmedabad also happens to be Deutsche Bank’s second most-targeted school, perhaps as a result of co-CEO Anshu Jain’s Indian heritage. Absent from the list were business schools from Canada, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Methodology of eFinancial Careers ranking

The list, which was released on Thursday, is based on data from 1.2 million CVs shared via eFinancialCareers’ global database. They used this data to create a league table based on the number of MBAs who have taken ‘front office’ investment banking jobs upon graduation. According to eFinancialCareers the definition of ‘front office’ used for this study includes jobs in corporate finance, capital markets, sales and trading or equity research.”

eFinancial Careers combined this data with the proportion of people in their CV database who have secured an investment banking job in order to create the ranking provided on their site. ‘Tier-one’ banks, such as Citi and Bank of America Merill Lynch were given greater weighting, followed by ‘tier two’ banks (like Barclays and UBS) and lastly tier-three (including HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland).

eFinancial Careers admits that the rankings are not perfect, since they do not account for earning potential, career progression or the total number of students who land an investment banking job after graduation. MBA candidates seeking investment banking jobs, however, may find it useful for their MBA search.