Why a target school really matters when applying to banking internships
If you're interested in a career in banking, you'll have no doubt heard that there are 'target schools' which banks love to hire from. What does that mean, really?
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Ben Chon, a former JPMorgan investment bank analyst runs an educational YouTube channel and advises students on getting careers in banking. In a video published yesterday, Chon revealed that US target schools will have "a team of 5 to ten bankers that lead recruiting" at most major banks. Those teams are allocated a certain number of spots for internship superdays that they're allowed to fill exclusively with candidates from their school. "If you do go to a target school, the fastest, most efficient way to get an offer is by speaking with those bankers leading recruiting," he said.
Chon, who left JPMorgan in 2018, worked on one of those recruiting teams for UC Berkeley in California. He said that recruitment teams are very invested in their candidates, and want to send out their "best gladiators to battle hoping they [will] demolish the competition."
Which schools are targets? It depends on the bank; Chon said that some banks build recruiting pipelines with non-target schools that their senior bankers originated from. Some schools, however, you can expect to be a universal target. Speaking in an AMA on The Bubble, our new anonymous forum, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker said that the five best target schools in the US are Harvard, Princeton, NYU Stern, Duke University and the University of Chicago.
The process is slightly different in Europe and the UK. On-premise campus recruitment teams are less prevalent but banks will host more student events at target schools where a lot of the leg work for recruitment takes place. Trackr suggests that the best UK target schools are Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL and Warwick. Bocconi is your best option in mainland Europe.
Getting an interview is much harder at a non-target school. In the US, Chon said applicants from these schools are "grouped into one really large pool of candidates." The amount of available superday spots will vary from bank to bank, but the acceptance rate for non-target applicants will be significantly lower. In Europe, Trackr's summer internship report last year said that the average target school applicant received 0.87 offers while the average non-target applicant received just 0.47 offers.
The ex-Goldman banker said that applicants from non-target schools "need as much of a leg up as possible." One of the best places to start is by joining your school's finance society. "It’s a great network and oftentimes that’s the place where banks will pick from," he said. This is equally true at target schools; since recruiting leads are often juniors, befriending them while they're still students could give you an edge.
Whether you go to a target or not, there are things anyone can do to improve their chances. Chon said that the best applicants "sent hundreds of emails to set up chats" with alumni of their school working in banks, and had in-person conversations with up to 50 of them. Chon said that candidates who impressed him most over coffee chats would always make it to first round interviews "as long as they also had really strong resumes." If this all doesn't work, the Goldman banker said that a "[target school] MBA is your best bet."
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