What Is a Semi-Target School?
A semi-target is a school banks know and hire from, but not in volume and not through a formal process. There is usually no on-campus information session and no school-specific resume drop. Instead, a few alumni at the bank keep the door open, and each year two or three students walk through it.
The term is imprecise by nature. A school can be a semi-target for one bank and a full target for another, and the line moves as alumni get promoted or leave. Forum tier lists treat it as a fixed label; the hiring data treats it as a count that changes every year.
How Recruiting Works From a Semi-Target
The application still goes through the bank's general portal, which means it competes with every other school's applicants. What separates a semi-target from a non-target is that there are alumni to call. A well-run networking effort at a semi-target means finding every alumnus at the bank on LinkedIn and asking each for a short conversation. One of those conversations has to become a referral before applications open.
Timing matters more at a semi-target than anywhere else. The alumni pool is small, so students who start in the fall of sophomore year reach the same five people before the rest of their class does.
Is My School a Semi-Target?
Count the alumni. If a bank's analyst class includes one or two people from your school most years, you are at a semi-target for that bank. rareliquid's target schools ranking shows the analyst count per school for 18 banks, which is a more reliable read than any tier list.
