Scale of the dataset

Counts of public professional profiles across the schools and banks we measure. Every figure below is computed from the same source, so the numbers reconcile with each other.

136,788136,788 alumni profiles across 100 US schools list an investment banking job title.
27,90827,908 of those alumni list an analyst title alongside one of 18 top investment banks and graduated in 2013 or later.
9,048J.P. Morgan has the largest measured analyst population of any bank at 9,048 people from classes of roughly 2015 onward.
97.8The median US school in the ranking produces 97.8 investment banking alumni profiles per 1,000 undergraduates.

How concentrated banking recruiting really is

Target-school arguments assume a handful of schools own the analyst classes. The measured shares are more spread out than that.

6.6%No school supplies more than 6.6% of any single top bank's analysts — the peak is Harvard University at Centerview, with 30 people.
35%The 10 strongest schools account for 35% of all analysts at the 18 top banks we measure.
65%The top 25 schools account for 65% of measured analysts at top banks, leaving the rest spread across every other school.
1,345Columbia University places the most analysts into top banks of any US school, with 1,345 from classes of roughly 2015 onward.

Which pipelines are growing

Comparing analysts who graduated in 2018 or later against the full 2013-onward population shows which school pipelines are being built now rather than decades ago. Schools with at least 100 top-bank analysts qualify.

87%87% of Williams College's top-bank analysts graduated in 2018 or later, the highest share of any school with a substantial pipeline.
86%University of Chicago is the fastest-rising large pipeline: 86% of its 834 top-bank analysts graduated in 2018 or later.
67%George Washington University has the most legacy-weighted pipeline measured, with 67% of its top-bank analysts from 2018 or later.

Elite firms and buyside mix

Where a school’s alumni concentrate once they are in the industry, measured at the five firms most often labelled elite and across the buyside verticals.

63%63% of MIT's top-bank analysts are at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, or Centerview — the highest elite-firm concentration measured.
2,861Columbia University leads private equity with 2,861 alumni profiles carrying a private equity job title.
29Stanford University has the most venture-tilted alumni network: 29 venture capital profiles for every 100 investment banking profiles.
78Florida State University has the most private-equity-tilted network at 78 private equity profiles per 100 investment banking profiles.

Analyst population by bank

Profiles listing each bank alongside an investment banking analyst title, who graduated in 2013 or later — the analyst classes of roughly 2015 onward. The right column names the largest single feeder school we measured for that bank.

Which schools feed which banks

The same data as a grid. Read across a row to see where one school’s analysts land, and down a column to see who a bank draws on. Shading is each school’s own share, so a small school with a lopsided pipeline reads as strongly as a large one.

Analysts from each school at each of the 18 top banks, classes of roughly 2015 onward. Shading is each school’s own row share, so rows are comparable regardless of size.
School	Goldman Sachs	J.P. Morgan	Morgan Stanley	Bank of America	Citi	Barclays	UBS	Deutsche Bank	Wells Fargo	Evercore	Centerview	Lazard	Moelis	PJT Partners	Perella Weinberg	Jefferies	Houlihan Lokey	RBC Capital Markets
Columbia University#1	255	247	211	200	172	105	92	68	38	53	13	53	29	15	16	43	29	45
Harvard University#2	299	200	188	169	112	83	70	49	25	40	30	46	17	21	10	30	22	22
University of Pennsylvania#3	208	191	160	144	113	72	54	51	44	76	26	54	52	29	22	52	37	39
Georgetown University#4	107	124	100	131	97	83	81	36	33	37	15	36	15	11	14	60	28	37
Yale University#5	183	126	114	117	74	82	61	23	22	33	19	27	11	14	6	29	17	15
University of Chicago#6	137	158	119	116	80	28	52	55	21	33	20	50	20	13	13	21	29	29
Duke University#7	129	97	102	107	84	46	40	70	46	19	8	33	17	6	9	34	13	50
Cornell University#8	175	214	128	157	156	107	104	48	51	66	13	39	24	13	5	45	16	62
University of Virginia#10	69	105	60	80	55	40	43	22	102	35	7	25	10	13	5	105	62	19
Dartmouth College#11	113	48	86	73	46	22	18	30	14	24	17	20	5	6	·	50	8	8
UC Berkeley#12	150	126	141	92	94	61	56	54	72	22	12	32	23	5	24	31	24	23
Stanford University#14	134	86	108	82	47	22	27	21	16	22	8	17	10	·	6	31	9	12
MIT#19	101	86	73	47	35	17	25	21	5	15	·	13	10	9	·	12	9	·
Northwestern University#20	85	80	65	84	48	35	38	40	17	38	6	28	27	12	6	20	21	5
New York University#21	116	142	114	93	89	57	55	37	38	30	7	31	19	11	6	28	16	30

A dot marks a measured cell under our five-analyst publication minimum. Shown for the 15 schools measured against every one of the 18 banks — Princeton University, University of Notre Dame, Boston College, Brown University, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University rank inside the top 20 but their per-bank cells are not fetched yet, so they are absent rather than empty.

Method and limits

Counts come from People Data Labs, which aggregates public professional profiles. School figures count anyone listing the school in their education whose job title has ever contained “investment banking”. Bank figures are stricter: they require an “investment banking analyst” title at that bank and a graduation year of 2013 or later, which excludes other divisions — equity research, sales and trading, asset management, and wealth management titles never contain the phrase — along with summer-analyst internships.

Three limits worth stating whenever these numbers are quoted. The source covers a subset of LinkedIn, so absolute counts are floors rather than exact populations. Profile data can pair a job title and an employer drawn from different roles in the same person’s history, which inflates bank counts slightly. People titled simply “Analyst” are missed, which deflates counts fairly evenly across schools. The rankings hold up better than any single absolute number.

Full methodology and the school-level tables live on the target schools ranking. Bank-level detail is on each bank page.