Lower semi-target school#44 of 100
Colgate University investment banking placement: is it a target school?
Colgate University is a lower semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #44 of the 100 schools we measure: 138 alumni list investment banking analyst titles alongside the 18 top banks from classes of roughly 2015 onward, weighted for school size, and its wider banking alumni network holds 621 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #44of 100 schools
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 13878% graduated 2018+
- At the elite five
- 4029% of the top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 621#61 by profiles
- Per 1,000 undergrads
- 198.3#27 per capita
- US-based
- 95%587 profiles
Is Colgate a target school for investment banking?
The verdict, from the dataNinety-five percent of Colgate's IB profiles are currently US-based, 587 of 621, one of the most domestically concentrated networks in this tier. For anyone recruiting inside the United States, effectively the whole alumni base is reachable, which is not true of the large public schools nearby where a fifth or more of profiles sit abroad.
The broad network splits cleanly: 198.3 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates is roughly double the 97.8 median and ranks #27 per capita, against a #61 rank by network size. The pipeline is trending upward, with 108 of 138 top-bank analysts graduating in 2018 or later, a 78 percent recent share. The count itself ranks #52 by top-bank analysts, and the blend's per-student leg lifts the headline eight places to #44.
Elite-five presence is the weak link at 40 people, a 29 percent share, and the buyside network is limited, with 271 private equity profiles at #65 and 55 venture capital profiles at #75. Colgate sends a steady and growing group into top-bank analyst seats, with placement concentrated outside the most selective firms.
Colgate investment banking placement by bank
Analysts, classes of ~2015+Colgate University's analysts at the 18 top banks we measure, graduates of 2013 or later with investment banking analyst titles, against the elite five. Its per-bank cells are not yet measured, so the breakdown by bank is the one thing this page cannot show.
- 18All 18 top banks we measure138
- 5The elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview40
By count alone Colgate University ranks #52 of 100; the table of schools ranked nearby, below, sets that figure beside its neighbors.
Where Colgate alumni land beyond investment banking
Alumni profiles, all yearsColgate University’s rank in each vertical we count, by the same title-phrase method. Bars show its count as a share of that ranking’s #1 school. Per 100 IB shows the network mix: profiles per 100 IB profiles.
How to recruit for investment banking from Colgate
Colgate has no business school, and its career center’s finance page is candid about the calendar: recruiting for investment banking starts in early September or October, insurance and corporate finance hire in the spring, and most banks never advertise entry-level openings online. The support is a Colgate Finance Club, Colgate Women in Business, an Investment Studies Program open to any year or major, and a two-day Finance Immersion Trip to New York; employers it lists include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Guggenheim Securities, Macquarie, and Morgan Stanley.
The outcomes page reports that 98.8% of Class of 2025 respondents had secured employment, graduate school, a fellowship, or service within six to nine months of graduation, on knowledge rates of at least 88% of each class, and its dashboards break the classes of 2016 through 2025 out by industry, employer, and academic department.
A November 2024 Maroon-News feature describes the alumni network as the main asset. One senior said he spent the fall and winter of sophomore year talking to every Colgate alumnus he could find on Wall Street, was invited to a Barclays Superday in New York, and will return to the bank full time after graduation; another traced a sales and trading path through a Tuck Business Bridge summer and an Evercore internship; the paper names Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley among the biggest employers of graduates.
Peak Frameworks ranks Colgate #48 of 60 and #56 by total hires. Its undergraduate placement rate of 0.66% ranks 27th on that list, a strong per-student result for a small college, but its presence score of 12% is tied for the lowest, meaning a thin footprint across Wall Street, with Bank of America and Barclays hiring the most Colgate students and few elite-boutique placements.
An alumnus from the class of two thousand eight writes that Colgate’s presence on Wall Street has waned somewhat over the past decade but remains strong relative to other liberal arts colleges, with Barclays holding the most Colgate alumni and its global head of investment banking a vocal supporter of the school. The comparison thread with Wake Forest, Bucknell, Villanova, and Hamilton put Colgate’s investment banking count in the low double digits from a student body of about three thousand, and rated the group semi-targets with great alumni networks and some bulge-bracket recruiting on campus.
Our data ranks Colgate #44 on 621 top-bank analysts from 3,131 undergraduates, or 198.3 per 1,000, the #27 per-capita figure in the country from a raw count that ranks #61; 95% of its banking alumni network is US-based. Its per-bank cells are not yet fetched, so the neighbor table above stands in for a bank breakdown.
What Colgate publishes about outcomes
6 figures, 2 sourcesEvery figure below is quoted from the source named above it, as published; none is ours. Read them beside our counts, which measure a different thing: analysts matched to named banks rather than a graduating class's outcomes.
Colgate University, Career and Continuing Education Outcomes
- Class of 2025 respondents with a secured outcome
- 98.8%
- Minimum knowledge rate per class
- 88%
Peak Frameworks, Colgate University Investment Banking Placement
- Peak Frameworks rank
- #48 of 60
- Peak Frameworks rank by total hires
- #56
- Peak Frameworks undergraduate placement rate
- 0.66% (ranks 27th)
- Peak Frameworks presence score
- 12%
How Colgate compares with schools ranked nearby
Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+Colgate investment banking FAQ
8 questionsIs Colgate University a target school for investment banking?
Colgate University is a lower semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #44 of the 100 schools we measure: 138 alumni list investment banking analyst titles alongside the 18 top banks from classes of roughly 2015 onward, weighted for school size, and its wider banking alumni network holds 621 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
How many Colgate alumni are analysts at the top investment banks?
138 Colgate University alumni from the classes of roughly 2015 onward hold investment banking analyst titles alongside one of the 18 top banks we measure, the #52 count of the 100 schools ranked; 40 of them are at the elite five, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview. Its per-bank breakdown is not yet measured, so the table above compares its total with the top of the ranking.
Do banks treat Colgate as a target school?
A semi-target with a small footprint: Peak Frameworks ranks it #48 of 60 with a 0.66% undergraduate placement rate that ranks 27th, and forum alumni say its Wall Street presence has waned but stays strong for a liberal arts college. Our count ranks it #44 of 100.
How do Colgate students get into investment banking without a business school?
Through alumni. The career center runs a Finance Club, an Investment Studies Program, and a two-day New York immersion trip, and students profiled by the campus paper landed Barclays and Evercore seats by cold-contacting alumni sophomore year.
Which banks recruit Colgate graduates for investment banking?
Barclays and Bank of America by Peak Frameworks’ LinkedIn count, and the career center lists Barclays Capital, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Guggenheim Securities, Macquarie, and Morgan Stanley among employers.
How many Colgate University alumni work in private equity?
271 Colgate University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #65 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Colgate University alumni work in venture capital?
55 Colgate University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #75 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Colgate University alumni work in hedge fund?
35 Colgate University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #74 of the 100 schools in our database.
How we counted Colgate’s analysts
Counts come from People Data Labs, which aggregates public professional profiles. The headline rank is anchored on the strict measure: profiles that list Colgate University in their education, a job title containing “investment banking analyst”, one of 18 named top banks as an employer, and a graduation year of 2013 or later — the analyst classes of roughly 2015 onward, deduplicated across banks. Those conditions hold on the profile rather than on a single job, so the title and the bank are usually but not provably the same role. The rank weights that count at two-thirds and the same count per 1,000 undergraduates at one-third, so school size is priced in. The elite-five figure counts analysts at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview. Data pulled 2026-10-16.
The alumni-network figure is broader: everyone who has held a title containing “investment banking” at any firm worldwide, across all years, including graduate alumni. It reads as the size of the school’s banking network rather than a single era’s placement. Of those, 587 (95%) are currently based in the United States and 34 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 3,131 total undergraduates reported for fall 2023 in the NCES IPEDS Fall Enrollment dataset — a school-size comparison, not a placement rate for a graduating class.
