Non-target school#91 of 100
University of Colorado Boulder investment banking placement: is it a target school?
University of Colorado Boulder is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #91 of the 100 schools we measure: 56 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 547 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #91of 100 schools
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 5675% graduated 2018+
- At the elite five
- 2545% of the top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 547#67 by profiles
- Per 1,000 undergrads
- 17.0#91 per capita
- US-based
- 87%474 profiles
Is CU Boulder a target school for investment banking?
The verdict, from the dataColorado Boulder's alumni network leans toward the buyside more than its banking rank implies, carrying 55 private equity profiles and 23 venture capital profiles per 100 IB profiles. The 125 venture capital profiles rank #46 and the 301 private equity profiles rank #60, both well ahead of the school's #91 headline position in banking itself.
The banking side is thinner. 56 alumni have worked as investment banking analysts at the 18 top banks since the 2013 class, ranking #85, with 42 of those graduating in 2018 or later and 25 sitting at the elite five, a 45 percent share. Density is 17 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates against a 97.8 median, from 547 IB profiles and 32,105 undergrads.
The limitation is arithmetic: 56 top-bank analysts across roughly a decade of graduating classes is a short list of people to reach, and hedge funds sit at #69 with 39 profiles. Colorado Boulder is a stronger base for reaching finance broadly than for a direct route into a large bank's analyst class, though that route is documented and recent.
CU Boulder investment banking placement by bank
Analysts, classes of ~2015+University of Colorado Boulder'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 measure56
- 5The elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview25
By count alone University of Colorado Boulder ranks #84 of 100; the table of schools ranked nearby, below, sets that figure beside its neighbors.
Where CU Boulder alumni land beyond investment banking
Alumni profiles, all yearsUniversity of Colorado Boulder’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 CU Boulder
Leeds reports its Class of 2025 outcomes under NACE first-destination standards on 1,276 graduates at an 83.3% knowledge rate as of the end of December 2025, with salary, location, and employer tables on the page; its top ten employers are Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, Deloitte, KPMG, Plante Moran, EY, memoryBlue, PwC, J.P. Morgan, and Oracle, one bank among wealth managers, accountants, and a sales-outsourcing firm.
The school’s older placement page is more granular: of 1,199 students who graduated between summer 2022 and spring 2023, 752, or 63%, had accepted a job or held a professional offer by the end of August 2023, 105 were in graduate school, 19 were starting a business, and 61, or 5%, were postponing the search, many of them traveling or, in the school’s words, working as ski instructors.
The Leeds Investment and Trading Group, the school’s markets club in one form or another for about fifteen years, has run a real-money portfolio since spring 2021 that has grown from about $280,000 to about $425,000 in US equities across six sector teams, each making buy or sell recommendations twice a semester, with 4% withdrawn each year for Burridge Center scholarships; members get Bloomberg terminals, a Barron’s subscription, weekly meetings, and an alumni network.
The CU Investment Banking Club bills itself as Boulder’s premier banking club, teaching discounted cash flow, leveraged buyout, and valuation technicals for interviews and inviting participants to apply for an annual New York finance trek to meet Leeds alumni in banking and private equity; the Burridge Center’s own Wall Street Treks take finance students to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco for a week of alumni panels, mentor dinners, and firm visits, its fall 2026 schedule adds Denver, and it counts ten student finance clubs, including a sophomore club built around the banking application and interview process.
The forum’s one Leeds thread dates to 2013 and is more about the school’s culture than its placement: the poster, who did not know what investment banking was when choosing a college, wanted Wall Street eventually but also a good time and a good education, and the top reply mocks the forum’s fixation with prestige, noting that some of the least impressive people it had met came from elite schools.
Our data ranks CU Boulder #91 on 547 top-bank analysts, the #67 count in the country, from 32,105 undergraduates, or 17.0 per 1,000, the #91 per-capita figure; 87% 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 CU Boulder publishes about outcomes
10 figures, 3 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.
Leeds School of Business, Career Outcomes (Class of 2025)
- Graduates, Class of 2025
- 1,276
- Knowledge rate, Class of 2025
- 83.3%
Leeds School of Business, Placement Statistics
- Graduates, summer 2022 through spring 2023
- 1,199
- Accepted a job or held an offer by the following August
- 752 (63%)
- Enrolled in graduate school
- 105
- Starting a business
- 19
- Postponing the job search
- 61 (5%)
Leeds Investment and Trading Group, LITG Investment Fund
- LITG portfolio at the start, spring 2021
- about $280,000
- LITG portfolio today
- about $425,000
- Portfolio withdrawn each year for scholarships
- 4%
How CU Boulder compares with schools ranked nearby
Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+CU Boulder investment banking FAQ
8 questionsIs University of Colorado Boulder a target school for investment banking?
University of Colorado Boulder is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #91 of the 100 schools we measure: 56 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 547 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
How many CU Boulder alumni are analysts at the top investment banks?
56 University of Colorado Boulder alumni from the classes of roughly 2015 onward hold investment banking analyst titles alongside one of the 18 top banks we measure, the #84 count of the 100 schools ranked; 25 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 CU Boulder as a target school?
No; J.P. Morgan is the only bank on the school’s top-ten employer list, which is led by Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and the accounting firms, and the forum’s one Leeds thread is about campus culture rather than placement. Our count ranks it #91 of 100.
How do Leeds graduates fare after graduation?
The Class of 2025 report covers 1,276 graduates at an 83.3% knowledge rate; the school’s placement page found 63% of the 2022 to 2023 cohort with a job or offer by the end of the following August and 5% postponing the search.
What does the CU Investment Banking Club do?
It teaches valuation, discounted cash flow, and leveraged buyout technicals for interviews and invites participants to apply for an annual New York trek to meet Leeds alumni in banking and private equity, alongside the Burridge Center’s Wall Street Treks.
How many University of Colorado Boulder alumni work in private equity?
301 University of Colorado Boulder alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #60 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many University of Colorado Boulder alumni work in venture capital?
125 University of Colorado Boulder alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #46 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many University of Colorado Boulder alumni work in hedge fund?
39 University of Colorado Boulder alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #69 of the 100 schools in our database.
How we counted CU Boulder’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 University of Colorado Boulder 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, 474 (87%) are currently based in the United States and 73 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 32,105 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.
