Target school#8 of 100
Cornell University investment banking placement: is it a target school?
Cornell University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #8 of the 100 schools we measure: 1,144 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 4,711 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #8of 100 schools
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 1,14478% graduated 2018+
- At the elite five
- 53347% of the top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 4,711#5 by profiles
- Per 1,000 undergrads
- 293.5#18 per capita
- US-based
- 82%3,874 profiles
Is Cornell a target school for investment banking?
The verdict, from the dataCornell's banking network runs 4,711 profiles deep — the #5 count by network size among all 100 schools, just behind Harvard's 5,015 — generated by the second-largest undergraduate population in the top ten, 16,051 students. Volume carries through the verticals as well, with private equity at #5 on 1,980 profiles and hedge funds at #5 on 246.
That scale cuts both ways across the broad reads: #5 by size but #18 per capita, with 293.5 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates — three times the 100-school median of 97.8, yet little more than a third of Columbia's 823.2. The headline, now anchored on top-bank analysts, lands at #8 even though the raw top-bank count ranks #4 on 1,144. The network skews domestic at 3,874 US-based profiles, or 82%, and the mix of 42 private equity profiles per 100 IB profiles tracks the norm among the schools above it, with venture capital ranking #8 on 587 profiles.
Cornell is the clearest case this high in the ranking of size lifting an all-time count: 16,051 current undergraduates imply bigger cohorts in every era the census covers, and the data cannot say whether an individual student's odds match those at denser peers. What it does establish is that the absolute pipeline is massive — a top-five network by raw volume, with buyside depth to match.
Cornell investment banking placement by bank
Analysts, classes of ~2015+Cornell University analysts at each of the top banks we measured — graduates of 2013 or later with investment banking analyst titles. Banks with published feeder pages link through.
- 1J.P. Morgan214
- 2Goldman Sachs175
- 3Bank of America157
- 4Citi156
- 5Morgan Stanley128
- 6Barclays107
- 7UBS104
- 8Evercore66
- 9RBC Capital Markets62
- 10Wells Fargo51
- 11Deutsche Bank48
- 12Jefferies45
- 13Lazard39
- 14Moelis24
- 15Houlihan Lokey16
- 16Centerview13
- 17PJT Partners13
- 18Perella Weinberg5
Banks with fewer than five matched analysts, and banks not yet measured for this school, are left off the list. Of the 1,144 analysts at the 18 banks, 533 (47%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.
Where Cornell alumni land beyond investment banking
Alumni profiles, all yearsCornell 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 Cornell
Dyson's outcomes page for the Class of 2025 reports 93% of graduates with full-time offers and 93% accepting within four months, a median base salary of $100,000 and a median bonus of $10,000. Financial services took 71% of the class and consulting 15%; within finance, investment banking and brokerage was the largest slice at 33%. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Blackstone, and Morgan Stanley lead the employer list.
Cornell Investment Banking Club runs a ten-week new-member program that ends in a stock pitch, organizes analysis by sector from consumer to financial institutions, and brings members to New York for firm visits alongside mock interviews and banker speakers.
Mutual Investment Club of Cornell, founded in 1997, is the oldest and largest undergraduate fund on campus at about $120,000, admits ten members a cycle, and lists placements at Moelis, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Centerview, and Lazard. Cornell Finance Club is the other long-running investing organization.
Forum consensus is that recruiting at Cornell is college-agnostic: Dyson, Arts and Sciences, ILR, and the Hotel school get the same on-campus treatment, and the only edge Dyson students claim is earlier accounting and finance coursework. Business fraternities carry weight; one poster counted most of one summer's Goldman banking interns among their members.
On-campus recruiting, per the same threads, covers every bulge bracket and most elite boutiques, and a Dyson alumnus said everyone in the school who wanted a bulge-bracket offer got one. Ithaca's distance from New York is the cost everyone names.
Direct-to-buyside seats are rare outside real estate, where the Hotel school's program feeds real estate private equity; the usual path is two years of banking first, which is the path our private equity rank on this page measures.
Our per-capita rank reflects one of the largest undergraduate bases in the top ten, and the enrollment figure it divides by is on this page. The bank breakdown shows the firm split.
What Cornell publishes about outcomes
8 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.
Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Dyson B.S. AEM employment outcomes
- Graduates with full-time offers, Dyson Class of 2025
- 93%
- Median base salary, Class of 2025
- $100,000
- Median bonus, Class of 2025
- $10,000
- Financial services share, Class of 2025
- 71%
- Consulting share, Class of 2025
- 15%
- Investment banking and brokerage share within finance, Class of 2025
- 33%
Mutual Investment Club of Cornell
- MICC founded
- 1997
- MICC assets under management
- $120,000
How Cornell compares with schools ranked nearby
Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+Cornell investment banking FAQ
8 questionsIs Cornell University a target school for investment banking?
Cornell University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #8 of the 100 schools we measure: 1,144 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 4,711 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most Cornell analysts?
By our count, J.P. Morgan leads with 214 Cornell alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then Goldman Sachs with 175 and Bank of America with 157, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Does Dyson matter for investment banking, or can you recruit from Arts and Sciences?
Recruiting is college-agnostic by every forum account we found. Dyson's edge is earlier accounting and finance coursework rather than access.
Which Cornell clubs feed investment banking?
CIBC for banking preparation, MICC and Cornell Finance Club for investing, plus the business fraternities that forum posters credit with much of the Goldman intern class.
Does Cornell place directly into private equity?
Rarely outside real estate, per forum accounts. Our private equity rank measures the alumni network, which builds through banking first.
How many Cornell University alumni work in private equity?
1,980 Cornell University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #5 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Cornell University alumni work in venture capital?
587 Cornell University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #8 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Cornell University alumni work in hedge fund?
246 Cornell University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #5 of the 100 schools in our database.
How we counted Cornell’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 Cornell 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, 3,874 (82%) are currently based in the United States and 837 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 16,051 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.
