Non-target school#87 of 100
Fairfield University investment banking placement: is it a target school?
Fairfield University is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #87 of the 100 schools we measure: 42 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 276 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #87of 100 schools
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 4281% graduated 2018+
- At the elite five
- 1433% of the top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 276#91 by profiles
- Per 1,000 undergrads
- 55.6#65 per capita
- US-based
- 97%268 profiles
Is Fairfield a target school for investment banking?
The verdict, from the data42 Fairfield alumni listed an investment banking analyst title alongside one of the 18 top banks after graduating in 2013 or later, and 34 of them, or 81 percent, finished in 2018 or later. The bulk of the school's top-bank presence has therefore been built during the most recent analyst classes rather than accumulated slowly over earlier decades.
276 IB profiles from 4,968 undergraduates works out to 55.6 per 1,000 undergraduates, below the median of 97.8 but good enough for #65 per capita against #91 by volume. The network is almost entirely domestic, with 268 of the 276 profiles in the United States. Elite-five representation is comparatively light at 14 analysts, 33 percent of the group, while hedge funds rank #53 with 20 hedge fund profiles per 100 IB profiles.
Placement at the largest banks ranks #94, seven places behind the headline #87, with the blend's per-student leg making up the difference for a college of this scale. A cohort of 42 across a decade is small by any reading, and it is also real and traceable, which is more than the headline rank on its own communicates.
Fairfield investment banking placement by bank
Analysts, classes of ~2015+Fairfield 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 measure42
- 5The elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview14
By count alone Fairfield University ranks #93 of 100; the table of schools ranked nearby, below, sets that figure beside its neighbors.
Where Fairfield alumni land beyond investment banking
Alumni profiles, all yearsFairfield 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.
How to recruit for investment banking from Fairfield
Poets&Quants’ profile of the Dolan School reports that 84.1% of the Class of 2025 found jobs within three months, down from 99.7% for the Class of 2024, at a $73,828 average salary with 18% receiving a signing bonus averaging $3,788; 76% of the Class of 2025 completed a business internship, against 85% the year before.
Its top employers are PwC, Fidelity Investments, KPMG, The TJX Companies, Fairfield itself, Deloitte, TTI, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and RSM, two banks on a list otherwise dominated by accounting and retail; the school placed #41 in the 2026 ranking, #37 for admission standards, #58 for career outcomes, and #51 for academic experience, on a 27.9% acceptance rate and an 87.7% six-year graduation rate.
The profile frames the school around experiential learning: internships, week-long immersions such as a Silicon Valley trip, corporate visits, and study abroad, with 71 university programs including 14 business-specific options and 37% of students completing a global experience before graduation.
The one forum thread that touches Fairfield concerns its finance master’s: a prospective student relays that the business school claims nearly total placement and asks whether private equity and venture firms exist around Fairfield and Stamford, and the reply grants that the placement claim may be true while asking whether the poster cares about quantity or quality of placement, leaning toward the Chicago alternative.
Our data ranks Fairfield #87 on 276 top-bank analysts from 4,968 undergraduates, or 55.6 per 1,000, the #65 per-capita figure in the country; 97% of its banking alumni network is US-based, tied with Holy Cross for the highest share in this batch. Its per-bank cells are not yet fetched, so the neighbor table above stands in for a bank breakdown.
What Fairfield publishes about outcomes
15 figures, 1 sourceEvery 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.
Poets&Quants for Undergrads, Charles F. Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University
- Class of 2025 graduates with jobs within three months
- 84.1%
- Class of 2024 graduates with jobs within three months
- 99.7%
- Average salary, Class of 2025
- $73,828
- Graduates receiving a signing bonus, Class of 2025
- 18%
- Average signing bonus, Class of 2025
- $3,788
- Business internship completion, Class of 2025
- 76%
- Business internship completion, Class of 2024
- 85%
- Poets&Quants 2026 rank
- #41
- Poets&Quants rank for admission standards
- #37
- Poets&Quants rank for career outcomes
- #58
- Poets&Quants rank for academic experience
- #51
- Acceptance rate, fall 2025
- 27.9%
- Six-year graduation rate
- 87.7%
- University study abroad programs
- 71 (14 business-specific)
- Students completing a global experience
- 37%
How Fairfield compares with schools ranked nearby
Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+Fairfield investment banking FAQ
8 questionsIs Fairfield University a target school for investment banking?
Fairfield University is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #87 of the 100 schools we measure: 42 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 276 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
How many Fairfield alumni are analysts at the top investment banks?
42 Fairfield University alumni from the classes of roughly 2015 onward hold investment banking analyst titles alongside one of the 18 top banks we measure, the #93 count of the 100 schools ranked; 14 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 Fairfield as a target school?
No; the only forum discussion concerns its finance master’s and weighs quantity against quality of placement, and UBS and Deutsche Bank are the two banks on a top-employer list led by accounting firms. Our count ranks it #87 of 100.
How do Dolan School graduates fare after graduation?
84.1% of the Class of 2025 found jobs within three months at a $73,828 average salary, with 18% receiving a signing bonus, after 99.7% for the Class of 2024, per Poets&Quants.
Which employers hire the most Dolan graduates?
PwC, Fidelity Investments, KPMG, TJX, Deloitte, TTI, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and RSM, by the school’s Poets&Quants profile, with the university itself also on the list.
How many Fairfield University alumni work in private equity?
176 Fairfield University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #84 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Fairfield University alumni work in venture capital?
34 Fairfield University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #91 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Fairfield University alumni work in hedge fund?
54 Fairfield University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #53 of the 100 schools in our database.
How we counted Fairfield’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 Fairfield 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, 268 (97%) are currently based in the United States and 8 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 4,968 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.
