Which banks hire the most Harvard analysts?

By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 299 Harvard alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 200 and Morgan Stanley with 188, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.

Do banks treat Harvard as a target school?

Yes, on every list including ours, where it ranks #2. Forum accounts say the hard part is the other Harvard students: applicants outnumber interview slots many times over, so a sophomore internship and a strong GPA do the work the name does not.

Do you need to concentrate in economics to recruit from Harvard?

No. Forum accounts of Harvard recruiting describe interviews going to students across concentrations, and the school has no finance major to begin with.

Which finance club matters at Harvard?

Harvard Financial Analysts Club's comp is the standard on-ramp, and completing it opens the door to the club's student-managed fund. The Mignone Center lists it among the finance organizations it works with.

How many Harvard University alumni work in private equity?

2,552 Harvard University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #2 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Harvard University alumni work in venture capital?

788 Harvard University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #4 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Harvard University alumni work in hedge fund?

266 Harvard University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #4 of the 100 schools in our database.

Target school#2 of 100

Harvard University investment banking placement: is it a target school?

Harvard University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #2 of the 100 schools we measure: 1,178 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 5,015 profiles that include an investment banking job title.

By Ben Chon, former J.P. Morgan investment banking analystUpdated 2026-10-16

Photo: chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0

Rank: #2of 100 schools
At 18 top banks, 2015+: 1,17879% graduated 2018+
At the elite five: 68258% of the top-bank total
IB alumni network: 5,015#4 by profiles
Per 1,000 undergrads: 551.4#2 per capita
US-based: 70%3,512 profiles

TargetTarget 1–15Semi-targetSemi 16–35Lower semi-targetLower 36–60Non-targetNon-target 61–100

Ranks 1 through 15 are targets, and every school in this tier has placed at least 521 analysts into the 18 top banks since the classes of roughly 2015. The pipeline is proven at scale and banks arrive on campus expecting to hire, so your job is to use the machine early. Reach out to alumni your freshman and sophomore years, because at a target the competition sits in your own classrooms.

Is Harvard a target school for investment banking?

The verdict, from the data

With 2,552 private equity profiles, Harvard owns the #2 PE total among all 100 schools — a buyside contingent nearly the size of Columbia's 2,861 despite an investment banking base one third smaller. The tilt shows in the mix too: 51 private equity profiles per 100 IB profiles, the highest ratio anywhere in the top five.

The #2 overall rank rests on top-bank analyst seats: 1,178 alumni matched to the 18 top banks by an investment banking analyst title since the 2013 class, the #3 count on that measure. The broader network backs it up — #4 by size with 5,015 investment banking profiles and #2 per capita at 551.4 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates, more than five times the 100-school median. Its US share is the top five's lowest — 3,512 profiles, or 70% — implying an unusually international network. Venture capital, at 788 profiles, and hedge funds, at 266, each rank #4 among the 100 schools.

The broad-network figures describe no current class: the 5,015 profiles pool every generation of alumni, and dividing by fall 2023 enrollment cannot reveal how many of this year's seniors land offers. As a standing network, Harvard reads as the top five's most buyside-saturated heavyweight — #2 overall, and second only to Columbia in private equity.

Harvard investment banking placement by bank

Analysts, classes of ~2015+

Harvard 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.

Banks with fewer than five matched analysts, and banks not yet measured for this school, are left off the list. Of the 1,178 analysts at the 18 banks, 682 (58%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.

Where Harvard alumni land beyond investment banking

Alumni profiles, all years

Harvard 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 Harvard

Harvard has no undergraduate business school, so the numbers come from the Crimson's senior survey. In the Class of 2025, 21% of seniors entering the workforce were headed to finance, ahead of technology at 18% and consulting at 14%. New York was the most popular destination at 24%, and 64% of the class planned to go straight to work.

The 2024 survey found more than half of the class taking jobs in finance, technology, or consulting, up from the year before, and 64% of the seniors headed to finance were going to New York rather than Boston.

Harvard Financial Analysts Club, founded in 1996, runs a comp that introduces finance with internships in mind; top students then apply to manage the club's $100,000 long/short equity fund. The Mignone Center lists it among the finance organizations it works with.

Selective clubs set the tone. A 2025 Slate essay by a Harvard student describes the consulting, finance, and technology clubs as the arbiters of campus prestige from the first week, with acceptance rates that make them a recruiting process of their own.

Forum accounts push back on the idea that the name makes it easy. One Wall Street Oasis poster relayed a Citi recruiter's remark that applicants outnumbered interview slots roughly ten to one, and said the same few dozen students collected most bulge-bracket interviews. The thread is old, and the advice in it is a sophomore finance internship and a high GPA.

Bankers on the same forum attribute Harvard's modest banking share to self-selection rather than rejection, and note that interviews went to students from many concentrations, not only economics, which matches a school that has no finance major to begin with.

Our bank breakdown above shows where the network actually sits, and the elite-five share is the figure to read: it measures how much of Harvard's top-bank presence is at the five firms students argue about most.

What Harvard publishes about outcomes

8 figures, 3 sources

Every 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.

The Harvard Crimson, Class of 2025 senior survey: After Harvard

Finance share of seniors entering the workforce, Class of 2025: 21%
Technology share, Class of 2025: 18%
Consulting share, Class of 2025: 14%
New York as first destination, Class of 2025: 24%
Seniors entering the workforce directly, Class of 2025: 64%

The Harvard Crimson, Class of 2024 senior survey: After Harvard

Finance-bound seniors going to New York, Class of 2024: 64%

Harvard Financial Analysts Club

Harvard Financial Analysts Club founded: 1996
Harvard Financial Analysts Club long/short fund: $100,000

How Harvard compares with schools ranked nearby

Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+

See the full ranking of 100 schools →

Harvard investment banking FAQ

8 questions

Is Harvard University a target school for investment banking?
Harvard University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #2 of the 100 schools we measure: 1,178 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 5,015 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most Harvard analysts?
By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 299 Harvard alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 200 and Morgan Stanley with 188, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Do banks treat Harvard as a target school?
Yes, on every list including ours, where it ranks #2. Forum accounts say the hard part is the other Harvard students: applicants outnumber interview slots many times over, so a sophomore internship and a strong GPA do the work the name does not.
Do you need to concentrate in economics to recruit from Harvard?
No. Forum accounts of Harvard recruiting describe interviews going to students across concentrations, and the school has no finance major to begin with.
Which finance club matters at Harvard?
Harvard Financial Analysts Club's comp is the standard on-ramp, and completing it opens the door to the club's student-managed fund. The Mignone Center lists it among the finance organizations it works with.
How many Harvard University alumni work in private equity?
2,552 Harvard University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #2 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Harvard University alumni work in venture capital?
788 Harvard University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #4 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Harvard University alumni work in hedge fund?
266 Harvard University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #4 of the 100 schools in our database.

How we counted Harvard’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 Harvard 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, 3,512 (70%) are currently based in the United States and 1,503 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 9,095 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.

Is Harvard University a target school for investment banking?