Which banks hire the most Michigan analysts?

By our count, J.P. Morgan leads with 81 Michigan alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then Goldman Sachs with 76 and Citi with 66, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.

Do banks treat Michigan as a target school?

Ross is, by forum consensus the strongest public target in the country. Our count ranks the university #26 on the blended measure and #15 on the top-bank analyst count alone; the difference is enrollment.

Which Michigan clubs feed investment banking?

Michigan Interactive Investments, the Global Investments Committee, the Michigan Investment Banking Club, and the Alternative Investments Club run the pipelines, by forum accounts, and are hard to enter without experience.

Can you recruit for banking from Michigan outside Ross?

Yes, with less structure. Forum posters name elite-boutique offers to students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and say networking replaces the on-campus pipeline.

How many University of Michigan alumni work in private equity?

1,245 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #14 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many University of Michigan alumni work in venture capital?

392 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #14 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many University of Michigan alumni work in hedge fund?

151 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #15 of the 100 schools in our database.

Semi-target school#26 of 100

University of Michigan investment banking placement: is it a target school?

University of Michigan is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #26 of the 100 schools we measure: 573 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 3,000 profiles that include an investment banking job title.

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

Photo: AndrewHorne · CC BY 3.0

Rank: #26of 100 schools
At 18 top banks, 2015+: 57374% graduated 2018+
At the elite five: 22940% of the top-bank total
IB alumni network: 3,000#14 by profiles
Per 1,000 undergrads: 88.9#55 per capita
US-based: 84%2,527 profiles

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

Schools ranked 16 through 35 place real numbers into top banks — at least 152 analysts each in this data — but the per-school pipeline runs thinner. Alumni will answer your emails, and the difference between getting an interview and getting skipped comes down to outreach volume. Start networking earlier than your target-school peers and treat every alumni conversation as a referral opportunity.

Is Michigan a target school for investment banking?

The verdict, from the data

Michigan's top-bank rank of #15 sits eleven places above its headline #26, a gap that is now per-student dilution rather than any shortage of seats: 573 analysts across the 18 firms. What is striking is how evenly those analysts spread. J.P. Morgan leads at 81 and Goldman Sachs follows at 76, but the fifth-largest count, Bank of America's 56, still sits within 30 people of the leader, so the network leans on no single relationship.

Exactly 3,000 profiles put the school #14 by network size, yet 88.9 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates falls under the 97.8 median and ranks #55, the direct consequence of 33,730 undergraduates. Buyside depth is genuine, with 1,245 private equity profiles and 392 in venture capital, both ranking #14. Eighty-four percent of the network is US-based, and 74 percent of top-bank analysts graduated in 2018 or later.

Density here is a ratio between two mismatched quantities, profiles accumulated across every graduating cohort divided by one fall's enrollment, which is why a large public university lands under the median while holding a top-fifteen network by size. The verdict is scale and top-bank strength that the headline rank understates.

Michigan investment banking placement by bank

Analysts, classes of ~2015+

University of Michigan 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 573 analysts at the 18 banks, 229 (40%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.

Where Michigan alumni land beyond investment banking

Alumni profiles, all years

University of Michigan’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 Michigan

Ross publishes a BBA employment report each year; the newer releases sit behind a bot wall, so the figures here are from the Class of 2021 report. Financial services took 36.4% of that class at a median base salary of $85,000, and investment banking was 18.3% by job function at a mean of $87,116, with 88.5% of those analysts reporting a signing bonus at a median of $10,000. Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, BMO, Cowen, Lincoln International, and Solomon Partners are on the employer list.

Michigan Interactive Investments, founded in 1998, is the selective investment club, with about 60 members, a portfolio of $25,000 or more, a claimed placement record of every member, and the ENGAGE conference it hosts each fall, which it calls the largest undergraduate investing conference in the country.

Forum accounts call Ross the best public target in the country: every bulge bracket, elite boutique, and middle-market bank recruits, one private equity associate says it out-places Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Berkeley for New York and Chicago seats, and a 2022 recruit counts dozens of classmates with offers at top firms plus a few at Blackstone and Ares.

The caveats in the same threads are the class size, hundreds of BBA students a year with most pointed at finance, which makes the per-student odds ordinary, and the club culture: MII, GIC, MIBC, and AIC run the pipelines and are hard to enter without prior experience or friends inside, while other posters insist banks post openings for everyone.

Students outside Ross recruit with less structure but do place; posters name Evercore, PJT, Centerview, and Lazard offers to non-Ross Michigan students, and say fraternities help at Houlihan Lokey and Jefferies.

Our data agrees with the forum on both counts: 573 top-bank analysts rank #15, eleven places above the #26 headline, and the gap is 33,730 undergraduates dividing the per-student leg. The spread across firms is unusually even, J.P. Morgan 81, Goldman Sachs 76, Bank of America 56, and the buyside runs deep at 1,245 private equity profiles.

What Michigan publishes about outcomes

9 figures, 2 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.

Michigan Ross, BBA Employment Report, Class of 2021

Financial services share, Ross BBA Class of 2021: 36.4%
Financial services median base salary, Class of 2021: $85,000
Investment banking share by job function, Class of 2021: 18.3%
Investment banking mean base salary, Class of 2021: $87,116
Investment banking analysts reporting a signing bonus, Class of 2021: 88.5%
Investment banking median signing bonus, Class of 2021: $10,000

Michigan Interactive Investments

Michigan Interactive Investments founded: 1998
Michigan Interactive Investments members: ~60
Michigan Interactive Investments portfolio: $25,000+

How Michigan compares with schools ranked nearby

Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+

See the full ranking of 100 schools →

Michigan investment banking FAQ

8 questions

Is University of Michigan a target school for investment banking?
University of Michigan is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #26 of the 100 schools we measure: 573 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 3,000 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most Michigan analysts?
By our count, J.P. Morgan leads with 81 Michigan alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then Goldman Sachs with 76 and Citi with 66, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Do banks treat Michigan as a target school?
Ross is, by forum consensus the strongest public target in the country. Our count ranks the university #26 on the blended measure and #15 on the top-bank analyst count alone; the difference is enrollment.
Which Michigan clubs feed investment banking?
Michigan Interactive Investments, the Global Investments Committee, the Michigan Investment Banking Club, and the Alternative Investments Club run the pipelines, by forum accounts, and are hard to enter without experience.
Can you recruit for banking from Michigan outside Ross?
Yes, with less structure. Forum posters name elite-boutique offers to students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and say networking replaces the on-campus pipeline.
How many University of Michigan alumni work in private equity?
1,245 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #14 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many University of Michigan alumni work in venture capital?
392 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #14 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many University of Michigan alumni work in hedge fund?
151 University of Michigan alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #15 of the 100 schools in our database.

How we counted Michigan’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 Michigan 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, 2,527 (84%) are currently based in the United States and 473 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 33,730 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.