Semi-target school#20 of 100
Is Northwestern University a Target School for Investment Banking?
Northwestern University is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #20 of the 100 schools we measure: 523 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 2,314 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #20 of 100
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 523 80% since 2020
- At the elite five
- 250 48% of top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 2,314 #17 by profiles
- Profiles per 1,000 undergrads
- 252.7 #20 per capita
- US-based
- 1,966 85%
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.
What the numbers say
Northwestern splits the difference between the broad measures — #17 by network size and #20 per capita — and the headline lands at #20 as well, resting on 523 alumni in investment banking analyst seats at the 18 top banks since the 2013 class, the #21 count on that measure. The broad base is 2,314 investment banking profiles from 9,157 undergraduates — 252.7 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates, more than two and a half times the 100-school median of 97.8.
The network's defining tilt is private equity: 55 private equity profiles per 100 IB profiles, the highest ratio anywhere in the top 20 — ahead of even Harvard's 51 — and the 1,280 private equity profiles rank #12, outpacing the school's own #20 IB standing. Venture capital adds 17 per 100 IB profiles, and 85% of the network stays US-based, 1,966 profiles in all.
Ratios can overstate as easily as counts: 55 private equity profiles per 100 IB profiles describes where the alumni network eventually settled, not the odds that a current analyst makes that jump, and the 2,314-profile base is mid-sized enough that the mix shifts with each cohort. The verdict is a school that lands at #20 with every measure within a few places — network size #17, top-bank count #21 — a genuinely proportioned banking network with an unusually buyside-heavy afterlife.
Across finance
Northwestern 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. The last column shows the network mix: profiles per 100 IB profiles.
Where its analysts go
Northwestern 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.
Nearby in the ranking
How we counted
Counts come from People Data Labs, which aggregates public professional profiles. The headline rank is anchored on the strict measure: profiles that list Northwestern Universityin 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 2026-08-25.
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, 1,966 (85%) are currently based in the United States and 348 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 9,157 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.
