Non-target school#98 of 100
Purdue University investment banking placement: is it a target school?
Purdue University is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #98 of the 100 schools we measure: 48 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 526 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #98of 100 schools
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 4867% graduated 2018+
- At the elite five
- 3063% of the top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 526#69 by profiles
- Per 1,000 undergrads
- 13.2#98 per capita
- US-based
- 69%362 profiles
Is Purdue a target school for investment banking?
The verdict, from the data63 percent of Purdue's top-bank analysts sit at the elite five, 30 of 48, meaning the school's presence at the largest banks is concentrated in the most selective of them rather than spread across the field. The 48 total ranks #90 on alumni who worked as investment banking analysts at those firms, eight places ahead of the #98 headline rank, which the per-student leg of the measure pulls down.
Volume comes from a scale that also caps density. 526 IB profiles rank #69 by raw count, but 39,864 undergrads cut the ratio to 13.2 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates against a 97.8 median, for a per-capita rank of #98. Venture capital is the standout vertical at #47 with 120 profiles, or 23 venture capital profiles per 100 IB profiles.
Two figures limit what a student can lean on: only 69 percent of profiles are currently US-based, and 32 of the 48 top-bank analysts graduated in 2018 or later, a 67 percent share. Purdue's banking alumni are few relative to the undergraduate body, though the ones who reached the largest banks landed unusually high within them.
Purdue investment banking placement by bank
Analysts, classes of ~2015+Purdue 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 measure48
- 5The elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview30
By count alone Purdue University ranks #90 of 100; the table of schools ranked nearby, below, sets that figure beside its neighbors.
Where Purdue alumni land beyond investment banking
Alumni profiles, all yearsPurdue 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 Purdue
The Daniels School reports 96% of undergraduates engaged, employed or continuing education, six months after graduation, 87% completing at least one internship at a $25 average hourly wage, and 51% of those reporting a salary receiving a hiring bonus. Finance, the school’s largest major, shows 95% engaged on an 89% knowledge rate from 216 of 243 graduates, 83% employed and 11% continuing education, at a $70,258 average starting salary, against $68,773 for accounting and $77,047 for economics.
In fall 2025 the school launched the Investment Banking Academy, a highly selective program with GPA minimums, applications, and interviews meant to identify the students most likely to land top banking jobs, advised by Alex Boquist, a former Goldman Sachs banker and clinical associate professor, and paired with an open Investment Banking Club. Finance majors now start with Introduction to Finance with Excel, built around technical-interview modeling with Training the Street material, and Finance Industry Exploration taught by a thirty-year Wall Street veteran, with core finance courses moved earlier so students can use them in internship interviews.
The academy grew out of a student club started about five years earlier as summer analyst recruiting moved into the spring of sophomore year, roughly sixteen months ahead of the job, and runs on mock interviews in rounds, students first, then upperclassmen, then alumni and career services; selected members travel to New York and Chicago, and the board that backs it includes alumni at Leerink Partners, Leonard Green & Partners, GTCR, and Core Advisors who describe their role as referring prepared students into jobs and building an alumni flywheel in the major financial hubs.
Forum threads predate the academy and treat Purdue as an engineering school with a small business program: the top reply on its reputation says the business school is much smaller than any other Big Ten school’s, which is part of why it is not as well known, a banker confirms there are several Purdue alumni in banking and offers to help, and a thread on Purdue’s representation in Chicago is mostly posters telling a high school senior to calm down.
Our data ranks Purdue #98 on 526 top-bank analysts, the #69 count in the country, from 39,864 undergraduates, or 13.2 per 1,000, the #98 per-capita figure; 69% of its banking alumni network is US-based, the lowest share in this batch. Its per-bank cells are not yet fetched, so the neighbor table above stands in for a bank breakdown.
What Purdue publishes about outcomes
11 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.
Mitch Daniels School of Business, Undergraduate Outcomes
- Undergraduates engaged six months after graduation
- 96%
- Graduates completing at least one internship
- 87%
- Average hourly internship wage
- $25
- Salary reporters who received a hiring bonus
- 51%
Mitch Daniels School of Business, Data By Major
- Finance graduates engaged six months out
- 95%
- Finance knowledge rate
- 89% (216 of 243 graduates)
- Finance graduates employed
- 83%
- Finance graduates continuing education
- 11%
- Average starting salary, finance
- $70,258
- Average starting salary, accounting
- $68,773
- Average starting salary, economics
- $77,047
How Purdue compares with schools ranked nearby
Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+Purdue investment banking FAQ
8 questionsIs Purdue University a target school for investment banking?
Purdue University is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #98 of the 100 schools we measure: 48 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 526 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
How many Purdue alumni are analysts at the top investment banks?
48 Purdue University alumni from the classes of roughly 2015 onward hold investment banking analyst titles alongside one of the 18 top banks we measure, the #90 count of the 100 schools ranked; 30 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 Purdue as a target school?
No; forum posters describe a small business school inside an engineering university, with several alumni in banking but little name recognition, and the school’s own Investment Banking Academy only launched in fall 2025. Our count ranks it #98 of 100.
What is Purdue’s Investment Banking Academy?
A selective program launched in fall 2025 with GPA minimums, applications, and interviews, advised by former Goldman Sachs banker Alex Boquist, that runs mock-interview rounds, New York and Chicago trips, and an alumni board from Leerink Partners, Leonard Green, and GTCR.
How do Daniels School finance graduates fare after graduation?
95% were engaged six months out on an 89% knowledge rate, 83% employed and 11% continuing education, at a $70,258 average starting salary, by the school’s data-by-major page.
How many Purdue University alumni work in private equity?
261 Purdue University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #68 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Purdue University alumni work in venture capital?
120 Purdue University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #47 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Purdue University alumni work in hedge fund?
35 Purdue University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #75 of the 100 schools in our database.
How we counted Purdue’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 Purdue 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, 362 (69%) are currently based in the United States and 164 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 39,864 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.
