The Fastest-Rising Target Schools
Most target-school lists are static. This one measures movement: for every school with at least 100 analysts at 18 top banks, what share of them graduated in 2018 or later — the classes hired from roughly 2020 onward. A high share means the pipeline is being built now. The median school sits at 77%, so anything well above that is a pipeline widening faster than the field.
Williams College leads at 87%, and University of Chicago is the standout at scale: 86% of its 834 top-bank analysts came from 2018 or later. Data pulled 2026-08-25.
#1Williams College87% of its analysts since 2018Photo: Daderot · Public domain
#2University of Chicago86% of its analysts since 2018Photo: Ndshankar · CC BY-SA 4.0
#3Georgia Tech86% of its analysts since 2018Photo: User:TheCustomOfLife · Public domain
Rising fastest
Share of each school’s top-bank analysts who graduated in 2018 or later. The count column is the full 2013-onward population, so a big number beside a high share means a large pipeline that is also growing.
- 1Williams College18387%
- 2University of Chicago83486%
- 3Georgia Tech14586%
- 4Northeastern University27785%
- 5Texas A&M University25182%
- 6UC Santa Barbara12382%
- 7Brown University53581%
- 8Southern Methodist University29381%
- 9Babson College18181%
- 10Northwestern University52380%
- 11Indiana University Bloomington36180%
- 12Emory University31880%
- 13Baruch College28980%
- 14Hamilton College10380%
- 15Columbia University1,34579%
Most legacy-weighted
The other end of the same measure. These schools have real pipelines into top banks, but more of that presence was built before 2018 than at the schools above. A low share is not a collapse — it means recent classes are adding to the network more slowly than the field.
How to read this
Two graduation windows, one population. We count people with an investment banking analyst title alongside any of 18 top banks who graduated in 2013 or later, then count the subset who graduated in 2018 or later. The ratio is the share shown above. Only schools with at least 100 analysts in the wider window appear, so these percentages rest on real bases rather than a handful of profiles.
The honest limits: profile data undercounts recent graduates slightly, because people update public profiles late and the newest analyst classes are still filling in. That biases every school’s recent share downward by a similar amount, so comparisons between schools hold up better than any single percentage. Graduation year is also a proxy for hire year, which works well for analysts who join within a year of graduating and less well for career changers.
See the full ranking of target schools → · More recruiting statistics →
