Non-target school#90 of 100
Is Santa Clara University a Target School for Investment Banking?
Santa Clara University is a non-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #90 of the 100 schools we measure: 37 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 262 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
- Rank
- #90 of 100
- At 18 top banks, 2015+
- 37 78% since 2020
- At the elite five
- 15 41% of top-bank total
- IB alumni network
- 262 #92 by profiles
- Profiles per 1,000 undergrads
- 41.9 #70 per capita
- US-based
- 238 91%
A rank below 60 puts the odds against you without ending your chances: every school on this list has placed analysts into the top banks. Plan on cold email volume that feels unreasonable and a resume built from early finance internships. The students who make it from this tier start earlier and follow up longer than everyone they are competing against.
What the numbers say
Santa Clara's venture capital presence is the standout figure: 113 venture capital profiles, or 43 per 100 IB profiles, which ranks #51 on that vertical against a banking rank of #90. The banking network itself runs to 262 profiles, and 37 alumni listed investment banking analyst titles alongside one of the 18 top banks since the 2013 class.
29 of those 37, or 78 percent, graduated in 2018 or later, and 15, or 41 percent, are at the elite five. Density comes to 41.9 IB profiles per 1,000 undergraduates from a base of 6,249, below the median of 97.8 and good for #70 per capita. 91 percent of profiles are US-based, with private equity at 60 profiles per 100 IB profiles.
The top-bank rank of #96 sits six places behind the headline #90, a gap the per-student leg of the blend closes, and 37 people is a small group in absolute terms. The distinguishing feature is the mix rather than the size, and this network is more useful to a student weighing venture capital than the banking rank alone would indicate.
Across finance
Santa Clara 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.
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 Santa Clara 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, 238 (91%) are currently based in the United States and 24 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 6,249 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.
