Which banks hire the most WashU analysts?

By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 47 WashU alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 39 and Morgan Stanley with 32, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.

Do banks treat WashU as a target or a semi-target?

A semi-target, #33 of 100 by our count and a high semi-target by forum consensus, closer to a target for Chicago than for New York.

Which WashU clubs feed investment banking?

The WU Investment Banking Association is the pipeline forum posters cite, with the Student Investment Fund and Women in Finance alongside it.

What share of Olin graduates go into banking?

By the Class of 2023 report, 18% of the employed by job function, at the highest median salary of any function in the report; financial services as an industry took 44%.

How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in private equity?

512 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #37 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in venture capital?

164 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #40 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in hedge fund?

59 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #51 of the 100 schools in our database.

Semi-target school#33 of 100

WashU St. Louis investment banking placement: is it a target school?

WashU St. Louis is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #33 of the 100 schools we measure: 263 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 1,437 profiles that include an investment banking job title.

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

Photo: Baili Min · Attribution

Rank: #33of 100 schools
At 18 top banks, 2015+: 26379% graduated 2018+
At the elite five: 12146% of the top-bank total
IB alumni network: 1,437#34 by profiles
Per 1,000 undergrads: 173.8#34 per capita
US-based: 82%1,175 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 WashU a target school for investment banking?

The verdict, from the data

Elite-five firms hold 121 of WashU St. Louis's 263 top-bank analysts, a 46 percent share of a group that skews toward the biggest names. Goldman Sachs is the largest single employer at 47, ahead of J.P. Morgan's 39, and the firm list then tapers quickly down to a 23-apiece tie between Bank of America and Citi. Morgan Stanley's 32 fills the middle of that distribution.

Both broad reads land on the same number, #34 by network size on 1,437 profiles and #34 on density at 173.8 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates, which is well above the 97.8 median. The top-bank rank of #35 sits two places below the headline #33, a small deficit rather than a real divergence. Eighty-two percent of the network is US-based, and private equity contributes 36 profiles per 100 IB profiles.

Because every profile listing the school counts regardless of degree level, the 1,437 total blends undergraduate and graduate paths while the density figure divides that blend by undergraduate enrollment alone. The verdict is a balanced mid-tier network whose quality shows up in firm mix more than in volume.

WashU investment banking placement by bank

Analysts, classes of ~2015+

WashU St. Louis 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 263 analysts at the 18 banks, 121 (46%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.

Where WashU alumni land beyond investment banking

Alumni profiles, all years

WashU St. Louis’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 WashU

Olin's BSBA employment report for the Class of 2023 covers 224 students with 175 employed, a 96% employment rate, at a $90,000 median base and $90,371 mean. Financial services and investment banking was the largest industry at 44% of the employed, 76 graduates, at a $105,000 median; by job function, investment banking was 18%, 32 graduates, at a $110,000 median, the highest-paid function in the report. Consulting took 17%.

Olin lists 27 undergraduate student organizations, among them the WU Investment Banking Association, WU Women in Finance, Finding Finance, and the WU Student Investment Fund, a student-run club that manages a diversified portfolio of securities and teaches investing.

Forum accounts call WashU a high semi-target for New York and closer to a target for Chicago, with strong consulting placement and a banking scene that has grown in the last few years. Posters relaying figures from the banking association describe a recent cycle with several Goldman offers, a handful at Guggenheim and Jefferies, and earlier years with Evercore, Lazard, Centerview, PJT, and Perella Weinberg among the outcomes.

The recurring caveats are that Olin is small, a couple of hundred students a class with consulting the more popular path, that the best placements lean on diversity programs and networking, and that WashU sits behind Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Michigan for Chicago offices. Defenders answer that the small alumni base is responsive and that a prepared student can reach New York.

Our data ranks WashU #33, in the semi-target tier, from a base of 8,267 undergraduates, a mid-sized school where the per-student leg neither helps nor hurts much. The bank breakdown above shows which of the 18 measured firms hold the most WashU analysts.

What WashU publishes about outcomes

10 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.

WashU Olin Business School, BSBA Employment Report (Class of 2023)

Students covered, Olin BSBA Class of 2023: 224
Employed, Class of 2023: 175 (96%)
Median base salary, Class of 2023: $90,000
Mean base salary, Class of 2023: $90,371
Financial services and investment banking share of the employed: 44% (76 graduates)
Financial services and investment banking median base: $105,000
Investment banking share by job function: 18% (32 graduates)
Investment banking median base by function: $110,000
Consulting share of the employed: 17%

WashU Olin, Student Organizations

Olin undergraduate student organizations: 27

How WashU compares with schools ranked nearby

Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+

See the full ranking of 100 schools →

WashU investment banking FAQ

8 questions

Is WashU St. Louis a target school for investment banking?
WashU St. Louis is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #33 of the 100 schools we measure: 263 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 1,437 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most WashU analysts?
By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 47 WashU alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 39 and Morgan Stanley with 32, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Do banks treat WashU as a target or a semi-target?
A semi-target, #33 of 100 by our count and a high semi-target by forum consensus, closer to a target for Chicago than for New York.
Which WashU clubs feed investment banking?
The WU Investment Banking Association is the pipeline forum posters cite, with the Student Investment Fund and Women in Finance alongside it.
What share of Olin graduates go into banking?
By the Class of 2023 report, 18% of the employed by job function, at the highest median salary of any function in the report; financial services as an industry took 44%.
How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in private equity?
512 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #37 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in venture capital?
164 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #40 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many WashU St. Louis alumni work in hedge fund?
59 WashU St. Louis alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #51 of the 100 schools in our database.

How we counted WashU’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 WashU St. Louis 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, 1,175 (82%) are currently based in the United States and 262 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 8,267 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.