Which banks hire the most Williams analysts?

By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 49 Williams alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 37 and Citi with 26, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.

Do banks treat Williams as a target school?

A semi-target by our count, #31 of 100, and somewhere between low target and high semi-target by forum consensus, with per-student placement that rivals the Ivies from a class a fraction of their size.

How do you recruit for banking from a college with no business school?

Through the Williams Investment Group, on-campus events, and alumni outreach that forum posters say should begin sophomore fall, with the technicals learned outside the curriculum.

Do athletes and connections dominate banking recruiting at Williams?

Forum posters say the athlete and alumni networks carry real weight, and one thread argues most seats in a recent Goldman intern class went to connected candidates. Others answer that prepared non-athletes place at elite boutiques and other bulge brackets every year.

How many Williams College alumni work in private equity?

302 Williams College alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #59 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Williams College alumni work in venture capital?

54 Williams College alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #76 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Williams College alumni work in hedge fund?

36 Williams College alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #73 of the 100 schools in our database.

Semi-target school#31 of 100

Williams College investment banking placement: is it a target school?

Williams College is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #31 of the 100 schools we measure: 183 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 733 profiles that include an investment banking job title.

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

Photo: Daderot · Public domain

Rank: #31of 100 schools
At 18 top banks, 2015+: 18387% graduated 2018+
At the elite five: 11161% of the top-bank total
IB alumni network: 733#58 by profiles
Per 1,000 undergrads: 347.1#15 per capita
US-based: 93%684 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 Williams a target school for investment banking?

The verdict, from the data

Sixty-one percent of Williams' top-bank analysts work at the elite five, 111 of 183 people, an elite concentration only MIT's 63 percent beats in this tier. Where most schools at this rank spread across balance-sheet banks, the Williams cohort clusters at the firms with the smallest analyst classes. Goldman Sachs accounts for 49 of those seats and J.P. Morgan for 37, together roughly half the school's entire top-bank total.

The pipeline is also the freshest in the tier, with 160 of the 183 analysts graduating in 2018 or later, an 87 percent recent share. Density is extreme: 733 profiles against 2,112 undergraduates gives 347.1 per 1,000 undergraduates versus the 97.8 median, ranking #15 per capita while the raw count ranks #58. The headline #31 rests on the analyst seats instead, with the per-student leg pulling it well past the seat count alone.

Absolute scale is the constraint. A top-bank rank of #44 sits thirteen places below the headline #31, and the buyside network is modest, with 302 private equity profiles at #59 and 36 hedge fund profiles at #73. Ninety-three percent of profiles remain US-based. Williams delivers unusually high-quality banking outcomes per graduate, and anyone counting on alumni volume should expect a small, tightly clustered network.

Williams investment banking placement by bank

Analysts, classes of ~2015+

Williams College 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 183 analysts at the 18 banks, 111 (61%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.

Where Williams alumni land beyond investment banking

Alumni profiles, all years

Williams College’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 Williams

Williams is a liberal arts college of 2,112 undergraduates with no business school. The Record's report on the Class of 2025 puts finance at 23.7% of graduates' chosen industries and consulting at 13.4%, the two most popular for years, with 93% of the class employed, in graduate school, on a fellowship, or in the military as of December, on a knowledge rate of 74%, 433 of 586 graduates. The paper repeats the old nickname, the West Point of Wall Street.

The Williams Investment Group, formally started in 2022, is the only student-run fund with a formal affiliation with the college, which funds it and lends technical expertise, and it runs long-only positions in public equities.

Forum accounts put Williams somewhere between low target and high semi-target and agree on the per-capita story: a class a third the size of Dartmouth’s that sends a steady handful to Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan, mostly to New York and Boston, with alumni who pull for their own. The advice is to attend every on-campus event, hold a strong GPA, and start networking sophomore fall, because the school plays second fiddle to the largest targets.

The same threads carry the criticism that recruiting skews toward athletes, alumni of feeder prep schools, and the well-connected, with team-specific information sessions and alumni who help their own sport first; a 2025 thread on a Goldman intern class argues most seats went to connected or diversity candidates while the rest of the qualified students landed elite-boutique and other bulge-bracket offers.

Our data ranks Williams #31, at the top of the semi-target band, on the strength of per-student placement from a small base. The bank breakdown above shows which of the 18 measured firms hold the seats.

What Williams publishes about outcomes

5 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.

The Williams Record, Class of 2025 employment remains strong despite tight job market

Finance share of chosen industries, Class of 2025: 23.7%
Consulting share, Class of 2025: 13.4%
Employed, in graduate school, on a fellowship, or in the military, Class of 2025: 93%
Knowledge rate, Class of 2025: 74% (433 of 586)

Williams Investment Group, About

Williams Investment Group formally started: 2022

How Williams compares with schools ranked nearby

Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+

See the full ranking of 100 schools →

Williams investment banking FAQ

8 questions

Is Williams College a target school for investment banking?
Williams College is a semi-target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #31 of the 100 schools we measure: 183 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 733 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most Williams analysts?
By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 49 Williams alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 37 and Citi with 26, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Do banks treat Williams as a target school?
A semi-target by our count, #31 of 100, and somewhere between low target and high semi-target by forum consensus, with per-student placement that rivals the Ivies from a class a fraction of their size.
How do you recruit for banking from a college with no business school?
Through the Williams Investment Group, on-campus events, and alumni outreach that forum posters say should begin sophomore fall, with the technicals learned outside the curriculum.
Do athletes and connections dominate banking recruiting at Williams?
Forum posters say the athlete and alumni networks carry real weight, and one thread argues most seats in a recent Goldman intern class went to connected candidates. Others answer that prepared non-athletes place at elite boutiques and other bulge brackets every year.
How many Williams College alumni work in private equity?
302 Williams College alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #59 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Williams College alumni work in venture capital?
54 Williams College alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #76 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Williams College alumni work in hedge fund?
36 Williams College alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #73 of the 100 schools in our database.

How we counted Williams’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 Williams College 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, 684 (93%) are currently based in the United States and 49 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 2,112 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.