Which banks hire the most Yale analysts?

By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 183 Yale alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 126 and Bank of America with 117, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.

Do banks treat Yale as a target school?

Yes, and #5 of 100 by our count. Forum accounts name Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Barclays as the deepest pipelines and describe most bulge brackets and elite boutiques recruiting on campus.

Which Yale club is for investment banking?

YUDI is the banking track and the largest finance organization on campus; YSIG is the investment fund, established in 1982, whose board places across the buyside.

Is Yale better for banking or for the buyside?

Forum accounts give Yale more private equity and hedge fund presence than Stanford and less venture. Our vertical ranks on this page are the measured version.

How many Yale University alumni work in private equity?

1,262 Yale University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #13 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Yale University alumni work in venture capital?

437 Yale University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #12 of the 100 schools in our database.

How many Yale University alumni work in hedge fund?

140 Yale University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #18 of the 100 schools in our database.

Target school#5 of 100

Yale University investment banking placement: is it a target school?

Yale University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #5 of the 100 schools we measure: 804 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 3,078 profiles that include an investment banking job title.

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

Photo: Pradipta Mitra · CC BY-SA 3.0

Rank: #5of 100 schools
At 18 top banks, 2015+: 80478% graduated 2018+
At the elite five: 44055% of the top-bank total
IB alumni network: 3,078#12 by profiles
Per 1,000 undergrads: 451.5#7 per capita
US-based: 74%2,270 profiles

TargetTarget 1–15Semi-targetSemi 16–35Lower semi-targetLower 36–60Non-targetNon-target 61–100

Ranks 1 through 15 are targets, and every school in this tier has placed at least 521 analysts into the 18 top banks since the classes of roughly 2015. The pipeline is proven at scale and banks arrive on campus expecting to hire, so your job is to use the machine early. Reach out to alumni your freshman and sophomore years, because at a target the competition sits in your own classrooms.

Is Yale a target school for investment banking?

The verdict, from the data

Ranked by raw count alone, Yale would sit at #12 by the size of its broader alumni network. Spread those 3,078 profiles across just 6,818 undergraduates and the school reads #7 per capita — 451.5 profiles per 1,000 undergraduates, roughly four and a half times the 100-school median of 97.8. The headline #5 rests on a stricter ledger: 804 alumni matched to the 18 top banks by an investment banking analyst title since the 2013 class, the #8 count on that measure, with 625 of them — 78% — graduating in 2018 or later.

Only 74% of the network is US-based — 2,270 profiles — leaving a larger international share than neighbors like Georgetown at 84% or Duke at 86%. The buyside mix is middle-of-the-pack: 41 private equity profiles and 14 venture capital profiles per 100 IB profiles, closer to Cornell's blend than to Harvard's 51. Hedge fund alumni rank #18, a step behind the school's #5 IB position.

Per-capita density divides an all-time alumni pool by fall 2023 enrollment, so it flatters any school that stayed small — it is a size index, never a placement rate, and it cannot say what share of a current class actually reaches a banking desk. Verdict: a firmly target-tier network whose analyst bench at the top banks, not its mid-pack network size, is what holds the #5.

Yale investment banking placement by bank

Analysts, classes of ~2015+

Yale University 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 804 analysts at the 18 banks, 440 (55%) are at the elite five: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.

Where Yale alumni land beyond investment banking

Alumni profiles, all years

Yale 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 Yale

Yale's Office of Career Strategy reports the Class of 2025 at a 90.7% knowledge rate: 95.3% employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation, a mean starting salary of $94,028 for graduates working full time in the United States, and financial services the most common industry, ahead of education, technology, consulting, and healthcare.

The Class of 2023 report shows where the pay sits: 40.1% of respondents reported a starting salary of six figures or more, and among that group 39.9% were working in financial services, the largest share of any industry.

Yale Undergraduate Diversified Investments calls itself the largest undergraduate finance organization on campus, with a structured curriculum, mentorship, firm partnerships, and firm visits, and says most of its members gravitate toward investment banking. Yale Student Investment Group, established in 1982, is the long-standing investment fund.

A forum thread on the two makes the split plain: YSIG's board places across private equity, venture capital, and banks, while the newer finance clubs are easier to join and some have freshmen on their boards.

A second-year analyst writing on Wall Street Oasis in 2026 named Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Barclays as the deepest pipelines, said most bulge brackets and elite boutiques host events on campus, and called the athlete network real. Real recruiting starts sophomore year; freshman summers go to small boutiques.

The same thread's comparison with Stanford is the useful one: Yale for the banking-to-buyside path with more private equity and hedge fund presence, Stanford for venture and growth equity, which is the split our vertical ranks let you check.

Our private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund ranks on this page put numbers on that split, and the bank breakdown shows whether the forum's three named banks match the alumni record.

What Yale publishes about outcomes

6 figures, 3 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.

Yale Office of Career Strategy, Yale College First Destinations

Knowledge rate, Class of 2025: 90.7%
Employed or in graduate school within six months, Class of 2025: 95.3%
Mean starting salary, full-time in the US, Class of 2025: $94,028

Yale Office of Career Strategy, First Destination Report: Class of 2023

Respondents reporting a six-figure starting salary, Class of 2023: 40.1%
Share of six-figure earners in financial services, Class of 2023: 39.9%

Yale Student Investment Group

Yale Student Investment Group established: 1982

How Yale compares with schools ranked nearby

Analysts at 18 top banks, ~2015+

See the full ranking of 100 schools →

Yale investment banking FAQ

8 questions

Is Yale University a target school for investment banking?
Yale University is a target school for investment banking by our count. It ranks #5 of the 100 schools we measure: 804 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 3,078 profiles that include an investment banking job title.
Which banks hire the most Yale analysts?
By our count, Goldman Sachs leads with 183 Yale alumni holding investment banking analyst titles, then J.P. Morgan with 126 and Bank of America with 117, among graduates of 2013 or later at the 18 top banks we measure.
Do banks treat Yale as a target school?
Yes, and #5 of 100 by our count. Forum accounts name Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Barclays as the deepest pipelines and describe most bulge brackets and elite boutiques recruiting on campus.
Which Yale club is for investment banking?
YUDI is the banking track and the largest finance organization on campus; YSIG is the investment fund, established in 1982, whose board places across the buyside.
Is Yale better for banking or for the buyside?
Forum accounts give Yale more private equity and hedge fund presence than Stanford and less venture. Our vertical ranks on this page are the measured version.
How many Yale University alumni work in private equity?
1,262 Yale University alumni profiles include a private equity job title, ranking #13 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Yale University alumni work in venture capital?
437 Yale University alumni profiles include a venture capital job title, ranking #12 of the 100 schools in our database.
How many Yale University alumni work in hedge fund?
140 Yale University alumni profiles include a hedge fund job title, ranking #18 of the 100 schools in our database.

How we counted Yale’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 Yale 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, 2,270 (74%) are currently based in the United States and 808 are abroad. The per-1,000 figure divides the network count by 6,818 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.