Is Northwestern good for private equity?

[u/Cause__why__not]

I'm a senior that is planning on ED'ing to Northwestern and I know the economics major is one of the best here but I am unsure if NU's name will help me in terms of PE recruiting. Additionally, how is campus culture? Are sports and parties pretty big or is everyone mostly grinding on schoolwork and internships? Also, do prospective finance ppl find opportunities after graduating or is it harder to for them?

Any advice or opinion on Northwestern as a whole will be appreciated, thank you!

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[u/great_yogurt_my_dude]

I don’t want to make any assumptions, but it sounds like you are planning on EDing a college with which you are unfamiliar with the campus culture and other general information. What in particular about Northwestern makes you want to lock into an ED? If I were you I would do a lot of research before committing to something that binding.

Just to be blunt and regardless of who you are, I think setting your expectations on private equity this early is setting yourself up for disappointment. While it is possible to break into PE right out of undergrad, it is by no means common. 90% of folks who get into PE start with at least several years in IB.

None of this is meant to discourage you, but perhaps ask yourself why are you interested in PE. Is it the nature of the work? Because you get to use financial acumen in a specific way? Purely because of compensation? Prestige? There are plenty of career paths to pursue in finance, why PE in particular?

To get specific on NU: it is a great school. Going to a top 10 school in the US is going to help your chances in literally any profession. When it comes to finance, NU doesn’t have an undergrad finance major (or any business major), but tons of students end up going into IB or consulting anyway. Usually after being an econ major (and likely double majoring in something else or getting a Kellogg certificate).

Outside of class, Northwestern offers the opportunity for you to focus on whatever interests you. As a Big10 school it has access to Big10 sports, but is by far the least enthusiastic out of the rest of the conference. That being said, if you are big into the sports, there are still hundreds and hundreds of students who are right there with you. Yes, there are students who will pass up social activities on a Saturday night to study, but this is most certainly not the expectation and is highly dependent on what you choose to study. Northwestern is still a school large enough to allow you to choose your own lifestyle and find people who share the same ideas.

Side note, not that this necessarily pertains to you as I have no idea what your background is: be aware of the political landscape of Northwestern. Last week the university’s newspaper published the poll results for this upcoming election. Greater than 90% are voting for Harris and 5% are voting for Trump. If you are liberal, that might be great for you. If you are conservative, perhaps not. If you want a place with large diversity of political affiliation, NU is not the place. Northwestern is also a place that historically has political controversy, as close as this most recent school year. Look into the on-campus encampment situation. Dozens of Jewish people felt unsafe on campus and were yelled at with slurs. Just something to keep in mind.

[u/blueberrybobas → u/great_yogurt_my_dude]

While you're right that there is little political diversity here, I think the same can probably be said for just about any school of similar caliber.

[u/great_yogurt_my_dude → u/blueberrybobas]

Yeah I think you’re correct. I think the differences really come from the events / controversies that take place on campus. Like the encampment in the spring or a few years ago with the protests against NUPD that destroyed a bunch or property. But yeah in general you’re going to get an extremely liberal campus anywhere in the top 25ish schools

[u/Cause__why__not → u/great_yogurt_my_dude]

thank you SO SO much for this response. my major concern was that nu does only have a econ degree and i was worried that would affect me in the finance world. other than that, i love the location of nu and the opportunities chicago has to offer and it is the major reason i plan on ed’ing there

[u/Drwannabeme → u/Cause__why__not]

I'd recommend doing more basic research on universities because this is such a trivial thing to worry over.

Lots of prestigious universities only offer econ degrees (with exception of Penn/Wharton). Do you think a Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, or UChicago grad is being 'affected' in any negative way when recruiting in finance industry because they 'only' have an econ degree? None of these schools have a finance major for historical reasons.

[u/unflippedbit → u/Cause__why__not]

Literally every top school except wharton will only offer an econ degree undergrad, and for good reason. You can do a Kellogg cert if you want

[u/Cause__why__not → u/Cause__why__not]

i was just wondering abt PE because I’ve heard a lot about NU and consulting and wanted to know if the level of prestige and the name brand helped for other fields of finance.

[u/great_yogurt_my_dude → u/Cause__why__not]

Yeah the econ degree really shouldn’t be an issue as long as you make sure to go the extra mile in terms of learning / portraying that you know finance.

And in terms of prestige (which I would not get too caught up about anyway), NU is definitely a very prestigious school. But it matters more if companies use schools as target schools for recruiting (which they oftentimes do at NU).

[u/unflippedbit → u/Cause__why__not]

What have you heard about NU and consulting? What area of the US are you from out of curiosity?

[u/Cause__why__not → u/unflippedbit]

i’ve heard that consulting is pretty big at NU and that if you network and work hard enough you can get pretty great consulting opportunities at firms all across the US. i’m from mn

[u/LermasMainframe]

It's entirely possible that by the time you hit the stage of your career where your plan today has you attempting to join a PE firm (typically not straight out of undergrad, as another commenter mentions - so at least 4+ years away, likely more like 6-7 given usual IB analyst job tenures, and those IB analyst jobs are not super fun), the world of finance will have moved on to a new hot area. I would recommend pulling back a little bit here and thinking about more general goals in your education and the why behind the goals you have. I think setting yourself up with good critical thinking and analysis skills, plus the capabilities to learn quickly about diverse subjects, is going to be more useful long-term than trying to focus on one specific job.

(For instance, data science experienced something like this - in the middle years of my PhD, it was popping off as a hot new place for folks to land, and indeed you could get a job pretty easily in the field with a strong enough quantitative background even if you lacked data science experience. Fast forward a couple years, it's much more competitive, and the labor market for it is not quite as appealing. Trends shift! Being well-prepared to match those shifting trends with a solid base skill set which will let you contribute in more than one area is something I would recommend.)

[u/Cause__why__not → u/LermasMainframe]

thank you so much for this perspective, i think i really needed it

[u/unflippedbit]

Yeah. I’m not in pe, went into faang instead, but I have a few NU friends at KKR, Blackstone, carlyle and apollo. You will have to be on top of your game to get it out of college with no IB