Wall Street

Asset management is perhaps the field in which it’s most widely assumed that one needs a degree from a highly selective college in order to have a successful career. We’re going to examine two ways of looking at whether this is true. First, let’s see where Wall Street analysts with the best track records did their undergraduate studies.

TipRanks provides ratings of the performance of stock market analysts, and below is a look at where those in their current Top 25 who did their undergraduate studies in the US got their degrees. [Note: 5 studied overseas and I was unable to locate the information for one, so only 19 are on this list.]. Of those in this elite group, 14 of 19 (74%) received their undergraduate degrees at non-MC25 schools, so it looks like there’s no monopoly on places to learn the basics about finance and investing. (Note: Click on the word “lists” in the menu for important notes about this section.)

TipRanks Top 25 Analysts Colleges Attended

Amherst College

(Sources: corporate websites and LinkedIn.com)

(last updated 4/26/2021)

Next, let’s take a look at the leadership teams for some of the most well-known companies in this sector. We may have one firm that is an exception here, with BlackRock seeming to have a preference (with their management team anyway) for those with degrees from MC25 colleges. This could just be a statistical anomaly, though. If we include all eight firms, 72% have degrees from non-MC25 schools, which is very much in line with the other professions we’ve examined. Opportunities abound for those from non-MC25 colleges in investment banking. (Note: Where the CEO is not listed, they did their studies outside the US.)

Goldman Sachs

U Washington

JP Morgan Chase

Arizona State

Merrill Edge (Bank of America)

Boston U

BlackRock

Harvard

Vanguard

Georgetown

Wells Fargo

Notre Dame

Charles Schwab

Arizona State

Fidelity

(Sources: Corporate websites, linkedin.com, bloomberg.com, wikipedia)

(Last updated June 3 and July 5, 2021)