iBanking Interviews at School

Knowing where you fit within the iBanking cross-hairs is extremely important for your interview schedule. The investment banks will group candidates into predetermined buckets based on colleges. These buckets are called “Core” and “Non-Core,” and the interview cycles are completely difference.  Knowing where you fall into this is very important.

Banks have a certain number of core schools they interview on-campus and allocate a certain number of slots for these schools.  Whatever is left-over after core interviewing is made up of the non-core recruiting; this is usually a few months after core interviewing.  Core schools differ by bank and will be listed via the bank career recruiting website – if that bank isn’t coming to your school then you’re in the “non-core” bucket.

Core students have the benefit of applying online via the school websites and having the banks visit during career showcase – big banks typically hire on 4-5 analysts per core school.

Non-core students have a much harder path, they must apply via the bank websites (before the deadline) and have some sort of internal referral to land a first round phone interview.

Exhibit taken from Investment Banking Interview Guide:


Top Core Schools:

  • Harvard
  • UPenn
  • Yale
  • Princeton
  • Cornell
  • MIT
  • Duke
  • Stanford
  • Darthmouth
  • Brown
  • UChicago
  • NYU
  • Michigan
  • Northwestern

There are schools not listed here that will fall into the Core category, every bank has their own definition of which schools fall into the core and non-core buckets.

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