Top 7 Ivy League Colleges for Finance

If you’re looking for a career in the finance industry, you can’t go wrong with one of top 7 Ivy League colleges for finance. Granted, they can be somewhat costly, but as you will see below, there’s a reason for that.

The quality of Ivy League colleges’ lectures ensures that their graduates are almost guaranteed employment after receiving graduation in pretty much any field, and financial sector isn’t an exception. The best way to get there is by obtaining a Master of Finance degree, although an MBA program can help you get your foot in the door. Both of these are offered through business schools and Ivy League colleges excel in those, as you can see in top Ivy League economics colleges. There are some quirks, though.

As it turns out, Ivy League colleges may not be your best choice for pursuing a finance degree. Only three Ivy League schools offer such degree: Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell (the latter two offer masters in financial engineering). So, if you are dead set on pursuing a career in finance with one of the Ivy League’s diplomas, you should consider getting an MBA, which is the next best thing.

Unlike other Ivy League universities, Brown and Princeton don’t have dedicated business schools. Their undergraduate programs, however, are considered an excellent preparation for business schools. For Brown, that would be Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship undergraduate concentration for Business Economics track through the College of Brown University. It is a popular choice since 36% of graduates end up working in the business (finance included) sector. If you are enrolling at Princeton, keep in mind that it is a home of the Bendheim Center for Finance, established by Ben Bernanke in 1997, with an aim to help “interdisciplinary research in finance from a quantitative or mathematical perspective”. Also, two out of the last four chairmen of Federal Reserves went to Princeton.

So, which one should you choose if you are pursuing a career in finance? In order to rank them, we used two parameters. The first one is a university’s standing on Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) list. All of the Ivy League colleges are placed fairly high there, as it could be expected. Since we are talking finance here, we thought it would be fair to include salary one could expect after graduation as our second metric. After all, a college education is an investment and RO should always be considered when investing money. We used PayScale College Salary Report 2015-2016 as our source for this info. As our comparison point, we used median salary after 10 years of experience on the job. Here is our full list of top 7 Ivy League colleges for finance.

7. Dartmouth College

CWUR Rank: 44; Payscale mid-range salary: $111,000
Name of the school: Tuck School of Business
Founded: 1900, by William Jewett Tucker and Edward Tuck
Notable alumni: Don M. Wilson III, former Chief Risk Officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co; James Schiro, Zurich Financial Services

6. Cornell University

CWUR Rank: 10; Payscale mid-range salary: $109,000
Name of the school: School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (for Masters in financial engineering)
Founded: 1961
Name of the school: Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management (for MBA)
Founded: 1946

5. Yale University

CWUR Rank: 11; Payscale mid-range salary: $104,000
Name of the school: Yale School of Management
Founded: 1976
Notable alumni: Laszlo Bock – Vice President, People Operations, Google; Jane Mendillo – CEO and President, Harvard Management Company

4. Columbia University

CWUR Rank: 6; Payscale mid-range salary: $104,000
Name of the school: Columbia Business School
Founded: 1916
Notable alumni: Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; Nancy McKinstry, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Wolters Kluwer

3. University of Pennsylvania

CWUR Rank: 14; Payscale mid-range salary: $120,000
Name of the school: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Founded: 1881
Notable alumni: Pridiyathorn Devakula, Governor of the Central Bank of Thailand; Robert Wolf, President and CEO, UBS Investment Bank Americas

2. Princeton University

CWUR Rank: 9; Payscale mid-range salary: $122,000
Name of the school: Bendheim Center for Finance
Founded: 1997
Since Bendheim Center for Finance is still too young to have any notable alumni, instead we offer you few names from the staff list: Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke, Daniel Kahneman, and Christopher A. Sims (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winners for 2002 and 2011). Impressed yet?

1. Harvard University

CWUR Rank: 1; Payscale mid-range salary: $126,000
Name of the school: Harvard Business School
Founded: 1908
Notable alumni: Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management; Jamie Dimon, CEO and Chairman of JPMorgan Chase

Harvard is ranked first in both CWUR and salary, which propelled it to the top of our list of top 7 Ivy League colleges for finance.