I've been working on wall street for about 30 years now. I've got an MBA from an Ivy (Columbia), and my daughter got her undergrad from Cornell (now in medical school). Most Ivy students are either pre-med, pre-law, or pre-MBA, period. True, a huge number of Ivy's go to wall street, but my institution won't look at them unless there have some finance, economics, or accounting coursework because we can't take the time to train them from the ground up (although many of the Banks will). We hire most of our entry level candidates from non-Ivy schools if they have the right coursework and make-up.
That said,, within my department, we have graduates from all the major Ivy league schools except for Princeton (including many MBA from Penn, Columbia, and Harvard), a ton of state school grads, and many from smaller less prestigious private schools. You would never be able to tell who went to what school based on performance alone, or who studied what (after a couple of years).
I'd love to have some more A&M grads coming through the pipeline, so anyone reading this please contact me if you know an upcoming graduate with the right qualifications. We do our recruiting in the fall for following years grads, and we also have a special reverence for veterans (there is an employee Veterans group that is trying to boost recruiting).
