2023 Certified Prestige official® b-school ranking - PE Firms
Looking for an updated ranking list for PE firm placements into b-school. Have consolidated previous responses on this from another post
Tier 1a: US Mount Olympus (Apollo / BX / Carlyle / KKR/ H&F / Silver Lake)
Tier 1b: European megafunds (Permira / CVC / Apax / EQT) and US demigods (TPG / Warburg / Advent / CDR / Vista / Thoma Bravo) General Atlantic, Bain
---Past this point, Wharton still basically guaranteed but H/S becomes tougher---
Tier 2a:GTCR/ LGP/ MDP/ New Mountain/ Veritas/ Francisco Partners, BDT
Tier 2b:Top growth (Summit / TA / Insight), Softbank, Platinum, Berkshire, Golden Gate
---Past this point, H/S becomes a small miracle, W is hard, but M7 still decent odds---
Tier 3a: Rest of MM buyout (HIG, Bridgepoint, TH Lee, Genstar, WCAS, Amsec, Lcatteron, Audax,Lindsey Goldberg, Arby too many to list), a few others on the growth side, Growth equity arms of MF (KKR Growth, folks strongly pref doing growth at pureplay growth such as GA rather than MF growth cuz of track record/ clear focus), Value/credit-DNA shops (Oaktree / Ares / Centerbridge / Fortress / Cerberus)
Tier 3b: Banks trying to break into PE (GS MBD / MS), Canadians and sovereigns (CPP / OTPP / Mubadala / GIC / Temasek)
---Past here, M7 odds are like at one of those companies which actually makes products, like Coca Cola---
Tier 4: Anything with <$10bn AUM
Tier 5: Anything with <$1bn AUM
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You can get M7 from any of these names, but the order / tiering is directionally accurate
Can you get HSW from say tier 3 or does it severly hurt your odds
This list is not good. Most of the 2a/2b names have better H/S placement than the MFs and certainly true on a per capita basis
Which ones specifically?
Berkshire placement is as good as anywhere. NMC, Golden Gate, GTCR, MDP all have great placement (and probably others on that list I’m missing) - all the “historic” UMMs have great placement since they have a known brands and a long history of alumni who donate
Very strange thread - this is still academia... adcomms at top business schools don't just see you worked at New Mountain and wet themselves. It's a hell of a lot more complicated than "I worked at X, therefore I get into Y."
schools care a lot about their rankings and want to accept a lot of pedigree individuals to improve their rankings, W does this more than H/S which are more secure about accepting unconventional candidates
Think you are conflating prestige with b-school placements. The biggest things to look for is past record of business school placements and MDs bschool connections.
For example, Berkshire has a great history of sending kids to HBS. Genstar sends a lot of people to HBS and GSB and if you look on their website all of their MDs either went to HBS or GSB. Having connected seniors at a firm with a strong pipeline to these schools is much more important than WSO "prestige" for banking exits. Silverlake and a few others also promote from within and people rarely leave for bschool so not as common and make it harder to judge.
Can you elaborate on which promote from within?
Silverlake, Apollo, Thoma, Vista, AmSec to name a few. Not sure on others
Spot on - if OP (or anyone else) is that pressed for a list, the way to do it would be to show H/S/W alums per capita at each firm and rank that way. At the end of the day, if 20 of your MDs went to HBS, odds are you as an associate have a pretty good shot. My understanding is that the big Boston names that have been around since the 80s (Bain, Advent, Berkshire, TA) fit this criteria and place lights out. I would expect the same to apply for GSB/Bay Area firms but am less sure on what names have a big alumni base (believe Francisco, Golden Gate, and H&F fit the bill here). Then of course you have the 3/4 MFs that kind of transcend all of that (BX/APO/KKR etc..) and can place you anywhere no matter the alumni base.
Vista way way too high. Absolutely not tier 1 they suck
See comment above. Vista is one of the firms that promote majority from within - very few leave to get an MBA.
Move Carlyle to Tier 1b.
Wharton and I believe Booth have fully online MBAs now. Soon all of them will. The brand dilution is very real.
So online mba will dilute the brand? would online mbas allow you to continue working while going for mba? (assuming you need to take a year or two longer to complete it)
love to hear your take on the trajectory of these mbas due to online mba option, especially given your senior background in PE
If solely going off b-school placement Bain should be tier 1a no question about it, Berkshire up a tier too
are all boston based pe firms a leg up in placement?
Maybe to some extent but at least especially Bain has historicall had a long-standing legacy relationship with HBS, almost everyone senior went to HBS/GSB and the entire associate class places
I agree that Berkshire is top-tier here, but Bain isn't the same as it used be. Your comment applies to Bain a decade ago, but their associate program has gotten very large and they have so many strategies that are honestly all the same in the eyes of admissions officers, so they have quite a few people not getting into H/S. Some will go to Wharton when that happens but many will skip business school altogether as a result of not getting into H/S (ridiculous in my opinion).
Yeah don't know about the other strategies for Bain but at least North America PE last couple of years has been ~100% HSB/GSB
I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but I have multiple close friends at Bain Cap and everyone who’s taken their b-school applications seriously has gotten into H or S in the past few years, some of them both. They say it’s relatively close to a lock if you take the whole process seriously
What about 120b AUM?
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