Think strategically. Perform tactfully. Start your career in banking.
Investment bankers are trusted advisors to global clients and focus on long-term value creation. They use a full suite of modern financial methods and tools to unlock value, access capital markets, and enable clients to reach their financial goals.
If you are interested in financial markets and want to have a key role in the future economic success of clients, Johnson provides a structured curriculum and comprehensive recruiting pipeline. Learn from current and former practitioners to think like a banker, build complex financial models, present transactions in a fluid presentation, formulate recommendations, exercise ethical decision-making, and communicate effectively with clients.
“As I am transitioning to finance, I am aware that Johnson has a strong reputation in finance, with a solid alumni base in investment banks and the corporate world...In 10 years, I see myself as a team leader in an investment bank or in the investment and/or strategy division of an emerging company.”
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Ciara Chen, Two-Year MBA ’21
“The network of alumni, professors, and resources at Johnson is simply inimitable. The endless resources pour into building successful individuals, and thereby form a community is like no other.”
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Rose Haber, Two-Year MBA ’22
Unmatched networks, unparalleled instruction and support
Whether switching careers or continuing as a finance professional, Johnson provides the opportunity to immerse yourself in financial markets, learn from industry professionals, and leverage an extensive alumni network.
As you take your career to the next level, you will develop, and sharpen your skills through Johnson’s Investment Banking Immersion and affiliated professional clubs that lay a strong foundation for your continued success.
Enhance interview skills, meet alumni, and build your professional network among the world’s largest banks. Old Ezra represents Johnson’s largest network for banking professionals and will help you excel while recruiting.
Focus an entire semester on investment banking. Through courses, cases, and pitches, you’ll analyze landmark transactions, get advice from senior clients, and receive coaching from top bankers.
Gain exposure to private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and impact investing through the Johnson Private Equity & Credit Club where you will put real-world context to more specialized aspects of financial markets.
“All of it comes down to the fulfilling ultimate goal of any business school: Placing students at the top companies. Cornell, according to data from Revelio Labs, is one of the top schools banks pull investment banking talent from.” – Business Insider
Plan your career in investment banking
At Johnson, we take an intensely collaborative approach to recruiting, especially among banking candidates—a big differentiator that strengthens our performance, success, and outcomes.
Strong emphasis on team projects, peer mentorship, and collaborative recruiting practices
Intentional and customized feedback from peers to enhance hard and soft skills for your banking career
Dedicated mentorship from second-year bankers via Career Working Groups (CWGs)
Treks to NYC and alternate geographies, like Houston, for exposure to major banks.
Expert career management staff who can help you plan and navigate your recruitment strategy
Engaged network of alumni who remain actively involved in the recruiting process
Access to successful industry professionals via lectures, coursework, guest speakers, and the IB Immersion
Vast network of bankers from both the undergraduate and graduate programs, throughout Wall Street and around the globe
“Working in the most important financial hub of the world has been a dream since I started a career in finance… A good way to navigate the recruitment process is to leverage your network, your peers, and second-years. Practice your technicals, deal pitch, and
behavioral questions as much as you can with them. Challenge them and ask them to challenge you.”
Carlos Acevedo, Two-Year MBA ’20. Carlos took the Investment Banking Immersion and held a summer internship at Deutsche Bank in New York City, where he returned after graduation
“With 37% of its graduating class hiring into finance, Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management led all elite schools in Europe and the United States, including all of the top 25 schools as ranked by both Poets & Quants and U.S News.” – Poets & Quants
Investment banking career outcomes
Johnson’s immersive academic approach and strong finance network will position you for success.
While Johnson’s Ithaca-based MBA programs, primarily the Two-Year MBA, will best prepare you for a career in investment banking (IB), some of our executive MBA students also work in financial services as they aim to advance their careers with new leadership and management skills.
Our structured approach allows career pivoters to successfully break into investment banking.
“Prior to Johnson, I was a Teach for America Corps Member. I taught 18-to-22-year-olds with developmental disabilities necessary life skills. Immersing myself in accounting and finance was certainly a challenge, but the Johnson community supported me throughout the entire journey. The professional clubs, students, and coursework at Johnson enabled me to prove to investment banks that I have the skills required to perform at a high level. I am confident that the training and education that I received at Johnson was pivotal to my successful career switch and a major reason why I received a return offer to become a full time M&A Investment Banking Associate at Guggenheim.”
Timothy O’Connor
22%
of Two-Year MBAs enter into IB
$147,826
average salary for IB grads
$11,939
average monthly salary for IB interns
$51,672
average signing bonus for IB grads
96%
of MBAs entering IB received signing bonuses
23%
of EMBAs work full-time in financial services
80%+
internship conversion to full-time offers
24
IB firms offered internships to the Class of 2022
Johnson’s top investment banking recruiters
The companies below are just some that have recently hired Johnson graduates for full-time investment banking roles:
Learn from experts in finance
Take courses taught by faculty who have years of experience researching and practicing in the field of financial services.
If you’re pursuing investment banking—or if you are interested in taking just a few finance electives—you’ll learn from faculty who not only teach fundamentals and theories but also discuss their application based on personal experience. Learn more about a few investing experts below.
Associate Dean for MBA Programs and Rempe Wilson Distinguished Lecturer
Leader of the Investment Banking Immersion and founder of the Fintech Intensive, Pascarella spent 15 years at bulge bracket investment banks where he advised clients on more than $35 billion of M&A transactions and led equity, convertible, and debt financing transactions totaling over $9 billion in proceeds. In addition to his duties at Johnson, he is Managing Director and Head of East Coast Banking of Vista Point Advisors.
Robert W. Purcell Professor of Finance
O’Hara’s research focuses on issues in market microstructure, and she is the author of numerous journal articles as well as the classic book, Market Microstructure Theory. She was a member of the CFTC-SEC Emerging Regulatory Issues Task Force (the “flash crash” committee), the advisory board of the Office of Financial Research for the U.S. Treasury, and, most recently, she served on the SEC Equity Market Structure Advisory Board.
Dr. Philip and Rosalyn Baron Professor of Management Saar’s research interests are in market microstructure, behavioral finance, and stock market return predictability. He has been published in the leading finance journals, including the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Markets. He is also a co-editor of the Journal of Financial Markets and a member of the Economic Advisory Committee of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Find courses to build your knowledge of investment banking.
You’ll have the opportunity to take courses and electives related to investment banking across Johnson’s academic programs. Explore a sampling of course offerings below:
This course provides the basic tools of financial analysis and investment management with a particular emphasis on equities. The first part of the course focuses on discussing topics in financial analysis including profitability analysis, cash flow analysis, and key methods of valuation, all of which are approached from an investor’s perspective. The second part of the course focuses on different topics in investing, including the role of investor biases in the possible decoupling of the value of a stock from its price; strengths and limits of different approaches to investing, including value and growth strategies; momentum investing; and active and passive investing, including index funds. Investment vehicles including mutual and hedge funds are also discussed.
This course develops the framework for evaluating the gains, costs, and risks of managing firms’ assets and liabilities in financial distress, including periods of formal bankruptcy and restructuring. It takes the perspective of managers as well as that of financial market participants—for example, investors, analysts, legal professionals, regulators, etc.—that monitor and evaluate corporate policies in distress situations. The course features research on financial distress and the study of bankruptcy and reorganizations, survey data, and real-world examples.
This course presents an overview of the structure and function of the financial markets and attempts to provide a general working knowledge of the financial system by examining not only how various intermediaries and markets work, but also their evolution over time. The role of central banks, and their operations, is particularly emphasized, as is the nature of risk management both within the financial institution and more broadly for the financial system. Topics considered here include swaps, credit derivatives, value at risk models, and systemic risk. Just as intermediation has moved from institutions to markets, the course follows a similar evolution in the topics studied over the course of the semester. Market topics examined include securitization, the treasury market, digital currencies, and the impact of fintech on intermediation.
Open to students in the Two-Year MBA program in Ithaca
Financial modeling is the art and science of constructing spreadsheet models of firms’ future financial statements. This class draws on and integrates students’ knowledge of concepts learned in prior accounting classes by modeling the effect on the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows of financial transactions such as leveraged buyouts, mergers, and acquisitions, and corporate reorganizations.
Open to all Johnson and Graduate students
This course provides executive MBA students with real-world investment banking experience in an academic environment. Students, working individually and in teams, will play the role of investment bankers throughout the semester. Students will be introduced to the capital raising, leveraged buyout, and merger and acquisition processes.
The purpose of this course is to give students a broad understanding of financial statement analysis and valuation issues. The emphasis is on helping students understand the basic equity research process for use in investment and business decision applications. We cover information sources, strategic ratio analysis, cash flow analysis, forecasting financial statements, and firm valuation using discounted cash flow and residual income techniques.
Open to all Johnson and Graduate students
This course provides an overview of how to do accounting and reporting for M&A deals. In addition, you are taught how to model, evaluate, and perform critical analysis of M&A deals.
This course provides fundamental concepts and tools to value firms and assets using an economic framework. It begins with an overview of three approaches to valuation: 1) discounted cash flow (DCF); 2) valuation by multiples using comparable firms, and 3) real options. We will first discuss how valuation by multiples and the DCF approach are one and the same. Then, we will discuss these two approaches in detail. We will also discuss issues concerning the cost of capital, and the real options approach to value assets. Both conceptual understanding and practical implementations through case studies will be emphasized.
Open to all Johnson and Graduate students
Profiles in Leadership is Johnson’s premier platform for c-level executive speakers. Johnson has long attracted an impressive array of executive speakers; this course provides a streamlined platform for students to engage regularly with industry luminaries such as Irene Rosenfeld, David Einhorn, and others. Each session will begin with a presentation by the invited guest, followed by a robust discussion about the topics raised in the lecture as well as issues related to current events and other experiences of the lecturer.
Open to all Johnson and Graduate students
Explore Johnson's Academic Programs
Johnson offers several graduate degree programs for candidates with a range of experiences, academic backgrounds, and interests. See which program is your best fit as you plan to launch or advance a career in investment banking.
