MIT is most certainly not a second tier school for finance/consulting recruiting. It is easily a top tier school that is considered along with Harvard/Princeton/Yale (notwithstanding the inanity of having such a thing as top tier schools in the first place). The raw proportions of grads that end up in those destinations is probably less than other top schools because entrepreneurship is glamorous now and engineers usually end up in tech.
Brown might not be up there with Harvard in terms of recruitment, but it is still a "target" school for top finance/consulting firms. Goldman Sachs is one of the 3 largest employers of recent Brown grads (though no doubt some of the reported positions were for so-called "back office" positions). The other two are Teach for America and Google.
The fact that interviewers like to hire people with similar interests (incl. sports and fraternities) is sadly true from what people have told me.
One important point to keep in mind is that at the large finance/consulting firms, each school's applicants are screened and interviewed by the alumni from that school. So an engineer applying from MIT may very well get screened by someone from MIT with an engineering background.
MIT is most certainly not a second tier school for finance/consulting recruiting. It is easily a top tier school that is considered along with Harvard/Princeton/Yale (notwithstanding the inanity of having such a thing as top tier schools in the first place). The raw proportions of grads that end up in those destinations is probably less than other top schools because entrepreneurship is glamorous now and engineers usually end up in tech.
Brown might not be up there with Harvard in terms of recruitment, but it is still a "target" school for top finance/consulting firms. Goldman Sachs is one of the 3 largest employers of recent Brown grads (though no doubt some of the reported positions were for so-called "back office" positions). The other two are Teach for America and Google.
The fact that interviewers like to hire people with similar interests (incl. sports and fraternities) is sadly true from what people have told me.
One important point to keep in mind is that at the large finance/consulting firms, each school's applicants are screened and interviewed by the alumni from that school. So an engineer applying from MIT may very well get screened by someone from MIT with an engineering background.