P&Q’s 2026 Best In Class: Cornell Johnson, Banking

AN INTRODUCTION TO DREW PASCARELLA

Give some credit to Drew Pascarella, who earned his MBA at Cornell Johnson in 2001. Like Frank Hager, he was president of Old Ezra and even completed the Investment Banking Immersion he now leads. After business school, Pascarella headed to Citi, where he spent nearly a decade helping to lead its Technology Investment Banking Group. Over his career, he has advised on over $35-billion in M&A transactions, working with clients ranging from Nokia Siemens Networks to Cisco.

In 2012, Pascarella received the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse: The chance to return to Cornell Johnson as a lecturer. It was a chance to be part of a Pay It Forward mindset that is “alive and well” within him. Since returning, Pascarella has received two Class of 1992 Apple Awards for Teaching Excellence, while also devoting three years to being an associate dean.

Working at Citi, Pascarella also served as the team captain for MBA recruiting there. Coupled with his investment banking experience, he brings a unique set of experiences, ones that enable him to deliver a program that “really meets the students where they are.”

“I know exactly what they need to look like to get a summer internship and I know exactly what they need to look like in order to convert that internship because I was the one making those decisions when I was at Citi,” he tells P&Q. “I was in the rooms when we were debating whether we were going to give someone an offer, either for an internship or full-time. I was able to take all of that knowledge and transfer it into the system that we have built. That’s something that’s very intentional and systematized in a way that maximizes their success. We’re able to use that experience in order to understand what the market is looking for as opposed to just delivering the best of what we can.”

This “intentionality” acts as the foundation of Cornell Johnson’s Banking prowess. In September, P&Q interviewed Pascarella on the how’s and why’s behind the program. Here are Pascarella’s thoughts on what makes Cornell Johnson’s Banking programming so special in the marketplace.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DREW PASCARELLA

P&Q: In the 2026 Princeton Review MBA Ranking, which is based on student surveys, Cornell earned the highest score for its Banking curriculum. That includes Columbia Business School and NYU Stern, which are within a cab ride of Wall Street. How does Cornell achieve this level of satisfaction despite being four hours away in the Finger Lakes region of New York?

Pascarella: “Proximity to New York is one thing. However, real intense focus on banking as an ecosystem and industry that we want to excel in is something else. From a location perspective, we have access to New York and Wall Street very easily done. But what we can do in Ithaca – and what we’ve chosen to do  intentionally – is to build this year-long system and ecosystem around investment banking.

When the students are come in in August, they are intentionally focused on what we need them to do to get ready for the interviews in the fall and then internships in the spring. We have this year-long system that was engineered about 15 years ago that has generated a level of success that peer schools can’t easily replicate for one reason or another.

Again, proximity or location notwithstanding, I think the intentionality and focus on banking at Cornell is what really sets us apart.

[Let me give you a couple of examples.] Every top business school has access to senior-level investment bankers and has bankers on campus talking about transactions and the industry. What sets us apart is that we systematize that over the course of a year, such that it is not a few interactions with bankers or a modeling exercise over a weekend. It’s really a year of strategic and financial training, such that we know week-in-and-week-out what the students are learning and how their foundation is being built. More than that, we know what else we need to do to add to that foundation, such that when they leave us in May for their internships they’re better prepared than anybody else.

It’s not the individual elements. It’s the fabric we wrap around those elements to make sure the students are progressing and they feel there is a real method to the learning they’re going through over the course of the year. As you know, the academic environment only works on a semester basis, so you turn on in the fall and turn off (at break) and turn on again in the spring. We’ve broken that idea of operating by semester and really think about this as a year-long process. The fall is focused on making sure those foundational skills are built and the students are going to show up and be exceptionally well-prepared for the interview. Because without the offer, there is no summer internship so we have to first focus there. In the spring semester, we are building on all of the foundational learning in the fall and practicing how to be investment bankers in the spring.

The class that I run in the spring semester is called the Investment Banking Immersion Practicum, which literally puts students in the role of a banker – week-in-and-week-out – for an entire semester so they are actually practicing the work of banking. As a former investment banker, I’m qualified to run that and play the role of either a senior banker or a client. And we’re role playing the entire semester so that when they get to the street in the summer, it all feels really familiar to them. They have the confidence to go into that internship in a way that doesn’t feel new. They’ve been a part of it and practiced for it.

That’s unique to us, this kind of semester-long experiential learning built onto the foundational learning in the fall. It really takes our students to a level that other schools can’t.”

P&Q: How does Cornell Johnson leverage its banking alumni to educate its banking students and open doors for them in the field?

Pascarella: “The work that we do on campus to prepare our first-year MBA students really creates a debt of gratitude among second-years and our alums who are working in firms. They feel motivated – if not compelled – to give back. They’ve been beneficiaries of this ecosystem and this system that we run and they feel obligated to make sure they can play their part going forward. The second years run a lot of the programs specifically in the fall to get our students prepared for summer internship recruiting. And they do that on a volunteer basis because someone did it for them last year so they feel like they owe it to pay it forward.

The alums feel the same way. They get to the banks and feel like Cornell took care of them and did something special for them. They feel the desire to give back and make sure the opportunities that were afforded to them are forwarded to the next generation. It’s a virtuous cycle that is really strong here. As long as we continue to deliver great value to them as a first year, we are creating a very supportive alumni base along the way.

To be honest, we ask them directly – We really want you to support us and we ask directly for that support so they know what our hopes are. People like to be asked what to do. They want the specifics of how to help. And we’re very direct on what they can do to help us.”

P&Q: Tell us about some specific programs that bring first- and second-years together.

Pascarella: “There are three legs to the stool, with respect to our fall program. Two of those are direct interaction between first- and second-year classes and the third is faculty-led.

We have our finance club. It’s called Old Ezra. That’s our peer-to-peer knowledge transfer center. We have the leadership group of Old Ezra of second-year students and they are delivering weekly knowledge.  Every Sunday there are meetings, where they are talking about technical and behavioral skills. They’ll prep our students on the banks that are coming to campus each week. They’re sharing who’s coming for briefings and talking about the differences between Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Evercore and what’s important to each of those banks. Those sessions are being led by students who were just interning at these banks last summer. It’s the closest we can get to that kind of information of what matters to each of those banks. In addition, [they cover] what should you wear, how you should handle yourself in a briefing, and what questions you should ask of the alums. All of that work is being delivered on a one-to-many basis in Old Ezra.

The second leg is called the Career Work Groups. That’s a one-to-few, where you have 1-2 second-year students that are paired with 6-7 first-year students in small groups to cover many of the same things, but on a much more individualized basis. Let’s sit down and go through your resume. Let’s go through your story. You’re going to meet with Citi tomorrow – are you prepared? What questions do you have?

Both Old Ezra and the Career Work Groups are both systematized and institutionalized knowledge transfers between second- and first-year students. The third, which is what I do, is the weekly technical training. Second year students are doing some technical training, but they’ve had 10 weeks of experience and I have 25 years of experience. So some things need to be taught by a more technical master. I’ll give them weekly training on everything from how to value a company, to what is a leveraged buyout, to how to think about IPOs and mergers and acquisitions. Those sessions complement the training between first- and second-years.”

P&Q: Cornell Johnson is known for its Immersions, including its Banking Immersion. What is involved in the Banking Immersion and how does it equip students with the skills and institutional knowledge needed to land a job in the field?

Pascarella: “Immersions in general are readiness tools for a range of verticals that our students are interested in. The idea is that you have a package of academic, theory-based classes – what you would see at Wharton or Harvard – that underpins the industries that the students are going into. What makes it different is that we have this practicum class that acts as a wrapper around those academic theory classes. It bridges the gap between the academic theory and specifically what will be practiced in the industry where the students are focused.

In investment banking, we have this package of classes like valuation, financial modeling, accounting, restructuring, and typical accounting and finance classes in the second semester. What brings that all together is that translation work specifically in how a banker would approach accounting, an evaluation, or modeling is this practicum class. That’s the class where there is the role play, where the students are playing the role of associate level investment banker and I’m playing the role of either a senior banker they are working for or a client they’re reporting to.

Every week, I will write a new case. It is a hypothetical case – we don’t use Harvard Business School case, but based on something that is contemporaneous with the market. You just read in the Wall Street Journal that Company A and Company B are thinking about merging. You’re representing Company B and these are a couple of the issues that the client is focused on. You have a week to put together a presentation with your analysis to address these issues. So it’s all contemporaneous and ripped from the headlines. And students are working with today’s context under my tutelage to deliver investment banking advice using the skills that they are learning in these theory-based classes and applying them directly in an investment banking environment. And they are doing that week-over-week. It’s not a case study or competition, but 14 times – a semester’s worth of reps – to get that practice in before the internship. That’s what makes these immersions so very special.”

P&Q: According to the school, 85% of banking summer interns receive offers. Aside from the immersion, how does your first-year MBA curriculum prepare students to succeed in the summer internship – and beyond?

Pascarella: “The fall gets the students ready for the interview and sets the foundation for the spring. The spring, which includes this immersion, is this empowerment tool, this readiness tool, that makes sure that when they hit the desk and they are working for 10 weeks, they are the most prepared MBAs of any top business school.

And that shows.

The investment banks don’t plan to convert each of the summer interns into full-time offers. They want to do a 10-week interview and really kick the tires. And we know exactly what a student needs to look like in order to pass that 10-week interview. Again, that entire year of training sets them up for that success that’s required.

It’s not any individual element. It’s making sure that we know that over a nine-month period – when students are in our custody – that we’re doing everything we can to get them ready. And the results speak for themselves. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the alums at each of these firms are looking after our summer interns in a way where they are ensuring their success, to the extent they can. They see the conversion of a summer internship into a full-time offer as a reflection on them. They’ve spent a lot of time recruiting their picks from Cornell. The alums are heavily engaged with our interns to make sure that they are maximizing their chances of converting that offer. They play an important role in that area too.”

P&Q: What are the most important ingredients for students to succeed in the summer internship?

Pascarella: “I would say investment banking is an apprenticeship business. You’re not expected to know everything there is to know about banking by the time you hit your internship. What you are looking to show is that you are investable, that you have promise. It’s going to take a long time to learn all of this. There is an entire system set up inside the investment banks. That’s why you start out at a junior level. You work there for 3.5 years to get promoted to the assistant vice president level. Work there for three years and get promoted to a director level. They have their own conveyor belts. Our job – and really the associate or MBA level investment banker’s job – is to plug into that system so they will receive that mentorship and apprenticeship in a way that will make them successful.

What I’ve seen, in terms of the skills required, is you have to show up looking like you want to be mentored. What does that mean? That means you’ve spent the time that you can preparing for the internship you are now sitting in. You need awareness of how you value a company; how an acquirer thinks about mergers and acquisitions; the key aspects of doing an initial public offering; why a company would raise equity over debt, and how current market conditions influence those decisions. If you don’t have that awareness, it looks like you’re not ready to be invested in.

Our system creates that sort of awareness campaign, if you will, so that students are interested, informed, and ready to learn. That kind of skill, which is something we can help deliver, is really important. The second, frankly, is positive attitude. Again, because it is an apprenticeship business, you need to have the attitude of positivity and wanting to learn. You have to show up and be vulnerable, be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done because that learning and mentorship is so important for a junior to display over the course of an internship.”

P&Q: Tell us about a course or extracurricular event that you might not find at another MBA program. How does it give a Cornell MBAs an edge in the banking marketplace?

Pascarella: “I would say it is the Investment Banking Immersion Practicum. That’s really our secret sauce here. This is a class where they roll play every week. It is led by someone with 25 years of industry experience. It bridges the gap between theory and its application. And it’s something that’s systematized over the course of a semester. It’s not a series of lectures or cases, but it’s really an embedded structure that follows students from January to May, for students with a strong foundation with relatively little experience – where there is a semester’s worth of experience to draw upon. And that course seems to be the differentiator. If you look at the curriculum of other top business schools, everyone is teaching valuation, financial modeling, financial markets, restructuring – and these are all fantastic classes. But these immersions, specific to banking – allows for this practice and this experience before they hit the desk.”

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