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

 

What is the best MBA program for banking?

Traditionally, banks gobble up nearly 40% of Wharton School graduates – and roughly a third of Boothies. Columbia Business School and NYU Stern boast extensive finance programming and deep networks – not to mention home field advantage with Wall Street. Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB? They’re flat-out good at everything.

Earlier this year, The Princeton Review posed the ‘Best for Banking’ question to over 24,000 MBA students. Sure enough, the highest-scoring business school could be found in New York. However, the surprise came when that school wasn’t located in Manhattanville or Greenwich Village. Instead, it was found four hours north in Ithaca at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN FOCUS

This upset – powered by students who’d actually completed Banking coursework at the top graduate business schools – is one reason why Cornell Johnson earns Poets&Quants’ Best In Class Award for Banking in 2026. After all, to break into Banking, you’d expect that MBAs should be in the middle of the action, to gain experience and meet people. Ithaca? It’s remote – just 30,000 people, nestled in the Finger Lakes region and buffeted by canyons and waterfalls. How can you learn Banking in the woods instead of the street?

Actually, that’s one of Johnson’s advantages, says Frank Hager, a ’24 Johnson grad and P&Q Best & Brightest MBA. An investment banking associate at Morgan Stanley, he was once weighing Cornell Johnson against Columbia Business School. In the end, he chose Johnson because the rural setting gave him more room to grow.

“[Ithaca] takes you outside of the city to focus on yourself and be able to develop your relationships with your classmates and use those two years as productively as possible,” Hager tells P&Q. “If I was living in New York City, you have all of your friends across New York [and] you have your classmates at school. You don’t have this defined cushion to have separation from the rest of the world that really adds to the family that Johnson has.”

Plus, Cornell Johnson attracts its share of distinguished guests. During Hager’s tenure, for example, he rubbed shoulders with distinguished guests like David Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital, and Mark Tatum, deputy commissioner of the NBA. Despite its rustic settings, the Johnson MBA has produced some Wall Street heavyweights, including Andrew Bednar (Parella Weinberg CEO), Mary Meeker (Bond Capital founder), and Angela Mwanza (Rockefeller Capital managing director). That doesn’t count the collective influence of Cornell University as a whole, which Hager pegs at north of 250,000 alumni.

OLD EZRA BRINGS PROVEN STRATEGIES

An Ivy League school rich in tradition, Cornell University traces its lineage back to Ezra Cornell, a co-founder of Western Union who established the school during the Civil War. Cornell Johnson’s finance club – Old Ezra – carries his name and ranks as the business school’s oldest and largest student organization. Broken into corporate finance, equity research, and investment banking branches, Old Ezra serves as the catalyst for organizing and training the school’s future bankers.

Frank Hager served as president of Old Ezra as a second-year MBA. A former trader with Deutsche Bank, Hager took the path less traveled by transitioning to a college baseball coach. Returning to finance, he found Old Ezra provided a pipeline to Wall Street by bringing recruiters and bankers to campus to meet students. More than that, Old Ezra offered structure. That was particularly true in education, where second-year leaders would hold training sessions – or ‘checkpoints’ – every Sunday night. Here, members would walk through both technical concepts and networking and recruiting fundamentals that would set them up for long-term success.

“I had to get reacclimated to the lingo, jargon, and various technical aspects that would come up in interviews from evaluation to accounting to merger math,” Hager admits. “Old Ezra provided a very structured weekly education program that sits outside the classroom and supplements what you’re learning in your financial accounting and finance classes and all the core first year classes. [Old Ezra] brings more specific education around what is investment banking is and what they do on a daily basis and what a junior banker’s role is.”

THE FLYWHEEL EFFECT

The Career Management Center served as another resource for aspiring bankers at Cornell Johnson. The center is run by David Capaldi, who was previously a vice president in leveraged finance for JPMorgan Chase and a managing director at RBC Capital Markets. Capaldi would help organize Career Working Groups (or CWGs for short). Held weekly during the fall, CWGs would pair a half dozen first-years with two second-years who’d completed their summer internships. As part of these sessions, second-years would guide their underlings through the recruiting process, offering what Hager calls “reliable, unbiased advice.”  Afterward, Hager and his CWG classmates would take rides to New York City, which he found to be invaluable time to talk finance, practice messaging, and simply bond.

“We would do live technical questions [during the CWGs], where we would be sitting there for an hour or two hours to get up to speed and to prep for interviews,” Hager continues. “We would then take the bus or car down together to visit banks. The camaraderie increases your confidence and is your support network as you go through recruiting.”

Beyond CWGs, Capaldi would join forces with Drew Pascarella, a teaching professor of finance who runs the school’s famed Investment Banking Immersion program. Together, they would hold weekly sessions to address basics like an IPO and M&A transactions or hold discussions on issues like how to view companies issuing debt. Together, these various activities set a deep foundation that gave students like Hager a huge advantage during recruiting – and beyond.

“[The program] creates this kind of flywheel effect where you’re incredibly prepared for your internship – Old Ezra, CMC, coursework, [and] the Immersion program all being a piece of that,” Hager continues. “And being overprepared sets a baseline where, when you walk out of your internship, [a bank] is not just saying, ‘This person needs a return offer.’ They’re asking, ‘How do we convince this person to get on our team ASAP.”

That difference is what sets Johnson apart, Hager continues. “At the end of the day, investment banking is an apprenticeship business. Mentors are looking for investable people. They are looking to develop people who are capable and have a strong ROI on their time.”

A SEMESTER AS A BANKER

While Old Ezra checkpoints and CMC Career Working Groups offer support, the centerpiece of Johnson’s Banking programming remains the Investment Banking Immersion (known as IBI). Held during the spring, the immersion acts as a simulation where students spend a semester in the day-to-day world of an investment banker.

That starts every Monday night, Hager says, when Drew Pascarella assigns a case involving a real company in the news. During the week, each student team must develop a presentation to be delivered during the following class. Whether students were pitching M&A ideas or untangling the options and uncertainties from cases, these high-stakes, high-pressure presentations really prepared students to hit the ground running when internships started, Hager acknowledges.

“You got to learn from other groups and peers as they got up and thought about the problem and the solution for that company. It was incredibly helpful for your presentation and delivery skills. We would even have senior bankers from Johnson listen in on Zoom or come up in person [to play the client] and give feedback after the presentation.”

From putting together discount cash flows to conducting transactions analysis to combing through financial statements, the Investment Banking Immersion pulls everything together, Hager emphasizes.

“It mimics what happens in job and your internship. You go through all these work streams during the spring and it purposely mixes in all the different products or solutions that an investment banker may offer to his clients. So there is nothing you haven’t seen when you hit the desk.”

Even the immersion’s team-based structure reflected the push-and-pull realities of banking, with classmates often traveling for recruiting, club events, or projects.

“Coordinating in a group of 5-6 people to really tackle the case study and the problem that’s put in front of us is the same thing that happens in investment banking when I’m sitting down with my deal or coverage team to dissect that issue the company had and be able to present a solution, pitch an idea, or continue to build the relationship through productive dialogue.”

A FAMILY ATMOSPHERE

Outside the classroom, Hager credits a second-year mentor, Sean O’Connor, with grilling him on technical concepts and showing him what to weigh when choosing between competing offers. At the same time, he is quick to credit Johnson’s deep roster of faculty members with practitioner backgrounds. Among them, he singles out Sanjeev Bhojraj, who taught Financial Statement Analysis and The Search For Alpha. Not only does Bhojraj run an equity investment firm outside class, but Hager describes him as “an incredible thinker who challenges his students to think outside the box.” Hager also cites Rob Symington, who teaches Corporate Bankruptcy and Restructuring. He is a former senior portfolio manager at Avenue Capital Group who has worked on restructurings ranging from United Airlines to Trump Casinos over his 30-year career. By the same token, Hager recommends A.J. Edwards, Cornell University’s former chief investment officer and current operating officer for the Cayuga Venture Fund, calling him an “incredible teacher about the markets and capital allocation.”

Hager says he still goes to these professors, along with Drew Pascarella and David Capaldi, for occasional advice. These faculty members, along with his classmates and alumni, represent the best of Cornell Johnson experience: Community.

“It is such a family – everyone knows everyone,” Hager explains. “That’s a benefit of being in Ithaca: They wrap their arms around you… It also gave you this network and structure of peers to go through recruiting journey together, where you’re not competing for the 100 spots on Wall Street that Johnson might place. Instead, you’re rooting for everyone else and trying to get everyone else a home for an internship.”

This family atmosphere is one reason why Hager is paying it forward. “As an alum sitting in my spot now, with the recruiting starting to kick up, I’m having conversations with first-years now. I know how strong that world-class prep program is, so I’m confident that anyone who has gone through Drew’s class or David’s CMC Center Education sessions or the Old Ezra program is going to have the foundation to have the success in the internship.”

ADVICE TO FUTURE CORNELL BANKERS

The success of this formula is why Hager urges these students to always trust the process.

“You’re set up for success through all the different support networks with students, Old Ezra, faculty and staff, career management center, guest speakers, IBI, and the alumni network you develop. I counted it once: I think it was 173 conversations that I had throughout the fall of my first year at Johnson. Establishing that network is incredible for developing your success.”

Another piece of advice for MBAs looking for a career in Banking? Embrace being a student.

“You only have the student card and student email for two years,” Hager observes. “Take advantage of it because your ability as a student to reach out, cold contact, tell your story, and get your network expanded where people don’t think you have an agenda is incredible. The power of your network is so productive as your career goes on. You can establish relationships with people who can give you good advice and help you with your career. I always tell students to take advantage of being a student right now. There is not enough networking you can do.”

In 2025, Financial Services employers hired 41% of the class – a 13% higher share than Consulting – with graduates averaging $166,523 in base. Among the top employers, you’ll find JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Guggenheim Partners, and Moelis & Company. The year before, 42% of the class entered Financial Services, starting out with $165,829 bases. These part two years also represent a major uptick, as Financial Services only accounted for 35% of hires in the Class of 2023. In other words, the word is getting out: Ithaca is increasingly becoming a popular spot to find banking talent.

Next Page: An Interview with Drew Pascarella

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