No, you need to be (1) absolutely top tier talent and generally be willing to (2) live your job. Finance is not cushy. It's cut-throat, ridiculously competitive, extremely intensive, and very results oriented (to a fault - see: Taleb). Obviously having a nice school and a good network will obviously give you a better than average chance at getting your foot in the door, but nothing beyond that.
The main reason you see a disproportionate number of people with nice sounding names on their resume in high positions is because to get that nice sounding name on your resume, you already needed to be an elite academic outlier before joining them.
Like imagine I started a basketball school - and was able to get a disproportionate share of people 6'6" or taller to enroll. I'm going to be pumping out a disproportionate share of NBA professionals, regardless of what my school does. Not because of my school, not because of some special hook-up with the NBA, but because of my ability to grab a disproportionate share of 6'6" types who, in turn, make up a disproportionate share of world class basketball players.
No, you need to be (1) absolutely top tier talent and generally be willing to (2) live your job. Finance is not cushy. It's cut-throat, ridiculously competitive, extremely intensive, and very results oriented (to a fault - see: Taleb). Obviously having a nice school and a good network will obviously give you a better than average chance at getting your foot in the door, but nothing beyond that.
The main reason you see a disproportionate number of people with nice sounding names on their resume in high positions is because to get that nice sounding name on your resume, you already needed to be an elite academic outlier before joining them.
Like imagine I started a basketball school - and was able to get a disproportionate share of people 6'6" or taller to enroll. I'm going to be pumping out a disproportionate share of NBA professionals, regardless of what my school does. Not because of my school, not because of some special hook-up with the NBA, but because of my ability to grab a disproportionate share of 6'6" types who, in turn, make up a disproportionate share of world class basketball players.