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To land a summer job on Wall Street this year, Fairfield University junior Matthew Edgar sent 300 emails, made dozens of phone calls and several networking trips to New York banks from the Connecticut campus.

Darwin Li had a more direct route: The Princeton University junior applied online for positions and attended campus information sessions where company recruiters walked him through the application process and the firm’s culture.

A growing number of employers say a degree from a prestigious college counts less than it once did. But among elite finance and management-consulting firms—which offer some of the highest starting salaries for new graduates—an alma mater still matters. That puts students from less-selective schools at a disadvantage, career-services officers and students say.

“We teach our students that they’re going to have to compete,” said Eugene Gentile, director of the office of career management at Rutgers Business School. “Many of our students are not already moneyed. They’re often first-generation college students. When they get out there in these firms, they compete with the best of them.”

Competition is intense for summer analyst positions at Wall Street firms and management-consulting firms, the surest way to land a full-time role after graduation. For instance, fewer than 2% of applicants to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s summer investment-banking programs are accepted.

The odds can be even longer for students at places like Fairfield, Rutgers and Northeastern University, which are usually considered “nontarget” schools by recruiters. For those students, getting a foot in the door at a prominent Wall Street firm means sending hundreds of emails and cold-calling a string of bankers in hopes of landing a brief phone interview and a recommendation.