Why do banks have target/semi-target universities?

Because people who don't work hard don't deserve a lucrative career

Why do they exclusively (bar a few exceptions) recruit from these top universities? Why don't they just consider all universities? There are probably some excellent guys at somewhere like York or whatever who have excellent extracurriculars, excellent work experience, have networked a lot and know a lot about the industry and can build good relationships with clients. Surely there are people at non-target schools who have better profiles than some people at targets? Banking doesn't really require you to be a genius.

Some of the big4 have recently got rid of UCAS requirements because they said that a lot of great candidates were being eliminated by their previous system. Why don't banks do the same thing with target schools?

'Target' only means 'we have historical evidence that the majority of successful applicants can be found in these environments'. It's simple economics therefore to spend the HR/recruitment resources on these more 'target rich' environments than send a team up to York to pick up the one or two good candidates from there. The candidates from York can still apply and will be assessed on the same merits as applicants from the 'target' unis. It's just a resource allocation/recruitment efficiency thing.

Why do they exclusively (bar a few exceptions) recruit from these top universities? Why don't they just consider all universities?

can someone give me a list of uni targets ? Is nottingham a target uni ?

Nottingham is a strong semi-target so a student from Nottingham who has very good grades, extracurricular activities and some work experience and a knowledge of finance will have a good chance, much like a target student.
The targets are Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Imperial and Warwick. Bristol and Nottingham are semi-targets.

oh ok thanks a lot, what about manchester would that be considered more favourably ?

No. Nottingham is as much of a semi-target as Manchester, but it does send more people into banking so I think you might have a slight advantage at Nottingham. Nottingham also has a very small tiring finance society where you can network with other students interested in banking and sometimes with actual bankers.

yh and I think they said the maths society was sponsored by Deloitte - is this a good financial firm ? I'm a bit lost on the subject

Yeah Delloite is a top financial firm. It's not a bank but it provides accounting, consulting, actuarial, tax and legal services to clients. Loads of students of Nottingham and other good units go on to work there.

Btw I'm not a banker myself- I've just gained a lot of knowledge from bankers on LinkedIn and stuff and some of the banking careers websites like mergers&inquisitions and efinancialcareers