There are certainly financial firms that people are less interested in though, namely banks.
The usual destinations for smart and motivated new grads are (not counting very early startups/making your own company):
1. Top tier HFT/prop firm (Jane Street, HRT, Jump, etc.)
2. Meta, larger unicorns like Stripe, Databricks, etc.
3. Google
4. Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
Obviously im leaving out a lot of places but this is generally what I've seen.
Id say for most people FAANG is still the top option, and for people that want to shoot beyond FAANG, trading firms are probably the next target.
If you were including very early startups in this list, I've noticed that the smartest people often join promising startups as an early engineer, or make their own company. I'd put them above trading firms, but the risk is way higher.
Perhaps "prestige" may be lower from an external perspective (Your parents will brag about you being at Google, but probably not Jane Street), and Id also agree with the fact that the top 0.01% probably either make their own startup or join as a founding engineer at a startup, but the top 0.1% of students are definitely going for Prop trading/hedge fund jobs.
It did. Comp is nowhere near FAANG and the work culture is still stuck in the 90's.
Go to any college and talk to students looking for internships. Finance firms are nowhere near the top of their list.