No idea. Probably finance professional? I'm going to be a quantitative prop trader and I have no idea. Honestly it doesn't matter all that much. A banker might lean a bit more toward humanities-ish schools like Wharton or Dartmouth, while they'd look for traders more at places like MIT. More so the elite quant funds (like Jane Street, D.E. Shaw) than the bulge bracket banks' Sales and Trading arms. Then again the elite quant funds are the place to be right now. Sales and Trading is for chumps now that the Volcker Rule is in place.

If I had to guess at a taxonomy of the split, a banker organizes deals for other people (underwriting, M&A), while a finance professional is everyone else - from the humble financial planner in Redneckville Kentucky up to the biggest portfolio manager at Bridgewater. It's probably a buy side/sell side split. Then again I could be talking out of my ***.

I was looking over the best universities for Finance professionals and investment bankers (and the university are essentially the same in both categories, just the rankings are slightly different, but even then, not a lot).

What I want to know, is what is the different between the two categories? For instance, if someone is a trader (of things like MBS, derivatives and other structured products), is he an investment banker or a finance professional? What is the difference?

Thanks