To do ibanking in Canada

After the graduation, I wanna work in Canada, not the US.
What are the recommended Canadian universities to get a job in Bay Street other than Ivey and Queens?
Also, is doing the Economics major fine breaking into investment banking?

 
Best Response

Ivey and Queens are great schools and would well position you but York places well too (at the analyst level) and UT does well at the MBA level. Waterloo seems to place some people around too and that has an added benefit of the off-cycle (non-summer) internships which have smaller classes but fewer schools.

Econ major is fine but frankly not as good as it might be in the US. Given our schools have actual undergrad business / finance programs in contrast to many US schools I think there's a slightly higher expectation on technicals with regards to accounting and finance that you may not get in econ. Additionally, if you're at a target school the career office can be helpful in getting you flagged with the banks if you're a great candidate and is synced up with campus recruiting. I'm not entirely sure how that works with econ programs so you'd have to look into that.

Hope that helps and good luck with applications.

 

How is the change of major in Canadian universities? As of now, I am really interested to pursue Social science but if the recognition is not as good as it seems in the US, it is better to change I believe. Or is it hard to join Ivey as non-aeo Economics student?

 

Other than Ivey or Queen's you should go to either Schulich or Rotman. Waterloo's coop program is also pretty decent since if you get a coop you are likely to get a return offer. Don't do Econ. Canadian schools have established business undergraduate programs that have completely separate recruiting, and if you're in general arts and science you will not have access to business school OCR

 

Ivey, Queens, Mcgill & Schulich are your best bets. U of T works as well, and to a lesser extent you can make it in through Laurier & Waterloo, as well as UBC on the west coast and Concordia/Montreal if you can speak French and stay in Quebec. University of Alberta does well in Calgary.

Sometimes you'll see top ranked commerce grads from places like Ottawa make it, but they are few and far between.

Economics in Canada is not the same as economics in the U.S. for recruiting purposes. It can be done but it's an uphill battle, and the kids I know who made it had strong industry connections.

 

How are the MFIN programs at Laurier and Mc Master? They both offer co-op tracks. For the Vancouver based schools-Simon Fraser offers Msc Finance. do the canadian banks recruit from these for banking positions?

 

Not really. Sure, we have candidates that trickle in but it's not a big recruiting push. Frankly, you don't really need an MFin for banking and I think it's more relevant if you're looking to get in on the trading side etc. as we're not looking for quants. Traditionally they're not as polished either and don't interview as well on the banking side.

 

I used to work at / recruit for a large Canadian bank. Can echo what was said above: Ivey, Queens and Schulich were our top choices at undergrad level for Analysts. Rotman was the favourite for MBA Associates.

As for econ, we typically considered the business programs more "target" for IBD. However, I think we did interview people from other disciplines with strong profiles (or strong referrals - networking matters).

Some Canadian banks are known for hiring specific disciplines (BMO Mining likes engineers).

Happy to answer any specific questions.

 

If you keep your grades up above 80% in until your junior year you can apply to get into the HBA at Western. However the risk there is that you have no idea how the future will turn out or whether or not your preferences will change. However, if you want to stick to economics Queen's, McGill and UBC are better choices. If you get the chance and live in Ontario you should really go out and visit these universities because ultimately you should go to a school that your totally comfortable with. Realistically having a commerce degree gives you the advantage of having the best "brand" however the individual behind the degree is what matter most. Plenty of Econ/STEM/Math/Phyisics majors break into the IB world and some even go straight into PE or HF's every year. It's all about the hustle...nothing comes easy. If you want it bad enough..you'll get there.

Keep it together and you will go far..
 

Not that high since there aren't enough jobs. The IB market is Canada is much smaller and turnover isn't as high as the US. Go to a business school. Seriously. It'll make your life much easier if you wanna pursue IB. At many schools non-business kids don't even have access to ocr for the banking jobs!

 

At Queen's the OCR is all the same. The only difference is that sometimes for finance related jobs they group you in "clusters" where only certain majors are allowed to apply. For the most part its almost always --->Commerce, Economics + Applied Economics, Math and Engineering that are given access. There are some exceptions though like for example GS allow every major to apply.

Keep it together and you will go far..
 

I got into IB in Canada from a non-target and I've found it is happening more now. But it was difficult and it would have been a lot easier if I had gone to Ivey or Queens for sure.

I disagree a bit with the schools people have listed here as from what I've seen, there are actually more people in IB from Laurier than from Schulich.

 

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