Differences Between UK and US Universities and Their Significance

I hear constantly people saying that the universities in UK and US are very much different. Can someone provide more details of the differences, how Wall Street recruiters see these differences, and how the differences impact a student to land a job in IB or HF business. Thanks.

 
Best Response

This is a bit of a stupid question unless you're in high school and have the option to attend either. Also I don't know of anyone on this board who has attended both and would be able to answer it - I can only explain what UK ones are like and you can do the comparison yourself (assuming you're from the US).

UK unis very much promote self learning. The classes are more supplementary. Typically you will have a maximum of 10 hours of actual lecture time per week with a couple of hours of support classes - the rest is your own learning. UK students will party very hard (and if you're from the US, no - what you do is NOT partying hard) but also work hard from the months of April - June for exams. Exams tend to be in May / June and then some courses will also have January exams.

Almost all degrees are either 3 or 4 years. If you do a 4 year course then your 3rd year will typically be spent in industry or another country studying there. You can also do a 4 year course in subjects like engineering where the first 3 years are your bachelor and then the final year is just a masters addition. Employers ask for a 2:1 degree which is a second class honours and requires an average score of 60-69%.

In the UK there are 3 universities which are absolutely top rated for going into high finance - these are Oxford, Cambridge and LSE. There are also around 5 which are strongly recruited for, i.e. Warwick, Bristol, UCL, Imperial etc. Any university in the top 10 will give you a good chance at IBD.

There are on-campus presentations by most of the banks at the top universities, and most applications are done online. Here you will submit a CV, answer a couple of 50-200 word questions and do some online mathematical, verbal and logical tests. Networking plays a much smaller role and won't help you as much when it comes to undergraduate jobs.

As I said, silly question but hopefully this is at least helpful...

Universities: It's usually 3 years since there are no GE's and its typically harder to switch subjects unlike US uni's

I believe the UK runs on an application basis, so I believe the process is different than the US where it tends to run more on recruiting/networking

 

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