Top undergrad finance degree in Australia?
I'm situated in Australia, and I was wondering if there are target schools, or school that BB recruit from?
Which undergrad degree would give me the best competitive edge when it comes to applying for internships?
USyd, UNSW, Monash, Melbourne. Not in that order.
However, get good marks, show drive, be a nice person and you'll get a look at regardless of your background.
IMO, the best undergraduate finance degree is the B.Comm (Co-op) at UNSW. Gives you 18 months of work experience with top firms and 16.5k annually to boot. Every other degree is basically the same, although USYD has a job placement program which the other universities don't have.
Have seen few bankers based in Melbourne both from Monash and Melbourne.
I'm a little skeptical about the quality of Australian schools because their requirements are not as high as the top schools in the US/UK. It also doesn't help that I know of people who get in simply because they can afford to pay their way in. That being said, Australian schools are ranked quite well in worldwide rankings as compared to some top US universities (not sure why).
Requirements are not as high? You are quite uneducated and that's a pretty arrogant assumption.
It's also laughably wrong. As an undergrad at Usyd having studied in UCLA, with my friends also from Usyd having gone to UPenn/Harvard/Brown etc, I can tell you that comparativley the quality of education at US institutions is scarily lacking - i.e. for some reason your university's give out more than five 4.0's per subject (which sort of defeats the purpose of it as a grade if it's THAT easy to attain), you are not taught in first year how to actually research and understand journal articles etc.
Hell the ex-dean of University of Sydney and later, Univeristy of New South wales, is now the Dean of Wharton. His own words described that for the amount of funding our universitys receive, the output is by far better than the majority of the world.
Put simply, American Universities are a joke. I can never take a graduate from any institution under say H/Y/P/S seriously after my and my friend's collective experience with these institutions.
Theory is stressed over research for undergraduates at American universities. Research is more for doctorates. Almost all of the top universities are considered to be in the US/UK with a few sprinkled in from other countries like Canada and Switzerland. It's not particularly difficult to get into any top Australian university. The country's population is less than that of Texas and it's not much bigger than New York or Florida.
Depends on your current location mate, just go to any GO8 Uni and you would be fine. Although, if you are currently in VIC/NSW it does not make any sense at all to move.
My two cents, do really well on your undergrads and go for honours if you later miss out on graduat recruitment on your final year. This would put you in a great position (always maintain your ECs up thou, dont forget!)
Thanks for the feedback guys, looks like my idea of a GO8 was correct.
the top schools globally are in the US and the UK.
that said top Aussie are not easy to get into to...
for example, to study Commerce (e.g. with a Finance major) at Sydney University you need to be in the top 5% of all students in your state OR have an IB of 37 ... to compare, Oxford requires an IB of 38 to 40
or, since Sydney U is a large state school, a more fair comparison would be with the likes of UC Berkeley or U Toronto
UC Berkeley: "a score of 30 or above will receive 30 quarter units (20 semester units) total toward their UC undergraduate degree"
U Toronto: "A predicted score of 28 or more is required for a provisional offer of of admission. More competitive programs require at least 30 and as much as 35 on predicted scores"
The Australians at my target school almost all got 99.95, with some non-athletes scoring as low as ~99.85. To get into Melbourne/UNSW/USyd/Monash, you need to score 94-97 or so. Some great students go to those universities, but it's undeniable that the admissions standards are lower.
This thread turned out interesting...
To OP if he still cares, go to GO8 if you can, if not and you're in Sydney consider Macquarie, shit load of alumni in finance, really good overseas opportunities and the nicest campus in Sydney IMO. Plus Mac girls are hotter than USyd or UNSW
not sure what you mean by 'general undergraduate admissions'
at Sydney Uni,
to study architecture you need to be in the top 3% to study commerce you need to be in the top 5% to study structural engineering you need to be in the top 5% to study IT you need to be in the top 2% to study law you need to be in the top 0.3% to study physiotherapy you need to be in the top 1%
all these are undergraduate degrees.
anyone in the top 0.3 to 5 percent of their state is going to a top university in the US or the UK, likewise in Aus. i conceded at the start that the best unis in the world are in the US and the UK, but to say Aussie unis are easy to get into and are 'not even close' in terms of competitiveness is flat out wrong.
Lets combine everything (domestic/international, graduate/undergraduate) to make things simple and because it doesn't make a huge difference. The University of Sydney has 50,000 students in it. That would be equivalent to like 750,000 students in the States using a multiplier of 15 (probably generous since Australia has a lower fertility rate). There's basically the population of 25 top schools in the United States (assuming average school population is about 30,000 which is probably high and also generous). The University of Melbourne has another 40,000 so there's another 20 top schools. ANU has about 20,000. There's another 10 schools. So we're approximately at the top 55 universities in the US by enrollment through the 3 best Australian schools when adjusting for population. I wouldn't say cracking the top 55 schools is that hard in the United States. Top 20-25% in your high school class is usually enough.
Using a multiplier is pointless. Population is irrelevant in this discussion. University's have economies of scale, using your argument I'd then be able to say Chinese Universities > US universities through sheer numbers.
Stop replying in a thread you clearly have no qualification to talk about.
also i never mentioned quality of education... if MIT really provided such superior education then it makes no sense to restrict it to less than 1% of the population... you would want as many ppl going to MIT as possible (w/o undermining the quality of the edu) to increase the human capital stock of the country... exclusiveness is about signalling, not quality
obviously i think MIT is an amazing school, but you could probably get the same education at say CMU
but in terms of quality of undergraduate education, australia has a very good 'honours system', and someone with first class honours from virtually any aussie university will be competitive for top american grad schools... i don't think we can say the same for the US colleges
also at aussie unis there are no 'diversity quotas' and other politically correct admission measures, the students with the top scores get admitted period. i know a black guy who does gender studies at MIT who wouldn't get admitted to any go8 uni
We do have affirmative action and it's my belief that it's wrong and racist. I'll give you that. I'd still expect somebody of any race to get into MIT to be very intelligent. However, selectivity does matter. Otherwise the quality of the professors has to go down.
australian uni's do not have "general undergraduate requirements" so noone really knows what you're talking about. each undergradate degree at each university has its own requirements depending on supply and demand...
to get into a popular degree at a top university you need to be in the top 5% of your entire STATE, as the numbers in my previous post demonstrate, it is simply empirically incorrect that being in top 25% of your class is enough
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