Confused international student in London without IBD internships -Please help me

  • Hi, I am an international student coming from a war-zone where I never heard about IBD. I came to the UK on a scholarship to do MSc Accounting at a highly ranked but not target business school. After finishing, I went to a neighbouring country to my hometown (as I cannot go back due to extreme restrictions on travelling). This academic year, I joined another university to do a professional qualification in Accounting just to be able to come back to the UK. This year I got auditing graduate scheme offer from a big four firm but then they apologised because they realized that my current student visa does not enable me to switch to work visa as it is granted for a professional qualification not an academic one. I later thought of getting another masters to be able to join the big four firm or find an IBD role so I applied for Imperial College London. They rejected my MSc Finance application and got me a place on MSc Finance and Accounting instead. I started developing passion for IBD when I came to the UK. However, I feel like I am far away from breaking into the industry whenever I look at the profiles of previous students who were brought up in developed countries and got related internships in Europe, US etc. I had private equity and pitching for investors on behalf of an international NGO experience in my home country but it still makes me feel inferior because it's still NGO and I didn't find anyone who has the same profile as me and was able to break into IBD.

My questions are as follow: Will MSc finance and Accounting from Imperial College London help me get into IBD? I am concerned about the funding because it is very expensive for me but if it will help me get into IBD, I will risk it and do my best to secure money. There might be an option of a loan and a partial scholarship but I am not sure about them a lot yet. -If I get into Imperial would my MSc be useless as long as I have no internship previously (I looked at the profiles of IBD employees from imperial. They all had related internships before joining imperial & their current roles) -Is it worth getting MSc Finance and Accounting from Imperial given that I got MSc Accounting from a world's top 50 business school already earlier? Would the finance element in the new programme and the name of imperial be beneficial? -Is there any steps I can take to make my profile look better for IBD? Are their any IBD, hedge funds, M&A or private equity internships in the UK that would accept me on off-cycle to pave the way for me to IBD?

I know my situation is very complicated but I thought of sharing this hoping that maybe someone here can help me make informed decision.

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