Help me (๐บ๐ธ) decide a UK uni for FO IB
Howdy y'all,
Im a student from the United States looking to go to school in the UK. My ultimate hopes are to break into IB and am wanting to gauge my options.
So far, I've gotten offers from
- UCL (BA History, Politics & Economics)
- KCL (BA History & Political Economy)
- University of Edinburgh (LLB Law & Business)
University of St Andrews (MA Economics & International Relations)
and I'm waiting on LSE (BA History). Don't ask how these offers are all so different lol, I had to do quite a bit of heavy work.
UCL seems like the obvious answer here, but from checking Linkedin, I'm a bit worried about my prospects from seeing exclusively straight econ/quant disciplines at the firms I was hoping to recruit for. I understand that UK recruitment is traditionally uni > subject, but it just seems disheartening/off from my linkedin research.Considering this,
1. How worse off are my chances with a more social sciencey/artsy degree?
2. Would it be significantly more difficult recruiting from a semi like Edinburgh/StA's?
3. Even with the grad scheme visa, how much more difficult is recruiting as an international?
4. Would my pedigree be enough to warrant looks for buyside recruiting? (Given I don't fluently speak an EU language).
6. How do a-level/hs grades factor into recruitment? Considering I am an American on the AP curriculum who got good grades, but didn't take any advanced maths.
Thanks
Take UCL unless you get the LSE offer.
Depends on buyside, for HF UCL places well afaik.
Thanks for your comment.
Is LSE > UCL even when the degree has virtually no quant aspect involved? (ie, history is a weak degree)
If it was UCL maths or computer science or something like that, then maybe, but not really for the courses you've outlined.
if you go to KCL, every time i see you i'll say you're from Strand Poly.
Lse social anthropology> ucl HPE
Why are you not considering Warwick / Warwick Business School?
International rankings were also a factor of consideration and in the scenario I decide to return to the states later on, I wanted to go to a uni w/ a bit of clout which is also why I didn't include Durham. Although, that's looking more unlikely so I'll just say I haven't exactly heard the best things about Coventry lol.
Fair enough - just mentioning since Warwick has the best finance placement (in London) of all of the unis you are considering.
Of the selection you have proposed, I see UCL alums frequently across all levels. KCL / St Andrews / Edinburgh are all very rare both on sell/buy-side - would not advise.
Also remember that people doing History for example will not always be inclined towards IB, but there's more likelihood of an Econ grad being inclined towards IB.
Would you say that as a non-stem international, I still have a decent chance all other factors considered?
Not sure how things work as I'm not an international. But being at UCL or LSE will get you past the first screens, it's up to you to do the rest
As a current UCL Econ student from Scotland I can give you some colour here.
HPE at UCL is a relatively easy course so you are likely to get better grades than a lot of other UCL courses while still being at the best uni outside of Oxbridge/Imperial/LSE. Placement here is great across all degrees and into all realms of finance, of course the uni itself is massive but the placement is still super impressive in my view. Based on track record, your chance at high finance is the best from UCL out of the universities you mentioned.
BUT, I would really like to shed some light on St Andrews and I would highly recommend you consider them. St Andrews is around 20-30% Americans and has a super close-knit feel since the entire town exists because of the university. You will undoubtedly enjoy your time there more as an American BY FAR compared to the other universities and i know this as someone who has visited friends there 10+ times. I can tell you first-hand the university experience in London is not great and you really have to put in the effort to keep relationships because of how big the city is.
St Andrews has alumni across all bulge bracket and elite boutique banks. I actually worked out the per-capita (undergrad only) placement into those banks for St Andrews, Edinburgh, and UCL when I was deciding for my undergrad (mad nerdy but whatever). UCL was #1, St Andrews #2 (not too far off of UCL actually), and Edinburgh was #3 by a big margin. Point is, you can definitely break into a top finance career from St Andrews and if youโre good you can be a โbig fish in a small pondโ as opposed to UCL which has hundreds of people recruiting for top institutions every year. Some firms my friends from St Andrews went to recently: Ares, Goldman, JP Morgan, Deutsche, Jefferies, RBC, Citi, Bank of America, amongst others.
TLDR; UCL will give you the best chance at recruiting, but St Andrews will give you a much better uni experience with still very good prospects. The other unis I donโt think you should consider.
Thanks for your insight. It's great to hear that St Andrews has good recruitment, but why is it that when I look on linkedin, very few people seem to be getting offers?
How? At each bulge bracket bank there are minimum 50 people from St Andrews
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