LBS MFA vs St Andrews MSc Maths (not joking)

Hi all,

Before you all come at me for the fact that St Andrews isn’t a target, especially for masters, just hear me out.

My undergrad is in econ at a target in the UK and I’m on track to receive a first.

My profile: - economics undergrad at a UK target - several relevant internships across IB and PE albeit boutiques and not well known - strong extracurricular engagement In essence, a good profile to get interviews

My immediate career goal is investment banking (BB/EB).

To be honest I’ve always had a dream to study maths at some point in my life and although Econ is really quantitative at my university there’s just something about academic maths that I think is super challenging and interesting.

Anyway, I applied to a bunch of MSc Finance courses (purely for the brand name/career prospects) and received offers for LBS, Imperial, and HEC and of these I am pretty set on LBS. I applied to MSc Maths at St Andrews because it is consistently top ranked just behind Oxbridge & Imperial, and offers the only MSc Maths of those that I was eligible for. It is also very cheap at 12k which is an important consideration for me.

My current concerns about St Andrews are - it is a “downgrade” in terms of “target/semi-target” from my current university - there is a brand-name trade off between it and LBS - it is not a finance masters (no idea if recruiters would care)

Based on this, do you guys have any advice that would help me out here? Need to make a decision soon and would appreciate any thoughts.