For those who have done the MSc Finance at LSE, do students typically apply for summer internships or go straight for full-time roles, considering you’re not technically a penultimate-year student?
Additionally, does anyone have recent insights on how LSE Master’s students fare in IB recruiting for London compared to candidates from other schools?
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bump, im an LSE undergrad and I believe most msc fnance students apply for summers.
as for recruiting, its still quite random - you're treated like any other target school applicant. personally know people who've gotten into ROTH and EVR, and others who werent able to get anything at BBs/EBs. The lse brand helps massively when applying to boutiques though.
Programme is complete ass. Most students struggle to land interviews (much less offers). The people who have a good time recruiting are those with already strong profiles from Europe who are looking to re-recruit for London. If you look at the latest career report, is a joke - 91% "accepted an offer within three months" with a 98% percent reporting rate. The class size is roughly 180 students, which means that only 161 got offers, with the remaining 15 with no offer. It stands to reason that the the 2% who did not report are also without offers (sample bias) so you are looking at roughly 19 students without an offer out of a class of 180 - a whopping 10.5%!
And what is worse, those "accepted an offer" includes students who already came with an offer beforehand (roughly 50% of the class will be like this). And most of the placements from the students are, quite honestly, subpar.
If you do not have an easy way to get an IB do yourself a favour and save the £40k - stay very far away!
Would LBS be worth it, compared to LSE?
Define "worth it". Most of these programmes are borderline scams - a large majority of their "placement" comes from students who are incoming with an offer. If your "dream" is to break into IB, an MSc might facilitate it if and only if you have an "easy" way to get an offer or have an exceptionally strong CV and had a bad recruiting year.
That being said, LBS does not suffer competition from bachelor students as does LSE, so they have a big advantage there. LBS is also a less intensive course, meaning that you have more time to network (although it is useless for LDN) and more time to prep for interviews. So from that PoV they are better off than LSE. How this translates to placement, I do not know since I did not attend LBS.
I can comment as I got an IBD SA offer and am not studying a masters in finance.
The attitude to studying a master's in finance is pretty non-sensical in my opinion. I know people who studied Masters in Public Health and secured BB offers since in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 cycles.
I can see why it would be useful for you if you have zero experience to go on from your CV but my recruiting cycle this time showed that they really do not give a damn whether you do LSE Finance or whatever.
To put this into context, I did also do interviews at MS / GS / JPM and they strongly emphasised that although there's a success bias to LSE, LBS etc. it is not representative of the firms as a whole.
To emphasise, I don't know how their exact recruitment processes work internally but I wouldn't wager everything on a degree title. Maybe the University might help but don't think the masters is the be all or end all.
Here is my best recommendation: if you can find a way to narrate the fact that you are prepared to do the dirty work e.g. pitch books, data rooms, admin etc. even for the most toxic group in IBD that no one wants to touch (think O&G, Infra), most firms will give you a chance. Worked for me a charm and I'm glad I decided to get my hands dirty on desks that no one wanted to touch with a barge pole!
While that is excellent for you, I know people who have a target MSc and prior IB experience (but NOT in a brand name - think no name boutique)/Big 4 TAS - who did not even get a chance for an AC.
And I refer to my ending point: what I found when speaking to MDs and Assoc's was that it is a good idea to show a preference for verticals that firms find difficult to fill. Citi opened separate 2025 SAs for RE and FIG because I assume they couldn't find interns to fill those seats. It's a good example of how to orient yourself for desks that once you get into the door, you can rotate to any group as you've shown the ability to take an interest in work that other A1s don't want to touch.
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