LBS vs LSE Masters for London IB/PE

My profile:
Undergrad from Engineering College in India with first class honours, 1 year internship at a boutique bank where I worked on collaterals for a $100Mn M&A which fell through, and currently full time at the same bank working on growth equity fundraise mandates, expecting a closure this year. 

  1. What are my chances at getting into LBS MFA and LSE MFE, assuming I get a GRE of around 320-330
  2. Which is better? LBS I've heard has well structured career services while in LSE you're more on your own. However, the class size increase of LBS to 300 is concerning.
  3. Do I have a good shot at directly recruiting for PE/VC entry level roles given my background in tech IB, or should I stick to IB recruiting?

Thank you.

11 Comments
 
Most Helpful

There's 2 separate, unrelated questions here:

  1. Whether you'll get in: I'd think you have a decent shot at LBS but you haven't shared what university you went to, what your GPA was (so an 80% is considered a first-class in the college I went to but universities in the UK have their own grading scale for Indian UG colleges and to them an 80% is an upper-second class so you dont know what this ends up being) and what your GMAT/GRE would be. A 330 is on the lower end for an Indian so you'd probably have to shoot for higher than that. 

    I went to IIT (B/D/M) for undergrad and have a 775 on the GMAT (100th percentile). I got into LBS MFA with the highest scholarship they offer but rejected from LSE. LSE is a crapshoot because of their selection criteria. They disproportionately prefer Econ/finance undergrads (atleast for Asians) and in the past 3 years they usually admit only 10-15 Indians out of the 400 or so that apply. This acceptance rate is significantly lower than what it is for students from UK/EU (The other part of this is that LSE runs these online distance learning programs for undergrad students and atleast half of the admits from India are from their own courses)

  2. Having a shot at recruiting : Forget about PE/VC lmao. No one's directly recruiting into PE without front-end BB/EB IB experience in the EU. For IB recruiting you'd have a shot good as anyone else in these programs, which isn't pretty high. A quick linkedin search would get you info about where LBS MFA grads have ended up in the last cycle (which is why I won't be taking their offer either) and I imagine it'll only get worse with the increase in class size. 
 

Hey! Thanks for the detailed reply. 

1. I attended one of the top private eng. colleges in bangalore - think RV/PES/MSRIT/BMS. CGPA Between 8.5 and 9. Haven't taken the GRE yet, but from the mocks I have given and after seeing some of the prep material, I am confident that I'll score 330+. I am assuming my work ex in front office IB in Blr, and the deals that I've worked on will make up for any shortcomings in my Uni brand name or in my GRE.
2. Yeah I realise PE is going to be a moonshot. IB will be a safer bet. What do you mean when you say MFA students don't have a high shot at IB recruiting? As per their employment report, 64% of the class of 2025 placed into IB and PE.

Also, is it worth applying/attending HEC Paris, given the EU visa issues and the language barrier? Also, any other advice you can give me? I'd be very grateful.

Thanks

 
  1. Then GPA shouldn't be an issue for you so long as you manage a GRE score higher than 330 (for LBS), but scholarships are going to be hard because we're an overrepresented demographic and GRE scores don't allow you to differentiate yourself unlike GMAT ones. Again, your work ex would impress LBS, that's not an issue; the problem is with recruiting. Recruiters there won't recognise any IB work ex in India that's not from a well-known BB
  2. As for the LBS MFA employment report, I don't know what job functions are categorised under IB for the purpose of their classification. I recommend talking to international students from Asia who're currently enrolled in the program. I talked to 20-25 of them (mostly Asians/Non-Europeans ) and the general sense I got was that most of the East/SE Asians that got front-end IB roles post grad in the last cycle did so in their home countries or the APAC region (China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc). For the Indians I talked to, 2 of them are working in Mumbai, 1 in the Middle East and 3 were in middle/back office grad roles
  3. As for HEC, I'm not sure what the visa issues are. Work visas in the EU aren't a problem, it's the language as you said. Most non-European language speakers that attend HEC's MIF also end up trying to recruit for London or their homes countries again. It can be worth applying to if it ends up being significantly cheaper than LSE/LBS and if you're doing the longer program (2 years+) because the bigger firms in the UK aren't filtering on the basis of whether or not you have the PSW for 18 months post graduation. 
 

LBS is better

There are no "structured career services" like you are used to in India.

You WILL suffer and NOT get a job unless you get a grip, assimilate, and be willing to work hard and network. Just want to make that very clear before you apply under some illusion, somehow get in, and then complain about how difficult it is for Indians (its not).

 

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