2018 guide (obviously based on my experience and from various rankings)
TARGET: Oxbridge, LSE, LBS, IBS
STRONG SEMI: Warwick, UCL
SEMI: Cass, Edinburgh, Bath, Manchester, Durham
Other SEMI: Exeter, Queen Mary, Bristol, Kings, and so on through the Russel Group.
Decent chances to get a FO job but not so much in auge: Royal Holloway, Loughborough etc.
NON
You agree?
IBS? Imperial business school?! Well we now know where you go hahahaha. No way it's the level of LSE and Oxbridge, and above UCL and Warwick. Imperial is only targeted for hard sciences and engineering majors, since these kids are extremely smart. I laugh at IBS whenever I screen resume.
I don't go to Imperial. However, I disagree with what you've said. ICBS has solid placement in London IB and has arguably the hardest MSc Finance course in the country. Anecdotally, a lot of guys I know on the programme got very high grades at good undergrad programmes in economics and mathematics.
For MSc, it is not divided like how OP laid it out. For UK masters, we only look at LBS, LSE, Oxbridge. These are the targets masters. Warwick, UCL, Imperial masters are good, but whenever we see these, we will look at undergrad to see if they did anything interesting at a target. The hardest course, assuming what you said is true, does not equate good placement. Perception of your uni, fair or not, largely determines where you get interviews.
Overall, European masters are much more popular here in the City.
Fair enough on the rankings point. So for full disclosure, ICBS was one of the three MSc choices I considered and I looked into the career placement from it.
According to the careers report, MSc Finance students have placed in BAML, Barclays, Blackstone, BNPP, Citi, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman, HSBC, Lazard, Macquarie, Moelis, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, RBC, Roths, SocGen, StanChart, UBS.
Fair enough, we don't know whether this was for FO and we don't know what % of students placed. But LinkedIn yields similar results.
I ended up going to one of the two other London universities you mentioned - but I still know friends at ICBS doing well. So I wouldn't call ICBS a joke, though saying it isn't at the level of LSE or LBS may be fair.
Lol Royal Holloway
HEC and Bocconi are very strong in London. ESSEC not bad, but obviously they're better in Paris placement. Look at this: https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/218782/the-top-universities-fo…
Or https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/274288/summer-interns-goldman-…
Is quite clear, LSE, Oxbridge, Imperial, Warwick, UCL etc. win
Warwick is a target, and I would rather go there than at Imperial any day.
If your goal is breaking into the City, if I were you I'd apply to Oxbridge, LSE, LBS, Warwick and Imperial in the UK, HEC and Bocconi in Europe. Maybe HSG as well.
Those are my "tier 1" targets.
Then how do you explain the TOTAL ABSENCE of any BB IBD FO employer/position on Warwick's M.Sc. Finance's Career page.
Whereas the Imperial M.Sc. 2018 Brochure lists them all (and even Blackstone & BlackRock).
I don't know man... : It looks like Warwick seems leagues behind Imperial, in that matter.
For those of you who keep coming up with 'Oxbridge':
Cambridge has only one pre-experience Master program in its portfolio: and it's the M. Phil. in Management, which is delivered under the Judge Business School umbrella. No detailed data on employment on the program's page (only company names exhaustively listed, just like on the UCL MiM website);
As for Oxford: the Saïd brand is way weaker than the overall Oxford brand (UG). Plus, the MFE is extremely heavily quant-focused (both curriculum & career placement).
I would never put these specific 'Oxbridge' programs above an LBS (MiM or M.F.A. - both include summer internship) or an LSE (G.M.I.M. (2 years) or M.Sc. Finance (absolute ultra target for UK IBD FO)).
Have some judgement & learn to read public employment data. This is how we were able to filter out the US pre-experience Masters (Duke, Ross, Kellogg, UVA) which, aside from their brandnames, are empty, really.
UK citizen here - completed a UK undergrad and doing a MSc in the UK.
Overall (not just for IB)- Imperial is viewed as more prestigious.
Undergrad for IB - equal. There are a lot of Warwick guys at banks, more so than Imperial. However, Warwick has a larger student population (24K) than Imperial (17K) and more tellingly has a higher number of IB-focused courses (Econ, A+F, Management, Maths) than Imperial does (Maths) at the undergrad level.
Postgrad for IB - Imperial- its business school is better located, facilities are top notch, and whilst ICL is known for medicine / engineering / maths, ICBS is building a very respectable brand for itself. On the other hand, I doubt WBS MSc programmes enjoy the same success as the undergrad courses do. Generally, from people who've applied, I get the feeling that WBS is lower down in the pecking order. I see more ICBS guys in IB but that's not a huge sample size.
As a UK guy, I just think ICL and ICBS have more prestige than Warwick. I'd guess 8 out of 10 students would agree with me. The other 2 would be Warwick guys.