Best course from Exeter to break into IB
Hello all,
I'll be starting university next year and was thinking about applying to University of Exeter (I live in Exeter myself, so from a financial stand point, it's the best option for me). I was thinking about applying to BSc Business and Management. Could you tell me how this course would be viewed, given I want to break to IB? Or considering I'm not going to Oxbridge/LSE/Imperial/UCL, would Economics or Finance be better in this case?
Any insights would be appreciated ;)
bump
harder but feasible
i believe economics
Thank you for replying,
In general, do you think that Economics is the best option, considering Exeter is not the top tier uni? Also, wouldn't Finance be the most 'applicable' to IB?
ironically economics degrees do better
Hi, Exeter grad here (class of 2021).
Don’t do Business Management if you want to learn anything about finance and subsequently go into high finance. It’s a joke degree with joke lectures and majority of students not having genuine aspirations to go into high finance/anywhere serious.
I strongly believe that the best degree in the Exeter business school is PPE, and that’s even though I’ve studied Accounting & Finance.
In terms of content learned, you get an in-depth study of economics and Politics and the content is actually extremely interesting. The students are SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting and motivated than in Business Management.
It has honestly been a running joke (which comes from the truth) that if you want to get an easy 1st in a module you take a management module with the Business Management cohort. I have myself done this, and seen how a full class for a Thinking Entrepreneurially module went from 100 people in attendance at the start of the semester to 10 at the end, and yet the vast majority of people got a 1st. The content is largely so theoretically useless that you can blabber on in reports and pretty easily get through them.
Your other choice is Accounting & Finance, but I wouldn’t recommend it purely because I wanted to die in 2nd and 3rd year (1st year is really quite easy) after realising that hardcore in-depth Accounting is really not for me. It’s a very safe path where you will graduate, have a decent job (big 4 at best, small to mid-sized accounting firm at worst) and be set for middle-class life of living in excel spreadsheets. I will say that this sets you up with very solid understanding of Accounting/Management Accounting/Taxation/Corporate Finance, which is a great foundation to have in the world of finance. The question is just whether you can push through years of this. You can also get into finance by going Exeter A&F -> Big 4 audit (3 yrs) -> Big 4 TS (2-3 yrs) -> IB.
In terms of placing straight into IB, you will have a somewhat okay shot coming out of either of these (except for Business Management because you just don’t learn anything useful) if you have the profile for it. I have to say that BB IB is very rare from Exeter, I’ve only seen 1 person and I knew a lot of people from the business school.
So to sum up, I am personally very strongly against BM, PPE is more interesting but less practical (places into IB better than A&F), A&F is the most practical but really depends on if you can live through 3 years of accounting. Oh and btw, don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because it’s Accounting & Finance it’s 50% accounting & 50% finance. In reality it’s about 3:1.
Adding on to this: getting a 1st in PPE/A&F sets you up for target masters (Oxbridge/LSE/LBS), as Exeter is a respected university towards the upper end of RG.
And from there you can absolutely go into IB. I personally know people working at MM firms/currently doing PhDs at some of the above who have done it from Exeter.
Of course you still have to have ECs and be interesting, but it’s possible.
Good insights for student life, but in the end for IB/PE/HF recruiting course doesnt matter at all. No one is getting an interview from Exeter just because they were management vs ppe vs accounting (same with other unis)
Ive done 4+ internships from non target before joining full time and am now actively involved in intern/analyst recruiting. I dont think ive seen anyone even mention peoples courses. Everyone just looks at the uni as a whole (and even that is starting to change, less emphasis on uni and more on experience and diversity)
Could I ask how certain you are as to course not mattering. Simply asking as a lot of recent answers on here seem to suggest the opposite.
No way, I graduated a while ago (old title) and did Thinking Entrepeneurially. Glad to see the module hasn't changed, assuming it's the same old bloke teaching? Haha.
Exeter 2021 grad here - took Business and Management and can completely agree with the above. I took it simply because I didn’t know I wanted to do finance. Business Economics or PPE is a good shout.
I only decided to pursue a career in finance after 2nd year and took as much finance electives as I could, i.e., asset pricing, futures and options, financial modeling, and etc. Even though they weren’t really offered to the BSc Business Management cohort - i had to email the course administrators and ask them with the appeal of achieving first class for all of the statistics and accounting classes.
I have an offer for bsc finance at exeter, is it any good ? are the placements good ? idk which is the best pathway between data science and investment banking.
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