Durham University Undergraduate for IB
How does Durham place for investment banking in London? I'm an international student from Scandinavia currently applying to UK unis and stumbled across Durham today. Common consensus on WSO seems to be that Oxbridge, LSE and UCL are the go to schools for IB. However, I have not seen any mention of Durham. Sadly, I don't qualify for Finance at LSE and I haven't applied to Oxbridge, so considering this, is Durham a good option? I'm currently planning on applying to the following schools.
UCL
Edinburgh
St Andrews
Queen Mary
Durham, Bath or City.
Basically, I'm torn between Finance at Durham or Management at Bath.
I'm more keen on studying finance than management.
Why are you not including imperial / Warwick?
I am aware that they are great schools! However, because of my national curriculum I do not meet their mathmatics requirments. So regardless of my high grades and impressive EC:s I doubt I'll get an offer.
That's a shame, other unis you listed are great and will be able to reach the same opps.
Apply to Management courses at Warwick. In your 2nd year, you tailor your course and it becomes a Finance degree essentially
worth noting that uk schools don't care about ECs but care about SCs
Finance itself isn't great for landing a FO role in BB/EB; it's not terrible mind you but its very cookie cutter and the most important factor in the random process of London recruiting is standing out. STEM backgrounds tend to leverage their degrees for this very well from what I've seen. Finance/economics will be the most represented degree type in banks but many top tier applicants get caught out by randomness - don't feel like you must study management or finance. If you genuinely like them then go for it. Durham is the strongest semi-target school in the UK by placement, practically a low target or whatever. Go there and do the right stuff then you'll be fine. Warwick is generally considered to be slightly stronger, alongside UCL.
Thank you for your insight! My interests are (sadly) within finance/economics which, like you said, seems to be a disadvantage in the UK. However, I am committed to putting in the work to break into the sector (easier said than done ofc) so right now I'm just trying to figure out where I should apply to.
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