What Masters to do?
Hey guys!
I am a year 13 student in the UK looking for a future career in IB or something related.
I am planning studying Philosophy at University (applied for LSE, UCL, Durham, St. Andrews), and I was wondering what Masters degree is most sought out for IB after my Philosophy degree. What is the standard route to IB through a Masters degree?
Apologies for my naivety in advance, looking to learn!
You can apply to IB straight from your philosophy degree. No need for a masters
Agreed with the above, you don’t need a masters. Though for info, LSE MSc Finance and the one year masters from LBS both very solid at sending people to IB
are they quantitative in nature or more qualitative?
compulsory modules aren’t super quantitative, like someone said below (probability, statistics, econometrics, basic algebra)
Hey, there's no need to do a Masters to break into finance. The only time you should consider it is if you failed to break in from your undergrad. By the way, those are all solid universities to break into IB from, except for maybe St Andrews. It's a good university, don't get me wrong, I just haven't seen anyone in banking from there. Loads of Durham kids though on my internship. Something to consider.
Masters in Finance at LSE looks quantitative (they say that they want people with quantitative backgrounds for the programme). Just from own knowledge I would expect that to include knowledge of calculus, probability and statistics, very basic econometrics... But again, this isn't something to worry about because you can break into IB from undergrad.
IB considers people from a diverse range of undergraduate degrees. On my internship we even had a Music student. So you should be fine with Philosophy, as long as you can really perfect your story of "why IB". You might be asked why you want to do IB with a philosophy degree, so be prepared for an answer for that too. During my interviews, I was asked why I wanted to do it with an economics degree, because in reality, IB is not really like anything you learn in academics.
Completely agree on St Andrews front. Great uni, really well ranked compared to the others, which is why I went there. But my god was it harder to break into banking. I didn’t apply to the other unis mentioned because I assumed they’re about the same calibre, but I regretted that come application time where St Andrews was treated as semi target at best. Not impossible, as I broke in, but if your end goal is definitely banking, probs go to the likes of Imperial, LSE etc..
Even with previous front office internship experience at a top firm? LSE is so expensive (near unaffordable) compared to St Andrews
also, after or during master's, should you apply for internships or graduate programmes? for sales and trading. no previous experience in ST but in AM
No need for a master. Get good grades in your bachelor, save yourself some money and time!
Given in the UK your degree is less important to break into IB, may want to consider combining your philosophy major with a variety of finance, macro econ and python programming for some foundational knowledge. Look at the courses here at WSO for some basic training also in modeling, excel, etc...
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