How important is major in the UK?
Pretty short question--how much does course (Philosophy) matter at a school like UCL if I'm trying to break into London IB?
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not that important
id probably give a phone screen to a UCL philosophy major before i offer one to the QM / City Business Studies / Accounting & Finance person.
Longer answer to your short question:
Great post I wish there was more UK specific advice like this instead of Americans extrapolating their experience and applying it to the UK
I think the target thing is very important. Even Oxbridge STEM/Econ is no guarantee of BB FO, and some people will even miss out on MM FO. It's a completely different game to going to HYPSW. You can look at the careers stats for these schools.
Oxford: 7% "Banking and Investment" (further 4% in Accounting, Insurance and Financial Services)
LSE: 22% "Financial and Insurance Activities" (15% FO was an educated, probably overly optimistic guess) - how many people are trying to break into finance form LSE? Half?
Imperial: 13% "Banking and Financial" (further 3% in Accountancy and another 5-10% in "Other Business Related Activities", which probably includes some of the insurance sector covered by LSE's category)
UCL: 8% "Accounting and Financial Services"
Warwick don't disclose the information to the public (need a staff log-in) and the way Cambridge classifies things is not really comparable to the other four targets.
It's not like that many people are going into high-powered law/consultancy/engineering/tech jobs instead. Across all four of these universities with comprehensive data available, it looks like maybe 25-50% of people "make it" in terms of their first graduate jobs. There's also the salary gap between America and the UK. Highest average starting salary is Imperial at £37000, bumped up by the lack of soft subjects. No other university in the country is above £32000. Imperial's starting salary is about average for all US college grads, and two-thirds of comparable US STEM-focused schools (CMU, MIT, Berkeley, etc.). Everywhere else in the UK is well below the US median.
It will help you stand out among a sea of STEM/finance/econ applicants which can work to your advantage. Most of the econ/finance students have very similar profiles to each other which is why many of them face problems during the application season (they end up all looking alike on paper).
As long as you can talk about finance knowledgeably it's not a huge issue at all.
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