Chances at Ivey HBA?

Hello WSO.

I have just finished my first year at university and I am considering transferring to Ivey to increase my chances at breaking into Bay St in Toronto as an Analyst/Associate. I just wanted some honest review on my chances at getting into Ivey HBA (Non AEO) at UWO and what I can do to improve my chances, a little bit about me:

-Computer Science and Math double major at Non-target Canadian, 80% CGPA, 83% major average (Committed to improving this average this year, stupid useless humanities courses screwed me). I've also taken no 'bird courses', does Ivey care about the course load and take that into consideration?

-Weak EC's. However I am looking to do a lot in my second year including some intermural basketball, analyst for student run investment group, and hopefully more (I'm on the volunteers list at school so any opportunity that comes by, I'm willing to do, plus I've already started emailing/calling volunteer positions at school and in my local community)

As far as my future goes, if Ivey doesn't workout second year, I plan on applying third year with hopefully a better average + better EC's. If that doesn't work out then my last good chance at breaking into banking is to go for a top MBA program.

Does anyone have any thoughts on my chances at ivey, back up plans or any helpful comments related to the banking scene in Canada?

Thanks for reading.

 
Best Response

What do you want to do on Bay St? Presumably as a comp sci / math double major you are at waterloo? If this is the case this is likely sufficient for S&T (at least from an academic perspective).

If you want to do IBD, Ivey, Queens or McGill are your best bets, but if you already have done a year I suppose Ivey is the best option. I graduated HBA a few years ago, and (at least when I applied) no consideration was given to course load as they only review your last 10 credits (i.e. 2 full years). Transferring in from Western, they expect 80%+ on an application, but the average for acceptances is a couple percent higher (they state this number in the annual report - i want to say 83%).

Grades are just a small part of it though - somewhat like a cover letter, they expect it be at a certain level and your application and ECs do the rest. Make sure you get spruce up your ECs if you want to be competitive - this could kill you.

If you don't get in, its not the end of the world. I know plenty of people in IBD (though not too many at BBs) that have come from Laurier, Concordia, Waterloo, etc.

 

Thanks for the reply. I am just trying to break into a FO role on Bay st hopefully for one of the Big Five in Canada, I am just more interested in the analyst/associate positions (because I've researched them more) but ultimately open to all positions. Unfortunately, I do not attend Waterloo. I've been reading a lot on this site that CompSci/Math is compatible with S&T, so I will look further into this.

I just have two questions for you: 1) How likely is it to break into S&T in Canada with a non target besides Waterloo? 2) Any tips on what sort of EC's I should be going for? They keep mentioning "leadership" but a lot of the exec positions for clubs at my school are given to 3rd year/fourth year students. I figured I should do long term volunteering commitments that have some quality to them rather than 300 short term volunteer commitments.

 

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