Ivey HBA or LSE Undergrad

Which would be better for MBB/T2? Due a to a certain time and conflict related situations I can only apply to one of the two and I have been thinking, which one would be better as an international from India? I dont have much preference for the location because both Canada and the UK are amazing places and the US is amazing as well if I can get there

Right now the set up is:-

Pros for Ivey HBA-
1) No. 1 program in Canada cannot be matched by any other maybe Queens is comparable but the edge is always towards Ivey, unlike LSE which is always seen as second to Oxbridge in MBB
2) Canadian Visa might be a tad bit easier for internationals.
3) The post grad comp is not much lower than the US for a host of jobs, and is actually decemt
4) Heard its a competitive environment but kinda party school-ish as well and thats what I was kinda looking for.
5) The case study method is amazingly practical and efficient and I personally prefer it over pure academics.
6) Much lower COL than LSE
7) Really Really Career focussed curriculum.

Pros for LSE-
1) Opportunities in London are unmatched by London (the ontario one).
2) City life is bustling so there is something to do everyday.
3) Fees can be lowered with USS (undergraduate support scheme)
4) Visa might get easier comparitively after Brexit for non EU people
5) Even with less than half the comp as NYC, the overall opportunities for my career are amazing.
6) Much more known worldwide so if I had to come back to my homeland, getting a job wouldn't be the hardest with an LSE degree
7) Shorter program overall so overall less fees charged.

Note: I am open to do any PE or any other non-IB finance/consulting jobs. Also CorpFin for F500 is also there, and a host of other careers in Data Science as well, but the priority will be on MBB as of now, I just cannot do IB 100 h/weeks I'm sorry
😔

 
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lmao they arent even in the same league, lse would place well and have recognition anywhere in europe, asia-pacific, north america (probably edges out a shit-tier school in canada in terms of brand recognition alone) and pretty much any developed and emerging market in the world.

if you're 100% sure you want to work in canada, ivey may marginally benefit you for mbb, but lse absolutely mauls any canadian schools for anything outside of mbb in canada. 

 

LSE wouldn’t help at all with landing IB/MBB in the US out of undergrad. Recruiting works through OCR and networking in the states which requires being physically there for the former and the latter will eventually run into the wall of “hey kid why the fuck aren’t you applying to London instead?”. Recruiting is p structured, you go to the region you school in a lot of the time unless you have citizenship elsewhere. I’m fairly certain the Canadian schools have OCR and better links to sending kids to the states out of undergrad than any UK school does. Even from Oxbridge, people don’t apply to NYC and get it, it just doesn’t make any logical sense for a bank to pick them up. Post undergrad the school is pretty irrelevant as experience/firm name is more important however in Asia this isn’t as true and LSE would be a good bet.

To OP, pick the school/culture you think you will like the most, both are targets in their countries and it really does depend on where abouts you want to work and settle down. In terms of recruiting, LSE will give you great odds for the London scene but OCR/resume pushing does not exist here, nor do referrals (generally speaking) for BBs and EBs. Therefore it’s really random and a lot is staked on performance on online numerical and verbal tests you must do for pretty much every bank. NA, I believe, doesn’t do this and the power of a target for OCR and networking can eliminate the randomness in recruiting. Most kids from LSE will land nothing, and a good amount of them will have been top talent who should have but got dinged by the randomness of London recruiting.

 

if this guys from india, nobody would ask him why hes gunning for us roles as opposed to uk ones, everybody knows why and people switch between offices all the time

the brand name of lse will help you with networking to the extent that ocr is practically moot, especially for us roles, maybe not as much for canadian roles

the most important point that nobody ever talks about enough is that you will always have a soft ceiling in your career if you attend a school outside of hypsm/oxbridge, especially in buy side, even if you get a mba from a more "prestigious" school. now lse isnt hypsm/oxbridge, but its a hell of a lot closer than ivey

 

Wait I’m just genuinely curious, how is it that London banks recruit? By giving interviews to the folks that do best on online math/verbal tests?!? If that were the case (which I believe you) wouldn’t it be that many more folks outside of Oxbridge/LSE/UCL/imperial/Warwick etc. get into banking jobs?

I just don’t get the no OCR/resume part of this. Like Goldman doesn’t give presentations and meet kids on LSE/Oxford campus etc.? And there’s no human who chooses resumes and looks at what school you went to?

 

Wait I’m just genuinely curious, how is it that London banks recruit? By giving interviews to the folks that do best on online math/verbal tests?!? If that were the case (which I believe you) wouldn’t it be that many more folks outside of Oxbridge/LSE/UCL/imperial/Warwick etc. get into banking jobs?

I just don’t get the no OCR/resume part of this. Like Goldman doesn’t give presentations and meet kids on LSE/Oxford campus etc.? And there’s no human who chooses resumes and looks at what school you went to?

 

Wait I’m just genuinely curious, how is it that London banks recruit? By giving interviews to the folks that do best on online math/verbal tests?!? If that were the case (which I believe you) wouldn’t it be that many more folks outside of Oxbridge/LSE/UCL/imperial/Warwick etc. get into banking jobs?

I just don’t get the no OCR/resume part of this. Like Goldman doesn’t give presentations and meet kids on LSE/Oxford campus etc.? And there’s no human who chooses resumes and looks at what school you went to?

 

You’re getting MS because you’re wrong buddy. I don’t know where in the world you work but if you spent time at solid banks in NYC you would see that Ivey is way overrepresented in a lot of the top banking groups streetwide. I didn’t know who the fuck they were before 3 of them were in my FT analyst class in GS FIG. There were some in TMT and other groups as well.

Ivey does not have a global brand name no. Not even close. But within the walls of US finance it’s good enough to get you a plum job, and after that, your work experience matters more than your school ever did. You are not getting an NYC gig out of LSE out of undergrad, you’re just not. Look around, browse on LinkedIn. Do you see any of that shit happening? No.

You’re clearly not US based because if you were you’d realize how ridiculous you sound.

And for the record since you seem to think it’s a status thing, I’m on the buyside

 

You’re getting MS because you’re wrong buddy. I don’t know where in the world you work but if you spent time at solid banks in NYC you would see that Ivey is way overrepresented in a lot of the top banking groups streetwide. I didn’t know who the fuck they were before 3 of them were in my FT analyst class in GS FIG. There were some in TMT and other groups as well.

Ivey does not have a global brand name no. Not even close. But within the walls of US finance it’s good enough to get you a plum job, and after that, your work experience matters more than your school ever did. You are not getting an NYC gig out of LSE out of undergrad, you’re just not. Look around, browse on LinkedIn. Do you see any of that shit happening? No.

You’re clearly not US based because if you were you’d realize how ridiculous you sound.

And for the record since you seem to think it’s a status thing, I’m on the buyside

 

You’re getting MS because you’re wrong buddy. I don’t know where in the world you work but if you spent time at solid banks in NYC you would see that Ivey is way overrepresented in a lot of the top banking groups streetwide. I didn’t know who the fuck they were before 3 of them were in my FT analyst class in GS FIG. There were some in TMT and other groups as well.

Ivey does not have a global brand name no. Not even close. But within the walls of US finance it’s good enough to get you a plum job, and after that, your work experience matters more than your school ever did. You are not getting an NYC gig out of LSE out of undergrad, you’re just not. Look around, browse on LinkedIn. Do you see any of that shit happening? No.

You’re clearly not US based because if you were you’d realize how ridiculous you sound. If you ARE US based then that’s pathetic.

And for the record since you seem to think it’s a status thing, I’m on the buyside

 

1 - even if you knew nothing, some quick napkin math and linkedin searches would show you that lse literally has 20x the presence in ibd/pe/vc/er/am or whatever career path this kids aiming for, despite having an undergraduate enrollment little over 2x the ivey business school. 
 

2 - less people from lse want to go to nyc as opposed to from ivey, because there's way less opportunities in toronto. this isnt the case in london, because believe it or not people don't see a material difference between london and new york in terms of opportunities nor prestige

3 - lse has a wharton-like dominance in the uk, with the additional benefit of placing much better in asia-pacific and developing regions who tend to favor european schools.

4 - i cannot understand the importance of the soft ceiling that you'll encounter in buyside if you went to a school with no layman's prestige. nobody cares how good you are at your job when they can strut some kid from whyp/oxbridge out in front of clients instead of one from a top ~200 global university. lse is known and renowned by practically every country in the world

 

+ i just remembered ivey has a retarded and convoluted 2+2 system where they kick out kids who don't have a 80%+ gpa. if you filtered out everybody at lse who has below a 80%, than lse has 20x the alumni network alone with an undergrad enrollment (of everyone with a gpa above 80%) thats 2/3 the size of ivey

 
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You really write stuff like you are so certain on it. To start it is modeled on a HBS style system where the actual Ivey degree is 2 years and case based classes. The way AEO works is you are guaranteed a spot into Ivey as long you stay on path, so its not 1/3 of class gets kicked out, its Ivey kids do classes with general undergrad and if they struggle in them miss entry into Ivey. Also Ivey takes a certain portion of student transfers from other schools/non-AEO. Next, face facts Ivey is the pool of a high % of top students in Canada they have a very strong alumni presence. Ofcourse any UK target will have more alumni than top Canadian schools the population is way bigger. I know Canadians who are in law/med/finance who are in roles worldwide competing with top UK/US students.  To say the top % of finance students from a 1st world nation have no chance is beyond ridiculous. Plus I know at least 3 people who got into LSE, its much easier for Canucks to get into LSE than any top US target. Not every at Ivey or LSE is going to make BX NYC lets be real neither is Wharton and neither has the prescence of any top US target.

As mentioned OP both will get you where you want to one has a massive edge in EU. Other possibly easier to connect with people in NYC and shorter flight. Neither is Wharton. First step would be to see if you can even get accepted to both.

 

Again - if you want to go work in the UNITED STATES AFTER GRADUATING Ivey is the HANDS DOWN WINNER. Go look at your LinkedIn searches and see what's up. 

You must be in london if you think there's no material difference between london and new york in terms of opportunities, and pay, and therefore prestige. You're in PE so help me do some quick math. What's the AUM of the PE industry in the United States? Now what's the AUM of the PE Industry in all of Europe? How large are the total capital markets in the US? and now how large are they in all of Europe? Now compare the United States to the rest of the entire world combined. The answer is still MULTIPLES larger. So hopefully you can follow that More AUM = More Comp = More Jobs. Now does that mean NYC has more prestige? I'll let you be the judge. 

Look at the buyside exits of Ivey kids who do their banking stints at top BBs/EBs. They're pretty fucking good. A kid in my analyst class left to go to Maverick 7 MONTHS after banking. The soft ceiling you speak of doesn't exist after 4+ years of experience and in NYC. You think LPs are impressed by a kid from whyp/oxbridge being "whipped out" in front of them? Do you think "kids" even get put in front of LPs to begin with lol? You think THAT is what is driving LPs capital allocation decision making? 

 

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