hi all I am considering taking an MBA to break into IB from an industry Job. my questions are: (i) LBS or INSEAD? (ii) are there real chances to break into IB from industry with an MBA ? (iii) is it worth it economic wise? (iv) Min GMAT needed?
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1) Both are the 2 best programs for London BB IB, but note that Associate recruiting in Europe from MBAs has been decreasing and quite a few BBs have closed their MBA programs, whilst the others hire 10 or so. So I would also consider MBAs in the US, recruit for NYC where it seems much easier to get in, and lateral to London after a year. 2) Real chances are hard to tell for now, what is your current job/past work experience? From my personal observation, most people at BBs that were recruited at the Associate level for the London office were in most cases in finance already (S&t, ER) or a good chunk did consulting before their MBA. But I don’t think that a BB would be opposed to adding an O&G engineer to their NatRes team. 3) It can be worth it from an economic perspective if you stay for quite a few years or stay in finance, but say if you do 1 year of IB as an associate, and then go create your startup its not. 4) Min GMAT - would argue 700 or above, but below 700 you’ll already have a hard time making it into either MBAs I think (or at least for their Masters)
thanks for the reply and the insights. to the first point my experience is 4 years working in business dev (1 year startups in Middle East, 3 years industrial automotive in Europe, 1 year luxury). Would you say doing an MBA at LBS and aiming at doing the exchange in NY could be an option or to get recruited into the US you would need do be the entire master in the US? I am thinking that US schools are much more expensive vs INSEAD or LBS and are a 2yrs program. Based on my experience would you change your suggestions/ comments? thanks for the replies
The exchange will still not allow you to recruit for the US, so doing a masters in the US to recruit there.
This is just my anecdotal observation. May or may not be true idk, but that was just the majority if not all the profiles of people I’ve met.
INSEAD alum here - anecdotally I think placement at LBS is better than at INSEAD all else being equal (should be easy to get the stats, I think both schools will release placement info). INSEAD's reputation is a as a consulting school, not a finance school. There is also a a networking benefit to being in London vs in the middle of the French forest.
One counter-point is INSEAD allows you to recruit for roles globally if you want to shoot for an NY role (but not sure of placement).
thank you so much for the info. I tend to mistrust the stats published about the schools, especially about career and salary post graduation, as when I did my masters at a top 10 ft ranking masters in management few years back I found it to be far away from the truth. nevertheless thank you so much for the experience, you would however suggested INSEAD for someone with the main aim of getting into consulting MBB? is their “finance track”/“IB track” not up to the reputation or its more of a matter of networking/ placement by career office/ reputation of the school in IB ?
I am a LBS grad and I know tons of ppl that went to INSEAD. Frankly, I think the real differentiation between the 2 schools when it comes to IB recruiting is the INSEAD program structure. At the associate level, heavy networking (ie. 5-10 coffee chats per bank) is absolutely expected and it really drives interviews spots (along with pre-MBA experience, M&A / finance preferred). Assuming that you do the Jan intake (Sep intake doesn't make sense unless you are sponsored), formal summer recruiting will start just as you are starting school giving you no time to network. Of course you can network ahead of time, but you'd have to take time off work, fly to London, etc. It's not ideal. Not to mention that interviews tend to be much more technical so having time to practice with career service / fellow students is also valuable. MBB doesn't care about networking, they want you to ace you cases.
the % of students graduating with a job stat definitely gets fudged but INSEAD also discloses the number of students joining each major firm by name so you can look at the raw numbers for each bank and see the real placement figures. It should be pretty accurate vs consulting where the numbers are inflated due to sponsors rejoining their old firms.
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