McGill Desautels Faculty of Management VS Rotterdam School of Management
I am torn apart between McGill Desautels Faculty of Management, Canada(Bcom) VS Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands(IBA) Undergrad for a career in Finance. I am from Singapore.
Tuition Fee for McGill is significantly higher than RSM.
I would like to know what the best choice would be for me to be able to work in New York/London preferably for Investment Banking or Finance. Which has the best international reputation, better career prospects to land a killer first job and best choice in the long run.
(lets assume my grades are good)
Thanks in advance for your input.
Hey,
If you're goal is London/NYC, I would go with Rotterdam. McGill is a good school with solid reputation, better than Rotterdam I'd say. However, it would be an uphill battle to recruit to New York. McGillicans get recruited to New York for IBD but it is far more common to land a position in Toronto.
Rotterdam sends kids to London and it might be relatively more easier to land a position in London from Rotterdam than to end up in New York from Mcgill.
Also, you have to think about the Visa issue, I have understood that getting a Visa in the states is a major issue even for selected candidates whereas it should be relatively easier to get a Visa for UK.
At the end of the day you should also consider if you want to live in Europe or North-America. Banking in Toronto is not a bad fall-back option and getting a Canadian Visa is not an issue after completing a degree there. From Toronto you can also lateral to the States and Montreal is a ton of fun as a student.
Thanks alot for your opinion! :)
The reason I am slightly reluctant towards RSM is because I cannot major in finance. Its more of a general business degree whereas in McGill I can major and I think that finance is the strongest in McGill Bcom. For a career in Finance, majoring in Finance will be a great advantage.
McGill gradutes also have a higher starting salary than RSM graduates.
I thought that because of McGill's stellar reputation worldwide (due to its med and law prgms) it will put me to an advantage, on the other hand I am not sure how popular is RSM with employers.
And as for Visa in the States, as a Singaporean it is quite easy for me to get a work Visa due to FTA (unique to Chile and Singapore)
Im leaning toward McGill, the only thing holding is back me that McGill will cost me a whopping US$150,000 whereas RSM would only cost me US$75,000. But if I think it'll benefit me in the long run I wouldn't mind paying that amount.
Desautels has significant grade deflation due to their grade curving system. Average GPA is 3.0 in the faculty and a 3.7 gets you in to the top 15% of your class. 3.9s, 4.0s are extremely rare , professors grade hard as hell which is partly where the school's reputation comes from. Yes McGill is known as being international and has a reputation for being a good school. HOWEVER, what they don't tell you is how hard of a school it really is and its reputation as having deflation. Kids who were top of class in high school come in and often fall in the average.
Consider Ivey or Queen's.
I see a lot of people from IBA at RSM secure a jobs in consulting and banking. For London though, definitely after studying in the Netherlands, it is custom to obtain an Msc where you usually specialize and for you that would probably be finance. I have to note though, that most of the kids I see on linkedin coming from Rsm are very high performers gpa wise and obviously have the complete package (good extra curricular activities and high GPA). If you were to chose RSM and do relatively well, even striking out on internships would not be the biggest disaster as you could probably get a good 1 year masters degree at a stronger EU target like HEC, ESADE and obviously LSE/oxbridge. Take into account that I have heard that the IBA grading scale is quite tough.
Thanks iloveburritos! Thats what i plan on doing if i were to choose RSM. Do Msc in a higher tier European school. But just for reference, which school is in par with RSM? (one from UK and one from US)
In Singapore McGill is extremely popular whereas RSM isnt quite, that might put me to a disadvantage infront of employers. I dont know the case in US, but according to posts online and to this thread I know that RSM is known in the US however is it known better than McGill?
As a McGill student, I can confirm what Sophtrading123 said. However, it is not by all means impossible to get good grades. It's actually quite achievable.I believe that I suffered a bit from the deflation due to the curve policy, but it also has helped me in other circumstances. I probably feel like I deserve 0.1 higher than I currently am at, and among my circle of friends, nobody really complains about it. But for the most part, people feel like they get the grade they deserved. Very rarely do professors have to curve down 6-7%. If the class average going into the final is 80%, you're going to have to expect an extremely tough final, and generally the average will drop down to the acceptable range, with professors making 2-3% adjustments when necessary.
In terms of pure banking, Desautels seems better than Rotman from an impartial point of view in terms of foreign recruiting. There's an article on the internet that you can find on Google called "Battle of the Undergrads", whereby Canadian Universities are broken down with their recruitment potential. Queens & Ivey place the best as stated above, with McGill third (In terms of Canadian banks). However, McGill is the clear front runner in terms of foreign recruitment.
I know for a fact that there are a few students that have BB Internships in London this summer, and most others have it in New York. Most of them are in the Honors in Investment Management Program (~12 students per graduating class) which manage a ~3m AUM fund and get very good contacts in regards to recruiting. However, other non-HIM students are equally capable of getting jobs, it just necessitates more work. The HIM program itself is quite hard to get in. You are initially screened out from ~80 applicants depending on your GPA/Resume/Cover Letter. Around ~30 candidates are interviewed by the program director and approximately 12 make the cut. I personally didn't make it, assuming it was due to my weaker GPA (I personally believe that this is the most important part of the application). One of my colleagues was the last person to get an interview and was a 3.68 with a very strong CV and great connections with people already inside of the program. So if you believe you can get a good GPA, this program could be extremely interesting for you. I know one poster on this forums who is in the program, so if you have more specific questions, maybe you could ask him
Best of luck!
Also, about 50% of Desautels' entering students come from the international each year, which means faster adaptation for you, more diverse networking opportunities, etc. Montreal is a great city for students and is extremely cosmopolitan. Pretty sure students at McGill land internships and jobs in Europe, Canada and the US relatively often (depending on where they're from). Can't comment on RSM, but from LinkedIn you can see a bunch of students from McGill/Ivey/Queens land "killer first jobs" as you put it.
If your main focus is reputation, as you probably know, McGill ranks dozens of spots ahead of Erasmus everywhere, and has a larger presence internationally. If you're aiming for the US you might want to consider getting geographically closer and go to Canada.
You mention doing an MSc if you go to Europe, did you count that in your costs? If you go to LSE or the like and pay 50K+, just know that Master's degrees are not that popular in Canada/US, and you would probably just skip higher education altogether for a few years at least.
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