spring weeks and internships

[notgoingtoplan24]

is it harder to get a spring week or internship in banking/finance/consulting if you have a non- finance degree but from a top uni like Imperial, LSE etc so if for example you are doing a social science degree rather than STEM or engineering. has anyone's child successfully got one in these circumstances?

My DD got a consultancy early experience after studying social science at a mid tier uni for a year. She has maths at equivalent to A level and 2 other STEM subjects to AS level plus did a maths module as an outside subject in 1st year at uni (Scottish degree). I will ask her about others - what they studied and where (if she knows).

She ruled consultancy out after the experience (and had ruled banking/finance out after last year of school work experience) so applied elsewhere for penultimate year internships.

@notgoingtoplan24 Oxbridge don’t do “finance” degrees. So I think anyone can get them, but students have to
pass the selection tests. So I would evaluate what skills are needed and see if any areas of the application were a challenge. What could be improved upon? Just the degree isn’t the sole criteria for selection. I don’t think any uni student is ruled in or ruled out. These companies take a wide range of degrees because they want a variety of skills and attributes. I would just advise to keep going for summer internships.

Imperial STEMists do well for finance careers.

So do people doing the more qualitative LSE degrees.

when you say qualitative degrees at LSE what do you mean please?

Sociology, history, social anthropology, law

It depends what you mean by "Non-finance degree". My ds does statistical science at UCL. Is that a "non-finance degree"? What about maths? Or economics? Or computer science? All I would say is that most internships that I have seen seem to ask for specific skills, not "any degree". Inevitably, the ones that don't need specific skills will be more oversubscribed.

DD said mainly STEM and economics/ management/ finance (even a medic!) at her 1st year consultancy "experience' which was online because of coviid (and had more places). Not sure of everyone's uni but definitely Oxbridge (they always let you know according to DD), London unis, Warwick, Bristol and some (token) regional including her.

My middle one works for a US company who although they say no specific degree for the role he does, they weight certain degrees higher in their initial selection algorithm.

DD said consultancy super competitive but I guess you know that. She doubts she would have got an internship in later years.

My one with the most general degree is my smartest (and went to the highest rated uni of my 3) but found it harder than my other 2 who studied subjects related to career of interest. Much less he could apply for.

Thanks. That's good insight

In the Autumn term just past, my DS (penultimate year, statistical science UCL) made a list of at least 70 internships that asked for his skillset and which he found interesting before he stopped logging them. It would have been a lot more if he'd been interested in investment banking, but he wasn't - he was looking at data science, quantitative analysis, actuarial, but not in the investment banking sector. He applied for about 12 of them before he was offered a face-to-face interview with one, which then offered him the role, and he was happy with that, so stopped looking.

In general, there's lots of demand for numerical skills, and computing.