Banking Career: Economics or Business - where??

[isthisweatherforreal]

DD is looking to have predicted grades of A/A/A - A*/A/A in Maths/History/Physics, also an EPQ.

She's keen on working in banking, possibly investment banking.

What would be the best course at uni for that type of path? Economics? If so where are the best/top ranked courses (I know she will apply for some aspirational as well as 'bankers'). Read different on different websites so some real insight would be great.

If she doesn't make her predictions and they end up being A/A/B, she may look at Business or Business / Finance or similar. Where would be best for that?

Thanks.

Is she studying Further Maths as the top economics courses are very maths based, ie it helps if you are a natural mathematician?

Def try to find a course with a placement year as although these are hard to find they seem to now be the gateway to graduate roles

A better gateway is internships. Hugely competitive of course.

Economics is hugely competitive at the best unis. Without FM this could be difficult. Investment banking is also hugely competitive. She should have a plan B.

DD has a friend who is an investment banker. Did PPE at Oxford. Works ludicrously hard at his job. Obviously highly paid but they don’t take “ordinary”
people. Business is not a great degree for the top jobs. Nor finance. They can, and do, recruit the brightest of the bright. The recruits are recruited globally too.

Im not really sure what to advise regarding course because it might limit her without FM.

Yeh agree with others, the top econ courses usually expect/advise/assume FM. They may not require it - but that's bc some sixth forms don't offer it - but the majority studying econ at LSE or UCL will have it. Edited to add: does your DD's sixth form offer it? If yes, why did she not take it?

Also yy econ is very very competitive just now.

Agree with @TizerorFizz that a business degree, while a perfectly good subject, is less likely to lead to a top investment banking job. Is there any possibility of an internship or degree apprenticeship?

Thanks all.

Her sixth form do offer FM but really only the true maths geeks choose that. She's at a very academic school and although she passed the 11+ beforehand with good scores (especially maths) and was always comfortably on track for 9 for maths, she's not a maths genius. A silver in maths challenges rather than a gold, if that helps.

She's not aspiring for Oxbridge.

I know there are courses that don't ask for FM, e.g. Bristol/Bath/Exeter.

Good point re year in industry; believe she'd already had that down as part of the plan.

Degree apprenticeships are super competitive and I think she'd rather (lucky her!) have an opportunity to enjoy life as a student!! ;)

I think when DC say they want to work in IB, it's good to get them to think about what they actually mean, i.e. do they want to work specifically as Investment Bankers (Advising companies on M&A, Stock/Bond Issues etc) or do they mean they want to work in an Investment Bank.

If the former, then as PP have said, an extremely competitive area to gain a role in.

If the latter, then there's a myriad of roles/functions they can consider, from the highly competitive Front Office (eg Sales, Trading, IB, Wealth Management, Corp Finance), through the Middle Office (eg Risk Management, Compliance, Treasury, Product Control), into the Back Office (e.g. Technology, HR, Finance/Accounting, Trade Operations).

Middle/Back Office won't pay the megabucks of Front Office, but will still provide good remuneration - they'll also still be competitive to enter, but less so than Front Office - you'll see plenty of people with Business or Finance degrees in these functions.

To add - a common route into middle office roles is to go the accountancy route post university and then move into the banking sector 2/3 years in, once you're part/fully qualified

@lastdayatschool I think she's generally keen to be in any role, not necessarily the big M&A advisory roles. Useful insight, thanks.

I used to work in banking. Economics degree is one of the most common degrees and a good one to have. Maths PhDs and physics PhDs were also quite common for the maths based jobs where I worked. A lot were international backgrounds and degrees from abroad, maybe 80%, and many of these were also fluent in multiple languages on top of their degree /PhD which was generally in subjects like economics. Accountancy qualifications were common and an excellent route in. The grad schemes are incredibly competitive but you can get in via accountancy first or retail bank then move over if you are successful and work very hard or take a non grad scheme job and once in can apply for other roles. Universities varied, most common were international and these people didn't seem like they'd been to the local state school, within UK universities the ones I came across most were Cambridge, Oxford, LSE and the Scottish universities such as Edinburgh but several different Scottish ones. Probably varies by company though.

I would maybe go for Bristol, Bath, Exeter and a couple of Scottish, maybe Edinburgh and one other but Scottish will be 4 years. My daughter has similar A levels with 3 A stars predicted and 4 applications for economics and offered Oxford, Bath, Bristol and gone for Oxford firm, Bath insurance. I would avoid any very maths based courses but otherwise think she will get offers, maybe not all 5 but you don't need 5. DD also added universities late after heard Oxford offer. I never came across anyone with a placement degree but maybe other firms have them. It can be long hours in a lot of roles, high pressure and you need to be a person who can stand up for themselves or change quickly if not.

Have a look on google at some of the places where she might like to work and search the name of the institution plus linkedin plus whatever the job title is for the newly hired people and see what they did and where they went. The websites of the investment banks probably set out their graduate schemes too. They are all very competitive and my children's friends who went into this did a lot of work at university on applications for internships and that kind of thing. Eg my sons who went to Bristol (and my twins qualified as solicitors this year by the way) had a friend who got an investment banking internship in a university holiday and I remember the huge celebration as just getting that was so difficult which is not surprising as the higher the pay of jobs the harder it is to get into them.

Good luck. Bristol (where 3 of my children went ) sounds like a good choice as one of the options.

@Penguinsa Thank you, very helpful indeed! Out of interest, did your daughter do FM as well; assume so as lots of MN responders say it's crucial for the very top courses. Did she go to state or indie (my daughter is at a private which I know means it will be even more competitive).

Incidentally, the top jobs (which do perhaps sound out of reach) in banking, are they still primarily held by males?

I've worked in investment banking for almost 30 years. I started out with international baccalaureate focused on maths, economics and French and took the equivalent of this route in. https://www.goldmansachs.com/careers/students/programs/emea/degree-apprentices.html

I worked around 15 years in front office sales roles, and then post baby moved (not really through choice) into risk management which has better working hours.

The top roles are still very male dominated. Around 15% women at director level and above. Front office hours in particular can and will be brutal so difficult to juggle a family unless you have a stay at home partner, paid childcare just doesn't bridge that gap ime.

Having said that, I would recommend the career. I've had amazing opportunities, to travel and make significantly more money than I would've in almost any other career but it is not an easy path.

At dc private school, economics applications seemed very competitive. Bath,Bristol,Exeter seemed okay, but almost everyone with 3a* and below were rejected for straight economics at edinburgh, st andrews, durham and also leeds (which are less mathematical than lse etc.). This was a year ago so might have changed but worth bearing in mind, applying to joint courses at these unis might be a safer bet as less competitive.

Scotttish unis just don’t have the space for many English/welsh/NI students. They take Scottish who are deprived or international! They need the money. Law is similar.

@13572user That IS very competitive. 3 x A*s!!

For Edinburgh and St Andrews you can apply for a less competative joint honours and can usually switch after second year, because of the four year system, might be worth researching.

Didn't have FM and as long as you avoid the heavily maths based like LSE, Warwick, Cambridge etc we didn't find it an issue at all. For Oxford it's a joint course and just needs A level maths, about 40% have FM but they don't give any preference for a 4th A level or FM unless exactly equal to another candidate. She was state educated and in an underperforming comp for GCSEs and Oxford do GCSE score taking underperforming comp into account but there are very few applying in that category. She is at a big state sixth form now which does not count as contextual. So at Bristol she was in same category as private as they class on A levels which I think most unis do. Bath again offered immediately as non contextual then she phoned them to point out she has a contextual thing they count and they lowered their offer for her and were really kind on the phone and apologised for missing the ticked box. I looked up online and 20% of Bristol Economics students have FM, couldn't find figure for Bath, think it's higher for Bath as it's listed as 3rd most common A level. But it was literally immediate the offer. Her school were also full of doom and gloom about applying for economics and told her not to bother applying for Oxford or LSE. I told her to ignore negative people and told her I was told the same 30 years ago and also got in. Also the boys with same grades were told they would get in and they didn't so the schools can often get it wrong and tend to underestimate girls especially quiet ones.

It is competitive and her back up plan was a year out and apply again but the type of person that gets into banking and succeeds is the type of person who ignores negativity and who keeps trying and works hard. It was very male dominated, quite macho man who can be quite rude, and you need to stand up to them. It was also very private school dominated, I think there was only me from state school in some places though it was a few years back so may have changed. Hard work and willingness to work very long hours and resilience and a high level of intelligence were the key skills. It is super competitive so it may take a few attempts, alternative routes in and also it's a challenging career to do with kids but very interesting and enjoyable and easy to earn a good salary even at the lower levels. In my day a lot of the women were very attractive but they may have tightened up on that. I think even if you fail when applying for something you can learn from the process and you just keep on. The student room does contain applicants for each university in spreadsheets so can give ideas of what grades got in with more context. DDs school had 7 into Oxford economics and I don't think any had FM though 6 were PPE. They also do Economics and History which has lower criteria I think of AAA but very small numbers. My daughter said she thinks your daughter will get economics offers.

@Penguinsa Ah, thank you - this is incredibly insightful and helpful. Best of luck to your DD, sounds as if she will go far (as you have).

Thank you. I hope your DD gets what she wants and just keep going if not. I think I may have applied for about 50 jobs before getting into banking but once in you get headhunted so after 1 year I got offered a 30% rise to move to front office of another bank. The initial getting in can be painful though had I been more confident it would have been a lot quicker, I believed all the doom and gloom initially but then I remembered the one teacher who said you could achieve anything and kept trying. I was in the civil service before I entered it in a related job role, economist.

If you want to work in a front office role at an investment bank isn't it better to go to a target university? That being Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial, UCL and Warwick?

@Ajstyoe generally yes but without at least three A stars inc fmaths and coming from a private school and with no contextual flags it is very unlikely they'd get an offer (if the last few years are anything to go by). Going for economics plus another joint subject at somewhere like Lse, ucl, or Warwick would be a safer (but not safe!) option - as well as somewhere like bath with a placement year (very good uni but they have very high offer rates). There are five choices in UCAS so always worth a go at aspirational but be realistic for economics too. Personally if I didn't have top top grades I'd go for a slightly different course (but at a top uni) and then work really hard to get a spring week and second year internship, get some work experience (doing anything) and be involved in the finance/similar society at uni.

I think LSE, Imperial and Warwick are very maths based courses, not familiar with UCL course and LSE is adding a maths exam next year, Imperial course is 35:1 and Warwick has maths exam as well and these maths based courses prefer FM so would avoid them. Recruitment, according to others on here, is becoming more university blind - never was were I was but even then there were a wide variety of universities and the most successful in terms of money I knew as a friend was a man who went to university in Nottingham. He went via the accountancy route.

Ideally you do want predicted grades as high as possible and 3 A stars would be ideal. Some schools predict more than students get by c 1 grade per subject and in economics that can take the offers from those predicted below and the student can still get the place if they get the entry grades. Risky if they may not get entry grades.

Yep that's why I suggested a joint course - economics and politics, economics and geography, economics and history, economics and finance. Less mathematical. We know people on them and none with fmaths.

Yes that makes sense - joint degrees can be a way of getting lower offers and / or more chance of being accepted though check offer rates and make sure you have a couple that are a safe bet. For civil service jobs in economics 50% economics is what is required and in banking although they like economics its not essential unless for an economist role. And always check the admissions pages for each one can change from year to year.

I did Econ at Warwick back in the Middle Ages, and yes it was VERY mathsy (and I hadn't done A Level maths, so I struggled hugely and actually switched to Econ Hist for my second year). Most of my peers wanted to work in investment banking and very very few got job offers through milk rounds. Many (including me and 2 of the economists I lived with) joined Big 4 accounting firms, which has the potential to open many doors once qualified, including getting into banking. I also have many friends who've worked in banking compliance which has served them very well financially (and opportunities to travel).

I'd focus on getting a degree from a well-regarded institution, but if she's single minded about inv banking, then I'd say Maths/Economics will be crucial.