Reading's BSc Finance and Investment Banking a good program?

However good the degree is, it will always be attached to Reading University, which just isn't the same league as Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Warwick etc. It will be hard, but if you are one of the absolute best at Reading (in terms of work experience, extra-curriculars, volunteering, grades etc) then it is slightly on the radar and you can make front office. It will be much harder than from the likes of Oxford though.

Trading, Asset Management, Investment Management and M&A are all very difficult to get into, and a degree from Reading is less than ideal. If anything, Asset Management and Investment Management are probably harder to get into than M&A. You will be hard pushed to get into Private Equity out of any university, let alone Reading. Check out some of the profiles of the people private equity firms such as Terra Firma, Blackstone's PE business etc hire and you will find that most are from top UK, European and US universities.

As for why there aren't more degrees like this one? I guess it's tradition for students to study courses more along the lines of maths, economics etc before going into banking, and the banks haven't really wanted a course like that offered at Reading. Maybe there will be more courses like it in future, who knows.

ICMA will have minimal effect on the degree's desirability.

I am an ex-Iber from a 2nd tier centre (Spore) and to me the practical aspects of the course are still a little weak, which is surprising since they have the practicality of ICMA.

Thanks once again
sorry for my naivety but what does 2nd tier centre and Spore mean?

In what ways could the practical aspects of the course be stronger?

Better search it yourself - you'll need initiative and drive if you are genuine about this business.

Well make the trading and investment side as close to the real deal as possible so when you get out then at least you can say " I have a good idea what the practical side is all about ".

IB is a lot more practical / physical than people think.

Is the University of Reading's BSc in Finance Investment Banking degree a good program to get into investment banking or is bulge bracket recruitment focused heavily on Oxbridge LSE etc? Is this degree more for if you want to get into trading, asset or investment management rather than mergers and acquisitions/private equity? Any idea why there aren't more specialist investment banking degrees in the UK like the one at Reading? Anyone studying this degree at the moment what is the degree like would you recommend it to others?

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Hi,

I am a current ICMA Masters student and have also completed my BSc at ICMA. I had similar questions when I first started researching Investment Banking (IB) degrees so I hope sharing some of my experiences and findings will help answer your question.

It is true Oxbridge and other well reputable university names give candidates more credibility than other universities on the CV. However, this could be easily deemed worthless if you can’t prove your interest and personality at the job interview stage. These two factors are considered to be far more important than top grades or university background in the IB industry. As long as past work experiences and extracurricular activities strongly support the skill set required for the job, 2.1 grade and above candidates from most universities would have almost an equal chance to compete.

Just to emphasize the point above further, I can bring in some real life examples to illustrate. I know final year students from Reading and other universities such as Newcastle and Loughborough who successfully entered the IB industry last year. Some of these students were in focused degree disciplines like finance, economics, and maths as opposed to some who were in completely different fields of study such as dentistry and history. Although there are too many different factors, it is safe to say a common attribute among all of those successful was their keen interest and passion in the finance industry with a good base of commendable work experiences necessary to pass the assessment stages.

There are pros and cons for choosing ICMA BSc and the balance between the two would vary among individuals depending on what they want to achieve. For example if you want to become a Financial Engineer, it is important to have strong mathematical skills in which case I truly believe a pure Maths, Physics, Computer science degree or BSc Mathematics with Finance and Investment Banking (offered at ICMA) is a better choice. On the other hand, for most other IB relating jobs there is either no requirement or sometimes a requirement from business, finance, economics or related discipline is mentioned.

Personally, I chose IB degree as I was looking for a degree that involved a combination of maths and economics but with more application to the real world. As the course progressed into the 2^nd and 3^rd year, it only became more exciting as there was greater content of IB modules and mixture of practical aspects to the course (e.g. Equity and derivatives trading, private equity project, presentations). I found another key advantage is that the 3 years course provides a structured format to understand the world of investment banking and the various categories within it. This also helps to form a clearer picture to become more confident in using IB jargon easily and understand the full depth of news stories on financial times, Bloomberg or Reuters.

This particular BSc course is not aimed at particular categories in IB like investment management or trading as you might think. If you look at the module list for the 3 years, you will realise there are various modules without too much focus on just one particular area. Although the BSc doesn't offer a specialisation in one particular field within IB, it helps to provide an overview of IB with choice to specialise a little in the 2^nd and 3^rd year of BSc. If you want to do a specialisation in M&A and/or Private Equity, Masters is a more appropriate level to specialise these at. There are many more IB courses at Masters level than at BSc (Check ICMA, LSE, Cass website) which suggests a higher level of academic knowledge and skills are required to study IB. This is the case in not just the UK but also in other developed countries.

I would definitely recommend this programme to those who have researched or heard of IB and are curious to find out more. Please don't hesitate to inbox if you have more questions.

Hope it helps,
Whitecinder

I am very interested in this course but don't necessarily want to become an investment banker, does that matter or is the focus of the degree too narrow?

preferably a fund manager or analyst