Deleted.

Just for this. I've been out of college for four years now so hopefully my work experience matters more, and the LSE finance admissions did say that the math courses would be useful in building my profile. I do have excellent performance marks at work and that may help. while lse was ssurprisinly more open in saying that they would consider all aspects of a candidate's profile, ucl said they wouldn't consider me unless I got a distinction in the lse external program. Either way they seemed to give some weight to the external programs.

Yes they will give weight to the external program.
I wasn't being harsh btw - if you check gradcafe for LSE admissions results you will see a number of rejections for GPAs of 3.8 to over 3.9...
But also, if you want to be an economist, why are you looking at a finance MSc? It won't stand you in as good stead as econ (and I am an ex economist at a bulge bracket IB btw)...if you want a more general type of role sure.

Oh and gridiron, I am the same gender as my avatar

I agree with the right honourable gentleman above

I can't figure from your post whether or not you have completed your degree yet but if you have then it could well be far too low for admission to LSE and possibly UCL but you would need to write to them to find out.

If you haven't finished yet then it goes without saying you should work hard to raise that GPA to at least a 3.6 or 3.7.

Another possibility is staying at your current university to do a masters or at another place which would accept you, do very well and then if you are still keen on it reapply to LSE with a very good

What aabot warwick or edinburgh? Would they accept me? Manchester said they would be happy to take me into their master's but I prefer a slightly higher ranked school(at least in the top 20 like queen mary). I've been out of school for over three years now and I don't want to leave work for academia, schoolwork will always be an option to better my career anyway. My current employer sends some employees to uk master's under a joint scholarship with the uk embassy so that's what I'm aiming for.

The grad cafe and other sites are divided into two in terms of uk masters' admission - some say that since they consider the ability to pay tuition they take most of their applicants (one post here said that for warwick almost 80% of the 200 or so applicants were taken in one year) others are like you and say LSE takes only the best applicants.

I'm talking about the research department economists in ib, the kind with masters and working in the private sector. I was actually accepted to one of those departments recently(at jp morgan, citi and the like) but all the other team members had econ phd or masters and work experience at the world bank or something.

The program i'm looking at is the finance and economics masters, so that I would have a more open option than a pure econ masters, which is more tuned into getting into phd programs, which I'm not very keen about at the moment anyway...I'm much more interested in making money than writing papers.

I'm not talking about opinions - I'm talking about the results section - where people list if they were accepted or rejected for a particular program and what their GPAs or other relevant CV info is. http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=LSE+&t=a&o=&p=1

I'm not sure why you feel the need to do this at all if you were already offered a place somewhere in what you want to do? (And yes, the kind of job you describe is exactly what I used to do.)

I'm not talking about opinions - I'm talking about the results section - where people list if they were accepted or rejected for a particular program and what their GPAs or other relevant CV info is. http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=LSE+&t=a&o=&p=1

I'm not sure why you feel the need to do this at all if you were already offered a place somewhere in what you want to do? (And yes, the kind of job you describe is exactly what I used to do.)

IMO your link is mostly for phd candidates and I'm aiming for a masters so maybe the credentials are of a different standard altogether? My understanding is that UK schools have separate masters and phd programs so they take many more students for master's and only a handful of them to phd programs?

I'm pretty sure no good phd programs will take me as of current -- I wouldn't last a year in it. But for masters, maybe some prep and work experience may make me acceptable and then I could have some fling of luck where I'd perform to a distinction level which would allow me to progress into the LSE phd program.

It's a long shot, but that's sort of my goal.

I disagree upward mobility is limited at an IB by this - remember I worked in one - it is far more dependent on work performance and how well you do than what your qualification is. Your rating or team rating in II, client feedback etc is far more important to your pay check.
Agree re this assessment for central banking but that seems an odd choice for someone who wants to keep options open away from econ/writing papers and towards making money...

I agree with GG its a shame that your employer seems to look at rankings tables that would push you to one uni that is generally much less regarded than another, talking Manchester vs QM.

I disagree upward mobility is limited at an IB by this - remember I worked in one - it is far more dependent on work performance and how well you do than what your qualification is. Your rating or team rating in II, client feedback etc is far more important to your pay check.
Agree re this assessment for central banking but that seems an odd choice for someone who wants to keep options open away from econ/writing papers and towards making money...

I agree with GG its a shame that your employer seems to look at rankings tables that would push you to one uni that is generally much less regarded than another, talking Manchester vs QM.

As you probably are aware I am not one for this whole "rankings" and "prestige" nonsense as that's what it essentially is and means absolutely nothing if your grades and experience are sub-par (the fact I was able to transition from the OU to Camb and UPenn goes to show that 'prestige' means very little and is incredibly subjective).

However there are cases where certain universities might have a stronger reputation in one field or another than another institution and with regards to finance and IB Manchester is certainly a top universities and targeted regularly by the top firms, IBs etc. Manchester Business School and its Economics Department are highly rated and I would say outside the big five of Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial and UCL, Manchester certainly is highly regarded and I would even argue to placing it above UCL whose reputation I feel has been over-inflated by the fact it's located in London. I would definitely say that Manchester has a stronger track record in IB and Finance than Queen Mary.

That's not to say Queen Mary isn't a reputable university and that going there would do your prospects any harm, not at all. But I would never have considered it be on a level above Manchester in that respect and Manchester a few years ago was ranked in the top 5 in the world by employer/peer reviews. Manchester has a big brand name in terms of academia and networking and especially at the postgraduate level.

I am surprised your current employer is oblivious to this and without wishing to cause any offence or disrespect to either yourself or your employer, I question what level of knowledge your employer holds and their credibility if they feel that Manchester is not a reputable institution or is less so than queen Mary, Warwick and Edinburgh?


I still am unclear as to whether or not that degree result was your final result. If so then it would most certainly be far too low for LSE.

It is a final result and the rankings are based on the guardian subject rankings; I think they need a metric to follow rather than perceived prestige which can be both very accurate or very wrong. I'd be happy to end up anywhere from warwick to queen mary but given the opportunity of the london external program in math(higher level undergrad math) which may or may not count in the same light as proper grades from a full time program I was wondering how much it will help(lse says it "would help" but I wonder by how much, but since it is math it may give me a leg up in admissions for any school in econ/finance). What about the work experience? (I.e writing papers with economists and perparing reports for monetary policy decisions, taking part in international financial conferences et cetera.) Would I have any chance in edin or warwick?

I would say you are right if you're working as a sales role or back office role but for macro research role the managing director had a phd and the senior officer had a masters'. The regional head that I interviewed had a top15 us phd in econ and experience in the IMF before working for the bulge bracket. Wallstreetoasis also points out that most macro research roles are rare to come by but they are for master's and phd holders for the most part(with the rare exception of the DB chief economist who has a bachelor's from a middling US college with a few years experience at the federal reserve).

Maybe it was a mistake to refuse that offer but then I'd relied on other opinions as well so...there goes one option.

I was talking about macro research roles, which is exactly what I did. And when I left the IB I went to work for an investment manager, where I interacted with a large number of economists from various IBs. So I can safely say, I know how this industry works from the inside. So let me repeat: how you progress in the firm does not depend on your degrees, though it is obviously a screening mechanism for entry, which is why you see people with them. As well, in the US in particular Fed experience is valued and that often has a PhD as a prerequisite. But how well you do once in a bank depends on how much money you bring in, which is dependent on how much clients value your research, which is measured inter alia by direct client feedback and by various rankings. I guarantee you that economist A with just a BSc but with a number one ranking in the II survey will get paid more than economist B with a PhD from MIT and no ranking. Economist A will also be the one the head hunters target.

I'm still not sure why you place so much faith in wallstreetoasis saying such roles are rare for non-graduate degree holders when you yourself were offered one without such a degree.

But surely you've never seen someone with a b.a. perform better than someone with phd. Really? In what way would a phd holder provide worse advice on the economy compared to someone with a bachelor's? This is not sales and trading where sheer luck prevails more often. I've seen those ib reports and the people who write up the content in the end were not b.a. holders I would imagine. If they were to perform complex analyses and so on... ugh

Again, getting in is one thing, and being promoted to management role is another. Otherwise, why would the management research roles be populated in the majority by those who hold at least an m.sc? Just because something is not required for entry does not mean that having it is also useless or even detrimental for performance. To be fair, from common sense judgement, I think that a non degree holder has a chance, but a very slim chance of advancement. Clients would definitely want a ph.d holder from mit even if he she were off the mark sometimes; it's sensible to think that you can't afford better advice from anywhere else. Most chief economists I can think of are at least masters holders as are the middle ranked people there. B.a people there are usually short-term drones.

Am I wrong on this? ..