Do you have to go to the top 20 universities to be a investment banker?

what do you mean by AMAZING? how many people on the IMB course got ibank summer intern offers? do most people get a grad position doing tech role in ibanks?

Regardless, he is only one person and whether he went to Imperial or UCL will not prove your point. I did several spring weeks (a couple of years ago now), but on mine there were people from some non target universities studying non standard courses such as Social Sciences/Arts, who held in some cases two or three spring weeks. At SW level, course is irrelevant, the only reason it seems like Maths/Econ guys prosper is because statistically speaking more tend to apply.

What is the extent of your experience by the way?

Perhaps a bit of a silly question as its probably a no but could you do investment banking with a mechanical/civil engineering degree from somewhere like warwick or nottingham.

I think UCL got more people on SW's this year than Imperial College. It seems as if you're implying that you didn't get SW offers because you're at UCL.

They did; but only because of the nature of Imperials coures (ie: no economics etc, all sciences; and most engineers etc, want to be engineers no doubt).

I got rejected cause i highlighted my course as a weakness; plus there may have been other reasons, no w/e etc but the course and the way i talked about it in my cover letters alone would have been enough to be rejected.

My strong points would have included UCL.

Nothing wrong with Biology at UCL. To use an empirical example, on my spring week at Goldman, less than half of the people I met from UCL studied Econ or Stats. Rest were a mix of IMB, Engineering, History, Chemistry, etc.

I have been lucky enough to visit different trading floors.

Met a plethora of people...some have done accounting and finance, some have done history, some have done economics, maths, I even met one guy on JP Morgan trading floor who didn't even go to university, just went to work for the b of e for a few years and landed the job...

i met 1 guy at Goldman who went to Birmingham business school and spent a few years at a hedge fund previous to landing the GS job...

I'm going into my next year of degree , and will be applying to internships. I might not be in a target university, but if I can get a first overall, and smash the assessment centres if I'm fortunate to get into them...I will give it my best shot....

Currently studying accounting and finance, straight As at A level in physics chemistry and biology...

Hell, I even know 1 guy who got laughed at in an MS interview thinking he had to have gone to a target uni...

So guys, it doesn't matter where you go... work your backside off, train hard, be as mentally sharp as you can be. The cream always rises to the top.

My two cents.

sorry i was just wondering whether you saw any icma centre students at the SW?

I've applied there to do finance and investment banking in october, and I was interested in a possible career in trading. Given that i work extremely hard throughout the degree and network like crazy lol would i have a chance at S&T or even IBD at a BB bank?

or even others like SocGen or even prop houses such as optiver or tibra?

only ICMA guy i can recall was BO.

at a US BB this summer, IBD:

3 oxford
3 cambridge
3 LSE
3 UCL
2 Durham
1 Imperial
1 Warwick
1 Bristol & 1 Notthingham (both with international background)

That's all for UK uni. So now you have your answer : without a top 10 uni this is going to be very tough imo...

Anyone from Australia?

No, why ?

I'm sure there was an article or something a few months back where it talked about the banks having to target a smaller number of universities. They tiered like this:


Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial


LSE, UCL, Warwick


Everything else


I would link the article, but i haven't got it saved.....