What Universities do investment banks (specifically Goldman) recruit from?

Are there any particular universities that investment banks want. Is it true they also would rather have as many maths applicants as possible?
I am applying for maths and my top 5 are LSE, UCL, Cambridge, Warwick Durham but LSE doesn't offer a complete maths choice like the others.

If you wanna do maths then Imperial would be a very good choice. Investment banks aren’t specifically targeting maths students but STEM grads are always going to be sought after, I think this year STEM made up 40% of intern classes at Goldman Sachs. GS pretty much targets all of the universities you mentioned to some extent, you can find Goldman on LinkedIn and go to employees and filter for “investment banking analyst” or “sales and trading/markets analyst” if you want to see the exact make up.

If you’re into maths, you might be interested in trading firms such as Jane Street, Optiver and Citadel securities. They pay much better than investment banks and imo the work is much more interesting. The idea of “targets” is a bit different though.

Yes I was looking at Imperial but I don't want to have too many London universities since I live there and would still like to go to a top uni outside of it. Would you recommend Imperial over UCL?

Would the Maths with economics course at LSE (G1L1) count as a STEM course?

Thanks for the advice, I always thought Goldman paid the best as everyone gasses them up, especially the media and stuff.

Thanks for the advice, I always thought Goldman paid the best as everyone gasses them up, especially the media and stuff.

1) it really depends what you want to do, if you want to double down on the maths-side of finance or just maths generally I would strongly urge you to take imperial over LSE and apply to both UCL and Imperial for maths. If you are certain that you want to go into traditional finance then there isn’t going to be much of a difference between Imperial and UCL but UCL has a much larger dedicated finance scene. Just pick the school you want to go to more at that point as the difference in rep outside of quant finance isn’t really tangible. For quant finance it typically would be: Imperial>UCL>LSE.

2) the media thinks bankers earn a lot more than they actually do

Thank you.

My A levels are Further Maths, Maths, Econ and History and I believe Imperial favors chem/physics students for its Maths course so I just dk.

The only, and best way to validate this, would be to check the website entry requirements and also ring up the school and ask. If Cambridge are fine with your chosen subjects, I imagine Imperial would be too. With maths I’m pretty certain that the MAT would be more important though and conversely STEP/interview for Cambridge.

Good luck, I was in a similar position last year with 3 of the same unis so can semi-relate to this, although my courses were much less competitive. All I can say is that a UCL/Imperial maths degree will be more versatile, especially if you want to pivot into something like quant or tech. If you are deadset on traditional finance then it would probably make more sense to apply to LSE over imperial but there won’t be a big difference.

Do you like economics? If you do then I’d suggest applying to joint maths and economics at both UCL and LSE alongside other schools and then Economics at Cambridge. It’s just a weird concept to me to apply for maths and not apply to as much of COWI as you can for the prospects. It seems like you want to do maths but shoe-horned LSE in with the only relevant course they have because you think you need to go there for IB, otherwise I don’t see why you wouldn’t also apply to UCL for the same course. Consider what you want to do at university and what you want to do after, balance them reasonably and come to a conclusion. I should’ve given you enough information here for you to consider the career ramifications of your decision within finance anyway, it’s up to you to research further if you want.