Best possible degree for Investment Banking?

probably the best course for trading is maths and economics from LSE.

probably the best course for trading is maths and economics from LSE.

true, but doing a PhD in physics for the purpose of getting to IB is a really bad idea.

the guys who are PhD maths/physics in the banks either lost interest in the subject, or can't stand the thought of the miserable academic pay, or weren't good enough to get an academic position.

the guys who are PhD maths/physics in the banks either lost interest in the subject, or can't stand the thought of the miserable academic pay, or weren't good enough to get an academic position.

probably the best course for trading is maths and economics from LSE.

"Maths with statistics for finance"

Most just got offered enough money to give up on their ambitions in science. My tutor complains about losing the best PhDs from theory all the time

I agree with DDF here. Of course it happens that some really great PhD students are lured off to banks and hedge funds (I know a physics professor at Cambridge who left for a hedge fund last year) but in general the best students are after academic careers, not banking careers.

I'm looking at banking right now because, quite frankly, I'm not good enough to cut it in academia without doing an insane amount of work, which I'm not prepared to do for the meagre pay.

wrong, the answer is http://www.ulotc.co.uk/ or http://www.sandhurst.mod.uk/

Rubbish. I fail to see why this supposed military/athelete level training that seems to make people think you are going to be able to rake in cash in the markets or bring in more M&A deals. It's bull****. It's just a nice way of whittling down candidates, not much more.

Bloody hell it seems this is a very popular course, I was applying to Maths & Stats courses and saw this and thought yeah, why not, but I never thought it was such a popular course Does it have a particular reputation or something or is it just the word finance that makes people choose it?

yeh the word finance attracted me, I always wanted to do a quantitive maths related degree anyway but that one sounded particuarly relevant to what I wanted to go into - especially with the Tanaka Business school as well at Imperial...

However a PhD sounds a little much? surely they would get the picture that you were good at maths with a first or 2:1 in a numerical degree at Bachelors level?? I mean unless you want to be an actuary, as long as you cover statistics modules surely the real life application of the maths wouldnt be any higher than BsC level?