LSE, Durham, Warwick or UCL for PPE?

I’m no expert, but personally LSE>>Warwick>UCL>Durham

Where should I go?

The obvious answer is LSE. If you're looking for someone to change your mind then you probs won't find it

Hello! I wanted to ask you a question on Econ courses, but I can’t seem to send a message. What is your opinion on an undergraduate Economics and Mathematics degree vs Economics and Management? Which one is more beneficial in your opinion for going into financial services, or for applying to graduate Economics? Many thanks in advance

Where should I go?

Although I'm biased, I would say Economics and Maths > Economics and Management. Generally management can be a bit soft whereas maths is seen as harder (or at least less people have the necessary skills for it) compared to Economics, so one is seen as making your economics degree better and the other as making it a bit easier.

Worth remembering though that the universities in question are very important, for example whilst Econ+Math > Econ+MNGT, if the latter is at somewhere like Oxford or LSE whilst Econ+Maths is at somewhere like a standard semi-target then I'd go for Econ+Management.

In terms of careers, most jobs in financial services don't have degree subject requirements, you can become an investment banker straight out of a music degree for example. But there are some roles (more quant and analytics based roles) in finance that mostly hire STEM grads, so things like trading desks, structuring roles, quantitative research, some fixed income stuff, etc. So having a joint maths degree would obviously be an advantage for these.

For applying for graduate economics, I'm not sure whether you mean grad school (MSc/PhD) or graduate level economics jobs. If the former then graduate level economics becomes even more mathematical so someone with more of a maths background will tend to do better in admissions and on the courses. If you're talking about Econ graduate jobs, worth noting that most of these require a master's degree not just a BSc and finance firms (investment banks/asset managers) rarely hire graduate economists, instead they tend to mainly do experienced hires so people with a MSc of PhD with a couple years of experience. But there are still lots of roles that do take graduate economists with just a BSc like the Government Economic Service (GES), Bank of England, various regulators (Ofcom, FCA, CMA, etc) and Economic Consultancies (micro and macro ones). Often these organisations will want you to do a MSc at some point (normally between 1-3yrs after joining) and will pay for you to do it so that can be a good option.

As a result, it should be clear that graduate level economics (whether working in academia or industry) is mostly quantitative so a maths joint degree is almost always preferred and if you do want to go down the economist career path then you'll likely have to get a MSc, where a maths is again desirable. I genuinely can't see an advantage to a joint management degree over a joint maths degree unless you're considering which degree will be easier