Is it difficult for graduates of university of St Andrews to find a job?

I’m currently a first year undergraduate student at University of St Andrews. My degree is Maths and philosophy. My dream job is working in investment banking and hopefully I can get into some of the top firms in IB after my postgraduate study. Yet I’d like to know if St Andrews has a good reputation among these firms and should I start applying for internships next year.

Reply 1

elderwood2002

I’m graduating in CS this year and quite a few of my friends got jobs at investment banks. Most of them did their internship there last summer, some of them have done two internships with the bank in a row. You should definitely start applying next year, at least do insight weeks at the minimum.

Reply 2

compressed-infid

It's difficult for graduates in general, what university you went to have no relevance, employers what graduates that have professional experience, though internships, placement years etc. If your in university its never too early to start applying for these roles, I've seen people do it in their first year, second year and third year.

Reply 3

Picnicl

St Andrews is currently 5th for graduates going on to do something related to their area of study (for Maths, 20th), (for Philosophy 1st-Oxford was second), and 15th for going to have 'success' in general (for Maths, joint 11th), (for Philosophy 2nd-Exeter was first). The Complete University Guide.
Only 12% of St Andrews Philosophy graduates aren't doing something that uses that degree. For Mathematics, it's 20% but that's better than Cambridge (22%).

If you're interested in banking though, you'd switch to at least a joint honours with Economics surely, for which St Andrews graduates are joint 15th for success in general (above Bristol and Manchester), and joint 18th for related activity. (above Manchester, LSE, and UCL).

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 4

Anonymous #1

Two points here: 1. Drop out of maths, honestly. I am also at St Andrews and trust me the department is awful you don't want to deal with that as it is going to bring you degree classification down by A LOT. Majority of the people I know in maths, who are bright students are barely managing to get by. To get a decent grade in your honors you need to be genius level in maths, and the teaching quality is so ****. ComSci is much easier you won't regret it also from what I know, majority of your grades will come from coursework, whilst in maths it's 100 percent exam based. 2. Job market is tough right, I managed to get a decent off-cycle internship after having been rejected from around 150 applications. IB is quite easy to get into, also sign up for Investment society, they can help you train for the interview.

Reply 5

Anonymous #2

Original post by Anonymous

Honestly not wrong about the grading. The teaching is good but I'm convinced they are just trying to pass on their generational trauma from the way their profs abused them in undergrad.

The CS grading is a joke compared to what we have, majority from coursework that the grade is just a linear function of how much time you put.

Is the investment society actually good? I tried it for a sem and it was a bit of a joke, their portfolio is performing worse than mine and I look at it like once every 2 months.