The Student Room Group

careers in PPE?

what do people generally go into after PPE? are the job prospects good and do you think you would have a better chance at finding a comfortable job w PPE compared to law? both are appealing courses to me despite them being so different, but i’m really looking into job prospects and i’ve heard mixed opinions about both😓😓

Reply 1

I know people who want to do PPE and they're usually not looking to make a fortune, they genuinely want to change the world by becoming politicians or academic activists. PPE is really hard to get in esp for more prestigious unis and doesn't guarantee a stable job at all it's more of the idea that PPE is good for becoming a world leader in the future. thats my take at least
Original post by minimenko
what do people generally go into after PPE? are the job prospects good and do you think you would have a better chance at finding a comfortable job w PPE compared to law? both are appealing courses to me despite them being so different, but i’m really looking into job prospects and i’ve heard mixed opinions about both😓😓
This will massively depend on where you plan to study PPE. People view PPE very positively, but this is massively skewed by Oxford. Doing PPE at a non-elite university has similar prospects to most other social science degrees.

Career prospects will also depend massively on what you actually want to end up doing after your degree, if you happen to want to go into a high earning field after PPE like finance, consulting, etc you'll probably earn good money. If you happen to want to go into something different, maybe less money - so the takeaway is that it's less about the subject per se, and it's more about where you study and your career interests afterwards.

This is the same for law by the way. If you want to go into corporate law afterwards and are successful in getting a training contract, you're likely to have a very very lucrative career. But if you don't want to go into corp law or other high paying legal practice areas, maybe you'll earn less. And again, the quality of training contracts is also dependent on the quality of university you go to, doing law at some no name uni is unlikely to yield a significantly higher salary than doing any other subject there.
(edited 11 months ago)

Reply 3

Original post by BenRyan99
This will massively depend on where you plan to study PPE. People view PPE very positively, but this is massively skewed by Oxford. Doing PPE at a non-elite university has similar prospects to most other social science degrees.
Career prospects will also depend massively on what you actually want to end up doing after your degree, if you happen to want to go into a high earning field after PPE like finance, consulting, etc you'll probably earn good money. If you happen to want to go into something different, maybe less money - so the takeaway is that it's less about the subject per se, and it's more about where you study and your career interests afterwards.
This is the same for law by the way. If you want to go into corporate law afterwards and are successful in getting a training contract, you're likely to have a very very lucrative career. But if you don't want to go into corp law or other high paying legal practice areas, maybe you'll earn less. And again, the quality of training contracts is also dependent on the quality of university you go to, doing law at some no name uni is unlikely to yield a significantly higher salary than doing any other subject there.
thanks so much that’s a lot of info!! i’m currently predicted 3 A*s in maths lit and philosophy but it j seems so unlikely 😓😓 so i don’t want to get too overly confident within my mindset and aim to all high end unis. i’m thinking my backups will prob be somewhere like surrey - would u think law at uni of surrey sounds alright ? and i know not all unis offer ppe so in some places i might opt for politics and economics at places like surrey and perhaps bristol (not as a back up ofc). sorry if what i’m saying doesn’t exactly have a point driving it, but it’s more what to do not and how to apply strategically. you’ve answered all my questions form the first comment so it seems like it’s just up to me rn for the research i’m just so indecisive.
so if i was applying PPE i would most likely apply oxford, warwick, KCL and the politics and econ at surrey+bristol. would that be looking too highly ? again sorry for the bombard of comments and questions 😓😓😓

Reply 4

Original post by toastiee6
I know people who want to do PPE and they're usually not looking to make a fortune, they genuinely want to change the world by becoming politicians or academic activists. PPE is really hard to get in esp for more prestigious unis and doesn't guarantee a stable job at all it's more of the idea that PPE is good for becoming a world leader in the future. thats my take at least

right hmm i see that’s quite new info, i mean ofc i’ve assumed that those looking into PPE are very invested in politics and have some sort of driving factor to do something like ‘change the world’ but i j never thought of it too much in that lens. i really am looking for job stability, ofc i would love to get into politics and it’s something that really interests me but coming from a WC background i just want to secure a job and work my way up from there and then i can invest and use where i am to get into politics (i know this is v idealstic lol 😓😓) but do u really think the prospects for a decent paying job is rlly out of the question ? is it too much of a wishy-washy degree to narrow ur interests ?
Original post by minimenko
thanks so much that’s a lot of info!! i’m currently predicted 3 A*s in maths lit and philosophy but it j seems so unlikely 😓😓 so i don’t want to get too overly confident within my mindset and aim to all high end unis. i’m thinking my backups will prob be somewhere like surrey - would u think law at uni of surrey sounds alright ? and i know not all unis offer ppe so in some places i might opt for politics and economics at places like surrey and perhaps bristol (not as a back up ofc). sorry if what i’m saying doesn’t exactly have a point driving it, but it’s more what to do not and how to apply strategically. you’ve answered all my questions form the first comment so it seems like it’s just up to me rn for the research i’m just so indecisive.
so if i was applying PPE i would most likely apply oxford, warwick, KCL and the politics and econ at surrey+bristol. would that be looking too highly ? again sorry for the bombard of comments and questions 😓😓😓
No worries, and congrats on the great predicted grades!

On law at Surrey, I'm afraid I did economics degrees, worked in banking and now work as an economist, so I won't pretend like I have a tonne of expertise about the subtle differences between certain courses.

With respect to the options you have listed, they all look good to me. Your predicted grades are more than enough for all these options, now it's just about getting a good application sent off and turning those predictions into achieved grades. Happy to answer any further questions you have, both generally as well as about economics at university and careers afterwards.

Reply 6

Original post by BenRyan99
No worries, and congrats on the great predicted grades!
On law at Surrey, I'm afraid I did economics degrees, worked in banking and now work as an economist, so I won't pretend like I have a tonne of expertise about the subtle differences between certain courses.
With respect to the options you have listed, they all look good to me. Your predicted grades are more than enough for all these options, now it's just about getting a good application sent off and turning those predictions into achieved grades. Happy to answer any further questions you have, both generally as well as about economics at university and careers afterwards.

oh amazing and don’t worry about it ! thank you so much again for the help. i guess since u have the expertise for economics and u work in banking, do u think joint degrees like politics+economics and i guess PPE hold less weight when looking for jobs such as finance and banking ?
Original post by minimenko
oh amazing and don’t worry about it ! thank you so much again for the help. i guess since u have the expertise for economics and u work in banking, do u think joint degrees like politics+economics and i guess PPE hold less weight when looking for jobs such as finance and banking ?
Most grad jobs in finance, banking and consulting are degree agnostic, they accept all subjects. There was somebody in my M&A team who studied music at university, another who studied history, and so on. There are generally two reasons why they don't care what subject you've studied. The first is that often the work in finance/banking/consulting is completely different to what people study even in economics degrees, so they just try to attract the smartest people and then train them on the job. Therefore, they make you sit at least half a dozen of their own tests and interviews in order to figure out who they want to hire as a intern/grad.

There are some exceptions though, often jobs in trading seek out those with STEM degrees due to to sort of quantitative skill set required. For roles in Economic research at banks you often need a master's or PhD in economics. Quant research requires a stem degree. Then there's lots of back office roles which require specific degrees like legal teams obviously require law degrees, tech teams require comp sci, etc.

Therefore, for the vast majority of roles, banks and consulting firms will make little distinction between a candidate with PPE or pol+econ or straight econ or other social science degrees for that matter. It's often said that the university you go to is more important to banks/consulting firms than what you study there.

If you're thinking about economics roles at places like the Bank of England, the civil service (government economic service), or private sector economic consultancies, then the general requirements are that you have a degree in either PPE or one where at least 50% the content is economics modules (i.e. any of PPE, joint honours econ, and straight econ are all fine). There's also less focus on where you studied in economics roles, particularly in the public sector.

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