Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Here's the prestige ranking in my opinion:
1) Oxford & cambridge first class honours
2) NUS, SMU, LSE, UCL first class honours / summa cum laude. Ranked equally are oxford/cambridge non-first-class.
3) NUS, SMU, LSE, UCL good second uppers / magna cum laude. Ranked equally are first class honours from King's College London.
4) NUS, SMU, LSE, UCL poor second uppers / cum laude. Ranked equally are first class from all other Australian and UK schools,
5) NUS, SMU, LSE, UCL second lowers / merit. Ranked equally are all other UK and Australian degrees that are non-first-class, e.g. nottingham, bristol, [insert other random name] etc.
TLDR; only first class from Oxford, Cambridge, NUS, and SMU are regarded highly. First class from other schools are nowhere near. |
Not sure if this is entirely accurate wrt 2, 3, 4, and 5. I'm a final year from a local school and I've been collecting data on places at the big 4/JLVs. There are quite a few people with second lowers (equivalent to below cum laude) who have secured places in the big 4 and popular medium firms (e.g. TSMP, Stamford, WST, etc.). On the other hand, I have quite a few friends from non-london schools with second uppers and firsts that simply cannot find a TC with any of the above firms.
I have also heard of firsts/summas getting rejected from certain firms (the ones I know of personally were all rejected from JLVs) while second uppers/magnas get the spots (I fit into this category).
As I understand it, the graduates from non-london schools are having a very tough time. This is partly due to the school standing and (more importantly
IMHO) because most of them do not have internships with local firms.
I initially believed the above examples to be more the exception than the norm, but the number of people who do not fit into the ranking is quite significant. This leads me to believe that firms are looking past grades (i.e. you only need a certain minimum to get a chance, and this minimum isn't very high), focusing on interview performance and other indicators(e.g. internship performance, moot competitions, etc).
The good thing about this is that you can still get a decent spot even if your grades aren't very good and even if your school isn't a top one (this probably plays a bigger role in admissions). Just gotta try early and play up your achievements outside of academia.