Please don't come here and bulls***! You obviously don't study at an overseas university. PWC/Deloitte Consulting regularly recruits candidates from the top 10 US business school. The big 4 Management consulting post mba start their kids on USD135k not including sign on and year end bonus. Please go and read the employment reports before talking s*** and name-dropping brand name firms.

The big 4 in SG is really not the same firm as those big 4 in the US/UK. The consulting arms in London/US take the very best candidates in each cohort and pay them competitive wage (benchmark against tech & IBD).

Yeah consultancy in Big 4 pays as well as IB for fresh grads. Friend just got an offer.

Anyone knows how does the likes of GS, JPM, MS, CS, UBS, Nomura, BNP etc view a UK grad from a semi-target school in the UK? Below LSE UCL Warwick Oxbridge.

^

In addition, I'm a first year in uni still, secured a summer internship in big US asset management firm. Applied for AM, but they pushed me for a MO role. Not sure why, maybe because I'm a first year still or my qualifications, idk. AM or IB is a dream.

Anyone knows any firms that will take in first years for a position that is more FO? As 99% of the firms don't have any programs for first years, only penultimate year students.

Just focus on securing spring weeks atm, any other experience will be beneficial. IMO if you're interested in IBD, go somewhere to get some corp Fin. exp (doesn't matter if its lower tier), it will be very useful as you will be more prepared to impress in your summer internship.

Thanks for the reply. Have sent out apps to all the firms that have spring weeks available, 1 interview, few rejections, but still waiting for most of them to reply. So, so competitive how a 4 days intern can have 1000+ applicants for 40 places, for a mid-tier bank.

Have cold emailed quite a few firms(mainly the small shops) in SG and UK for corporate finance experience, mostly no replies or they don't offer...will keep trying.

Are you sure he/she is your friend if she lies to you? Big 4 consultancy pays as well as IB? Even a back office IT/Ops job at a local bank pays 10-20% higher than any entry level in Big 4. I would imagine a IB position would come in at about 50% higher.

Definitely not in Singapore. Big 4 consultancy pay in Singapore is ridiculously low, about $2.8k. I know this for a fact because I interact with these so called "consultants" at job interviews, and boy do they want to job hop!

Management Consulting in Deloitte S&O/ Big 4 is extremely well paid and highly regarded in London/US.

://managementconsulted.com/consulting-salaries/2015-management-consulting-salaries-undergraduate-mba-interns/

The Singapore big 4 really isn't representative of the big 4 in the US or even London. In the US, Deloitte S&O has become more prestigious than oliver wyman, LEK, At kearney. Granted the preferred firms are still MBB, but this is definitely a giant stride forward as S&O/big 4 are now increasing competing in the same space.

The IB firms do not pay better than the big 4 consulting post-mba. IBD start kids on 110kUSD. All the big 4 MC arm start their kids at USD135. It is clearly a far different world out there.

Dude, I am not going to fact check your numbers. Maybe you're some big 4 consulting kid but this is SINGAPORE, and this is SALARYSG. I can also point out to you that O&G pays extremely well in the US with crazy lavish perks that make those in Singapore look like candy snacks.

I can objectively say that big 4 consulting in Singapore is a joke. Deloitte, PWC, what have you. Please don't come and BS everyone, especially with regards to the caliber of people they employ and the crap work they do.

Hey dude, I'm agreeing with you that the people they hire are BS in Singapore. I'm just making the point that they are not really the same firm around the world. Besides, you need a brand-name university to get into consulting in the first place, so you can't blame the caliber that they hire when all they get to choose from are NUS/NTU etc.

Agreed but the salaries they offer are also pretty bad right?

I mean you pay peanuts, you get monkey, that's an age old adage that is true.

I'm from SMU. The bulge bracket banks, MBB, fmcgs, etc do conduct recruitment drives here, but these are normally by invitation (i.e. they send an email invite only to certain people, probably those above a certain cut-off GPA). So you're right in that grads in target UK/US schools probably get general recruitment drives but that is not to say that we don't also get similar opportunities (just that they're a lot harder to come by, and justifiably so)

I would say that SMU is not generally a target ground for the top companies. SMU is poorly ranked internationally and is largely unknown. NUS and NTU students stand better chances.

hahahahaha... joke of the day.

Definitely the case.

Really meh? I am another poster.... but I don't see why SMU kids are so arrogant. They aren't that smart by any means... Rich maybe.. but smart? Not as much as the top kids in NUS/NTU.

The top companies simply treat NUS/NTU/SMU as the same tier and then zoom in to the individual's achievements.

Singaporeans, especially those who have not worked overseas, always like to nitpick and make retarded statements like NUS is more internationally recognised, etc etc.

I worked overseas in a bank and nobody knows whats unis there are in Singapore.

When you tell people you are from NUS, nobody knows what that is. You tell ppl you are from NTU, they think you are from Nottingham Trent University. SMU, they think Southern Methodist University.

That's right, lower "internationally ranked" universities are more recognised than our local unis.

You think all the people from 1st world countries are fighting to take their MBA in NUS and NTU?

Hello, please wake up your idea. Only India, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar are fighting to get in.

The fact that this sort of statements appear in a front office thread is a joke.

No wonder there is this saying, sinkie own sinkie.

Frogs in a well croaking at each other on the best advice for surviving outside.

How brilliant of you to use your singular anecdotal examples in ONE industry from your experiences deployed "overseas" as proof that you're right!

Broadly speaking a 2.1 grad from a top 100 ranked uni with interesting resume that can catch the attention of recruiting companies, he stands a chance to compete. A lot would depend on how the candidate pass the selection tests and position himself as a right fit rather than he or she is from which university. Common sense and performance sustainability shall prevail!

You may perhaps be right in relation to NTU. Some people (who are not in the HR department) of international companies may not have heard of NTU. And of course not SMU. Even for these schools, it is naive to say that the HR recruiters of international companies, especially those who have a presence in Singapore, have not heard of NTU/SMU.

In relation to NUS, the people you have met must be truly ignorant to not know NUS which is ranked #1 in Asia. Please see the QS rankings at ://.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/asian-university-rankings/2015 . If those people do not know NUS, it means they do not know any of the Asian universities. That is true ignorance.

SMU is generally on a level competing ground with NUS/NTU in local companies. It is well known that SMU grads are outspoken, and that is an advantage. I'm being objective. However, the fact remains that SMU is generally unknown internationally as compared to NUS which is the number 1 university in Asia. This will be one of the factors taken into account by top international companies.

I graduated from NUS... I don't think we are the no. 1 uni in Asia. And our cert doesn't carry as much weight unfortunately.

Maybe not so much in the West. In the East, it's pretty big.

You are obviously in the wrong thread. My singular anecdotal examples in ONE industry happens to be the ONE industry people in this thread are interested in.

There is also job rotation, so I have experience in all of the front office positions including sales.

To the other posters, nobody cares about your QS rankings.

Name me the top 3 universities in Korea, Hongkong and Japan. And even if you can name them, nobody gives a f**k.

NUS is ranked above Yale, Pennsylvania and Cornell. You seriously think people will acknowledge that?

The best and brightest of Singaporeans already know this.

Which is why scholars from top companies and government agencies are always from a select group of universities. An example is the SAFOS list - ://.mindef.gov.sg/scholarship/scholarships-safos.html

But i explain more also useless. Frogs that only stay in Singapore will never get it.

You seriously think Ivy leaguers are that good?! Maybe HYP but the rest are lesser ivies which honestly aren't that difficult to get in.

The only reason there is a fascination with the ivies is because, unlike the UK, there exists a certain amount of ambiguity during admissions. Diversity, as they call it, have them choosing some not so smart kids over some brilliant ones. I know kids rejected from almost all ivies but got accepted to MIT and Caltech.

The ivies have gone down the road in favor of liberal political correctness and crap like diversity, affirmative action etc, which is why, barring HYP and maybe Wharton, they aren't that good. In fact, their international student pool is often FAR better than your local born in USA pool, thus reflecting a degree of protectionism that they would probably deny. Anyhow, don't get your panties in a bunch but most of them like Cornell are yes...way, way overrated.

Btw you sound like one of those loser cranked up over scholarships, always preaching about SAFOS, PS blah blah as though you are one of them. You're just one of their buddies who didn't make it but want to act elitist, right?

I am in a BB and I earn more than any SAFOS or scholar, so suck it.

The government is not doing anything but just releasing the COEs as it gets scrap. They should take this chance to store the excess supply and release in the famine years to come. By doing nothing now, they are just kicking the can down the road and cause a very bad cyclical trend


Come 2020 when the COE quota shrink again. It will break $150k or $200k.

Agree. The guy who deemed it a joke must be from SMU.

Hi is there any way I could email you to ask some private questions? I was post #43.

Please. Nobody looks at qs ranking man!
It's something like a magazine you read it on the train and forget.
Do you really think mnc take out their qs Bible during interview sessions to check. Only stupid Stats board does that.

Qs magazine will not push our University to greater Heights..
Only more Peter Kim will!!

Go to USA buy over their empire tower. For sure they will know Singapore is not part of China.. God!!
(altho both are similar in governance)

Barclays,GM and the likes do hold their recruitment drives at SMU.

International rank doesn't matter when you are applying for a BB or any job in Singapore. The HR managers are from Singapore. It doesn't matter if nobody in UK recognises your university.

HR managers in Singapore know the entry grades to the various universities in Singapore. For certain courses, the entry requirement between SMU and NUS is one A lvl grade. By not conducting a recruitment drive at SMU, they are losing access to a huge pool of potential employees.

I think that another poster claimed post 53 as the joke of the day because the poster suggested that you need your university to be recognised internationally to be recruited by BB. A clear lack of understanding of HR processes.

Lol. Funniest s*** ever. Please tell me how did you get the part 'aren't that difficult to get in.'. I'm being clear here - you said the difficulty to get in and not the caliber of students.

The rest except HYP? Let's see. You think an average JC student can get into the following of which ALL boast an acceptance rate of at most 15%:

UPenn, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Brown, Duke, Columbia.

You can't remove your education. So no worries if you couldn't get into any of the above schools. Just say that they 'aren't difficult to get in' without evidence to make yourself feel better. Go check the stats please. Oh, just telling you that pick one of the above schools and I guarantee you an alumni from there has a better chance to go into high finance over a local school grad.

Look, you know what I mean, and how a big number of the schools you mentioned (excluding MIT/Stanford) aren't that difficult to get into. To be fair, probably not for the average JC kids. My point being is that there isn't anything much to brag about UNLESS it's HYPSMC; and the reason why their admissions rate are so low for some schools is because for US schools, you can apply to many schools without consequence. This is unlike Oxbridge where you can only apply to one or the other. And I believe their acceptance/admissions rates are higher than many of the schools you listed..

And quite frankly, I did get into some of those schools + top schools in the UK. But I chose to go to a local uni and made it to BB FO.

So that's the real deal right there. You take your papa mama scholarship to these schools, having to pay 200-300k easy while I paid my OWN way to a local uni education, and still got to the same place where you(?) and a bunch of others ended up. Who wins at life? Undisputedly me, thank kew veri much.

Okay. Fair enough. But I really have to clarify my points which I believe are equally valid.

Point 1: How do you objectively define 'difficult to get into'. An acceptance rate of under 15%, to anyone, no matter how you spin it, is NOT easy to get into. And since you mentioned you got into those school, well done by the way, you should know that just 2400 SAT and 4.0 GPA will NOT cut it. Source: Go to College Confidential.

Point 2: I think you are underrating the value you get by going to the schools I mentioned. HYPSM + others. It is a perception thing; going to those top school will make others perceive that you are better that you actually are not withstanding that you could very well be better, both in hard and soft skills, than your average local uni grad.

Point 3: Since we're talking about finance, go to WallStreetOasis.com. The consensus there is that there is such thing as target schools, where an alumni from such will have better opportunities. And these target schools are HYPSM AND the 10 or so I mentioned.

I'll reproduce one of the forum threads here:
Top: Wharton, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Cornell, Duke, NYU, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth
then there are the rest. its mainly dependent on the networks at the individual banks but these are the top ones, roughly in order though not exact.
(://.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/comprehensive-list-of-target-schools)

My point, top schools in the US are NOT limited to HYPSM. Go to New York and you'll find tons of NYU and Columbia grads over say MIT, which while is in HYPSM, is more tech VC focused than IB.

Point 4: I agree with you. Those who sign for scholarships are already regretting it. Hehe. I'm quite glad ST Aerospace didn't offer me their scholarship. Hehe. Any scholar engineers want to break bond? Lol.

Of course, if finances aren't an issue then do attend a top school in the US/UK. The brand will stick with you for life and it would be much easier to get a good job.

I define "difficult to get into" as the schools which have a "wow" factor. Basically, the kind of schools that everyone knows about and will almost certainly do whatever it takes to get in. I know of at least several friends in NUS who got into Brown for instance but didn't thought it be worth it.

AG Walter-Woon also said that he won't be sponsoring his kids an overseas law education *UNLESS* its Oxbridge simply because he believes the law education locally is more than good enough.

Again, this is a subjective issue.

Okay. I will agree that HYPSM does have that unequivocal "wow" factor to everyone. Pertaining to finance industry, namely those who'll actually make decisions which are relevant to you, that is your boss, HR and colleagues, the other schools will carry a "wow" factor as well. A notch below HYPSM, but by not that far, and much above the local schools.

Any fund manager worth his salt seeking to get a top analyst for his company will take a look at candidates who graduated from Columbia, Duke, Caltech, UChicago. By the way, I just checked and these four schools have an acceptance rate of single digit. Just saying.

Of course, we're speaking about averages here. As this thread pertains to people getting jobs, a brand name school, HYPSM + others, might inch you closer to the FO offer.

Cambridge acceptance rate is at 20.8%, Oxford at 18% while LSE is at 7.2%.

I got into LSE. I didn't apply to Oxbridge because I missed the deadline but no way will I make the claim LSE > Oxbridge.

I believe that the acceptance rates for Peking U and Tsinghua U are also ridiculously low at under 1% yet they aren't as prestigious as many schools in the West (again, subjective but for the most part true since even Chinese students prefer to go to Harvard than Peking U). Anyhow, I am not sure if acceptance rates are the best way to determine if one school is better than another school. But yes, it's a fact that most target schools have low acceptance rates, and you should maximize your chances if you wish to get into BB FO by attending one of these schools.

Oh, you made me have to do it. Here is the list of US schools with acceptance rate <= 12% for the fall 2014 entering class, taken from USNews. The labeling, decided by the flow of this conversation, goes:
x - Irrelevant school for finance.
! - HYPSM
# - Top school for FO jobs but not HYPSM

x Curtis Institute of Music - 4.8%
! Stanford University - 5.1%
! Harvard University - 6%
! Yale University - 6.3%
# Columbia University - 7%
x Alice Lloyd College - 7.1%
! Princeton University - 7.4%
! Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 7.9%
x United States Naval Academy - 7.9%
x College of the Ozarks - 8.3%
x Juilliard School - 8.4%
# Brown University - 8.7%
# California Institute of Technology - 8.8%
# University of Chicago - 8.8%
x United States Military Academy - 9.5%
# University of Pennsylvania - 10.4%
x Claremont McKenna College - 10.8%
# Duke University - 11.4%
# Dartmouth College - 11.5%
x Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering - 12%

Hi guys, sorry to interrupt this extremely intense conversation.

But just wanted to say, as much as Stanford is a very reputable institution, it is NOT in the Ivy League.

Bye!

Lol. Thanks for stating the obvious. You would think that a guy who talks only about US schools, me, would know that. Yes, that's why I made a distinction between top schools and Ivy League. And in case other may or may not know, MIT is not in the Ivy League.

Maybe I should then quickly bring everyone up to speed.

The term Ivy league came from history. It consist of eight schools that participated in the same league for sports. But over time, the academics of these schools developed to be recognized as the strongest in the States. The Ivy Schools are:

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell.

Yup, you'll quickly notice that some top schools are not in the Ivy League and may be even better than the ones which are in the Ivy League. A brief breakdown would be:

Tier One: Harvard, Yale, Princeton.
Tier Two: Columbia, UPenn (drawing their prestige from their business schools)
Tier Three: Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell.

I could expand further but I'll stop there. In summary, that's why HYP form the top of the top. And personally, one would take any of the top non-Ivy League schools, over Tier Two and below. Got accepted to UChicago? Their economics department is known to be better than that of Columbia.