Which degree is the best return on investment
 

I am planning to apply for a local U next year. Due to personal reasons, I will be paying for my own education either through a study loan or hopefully picking up a scholarship.

I have excellent results and can get a place in almost any degree course. Barring subject interest as I have no particular course preference, what degree will offer me the best ROI upon graduation and in the long-term. Money is a priority to me and I want to provide my family with a good life in the future.

From my knowledge, I've heard high finance (IB, trading) pays the most but the hours are one of the worst. The law market isn't doing very well and compsci grads are being replaced with foreign grads. Accountancy and engineering are pretty stable but the starting pay is relatively low. My parents have also advised me against going into arts although I wouldn't mind doing it provided it pays well.

Assuming I wish to get a job in investment banking, will a finance degree (biz) from a local U suffice? I have also heard stories of many finance grads going into property/insurance due to oversupply. The job market seems pretty depressing and I really hope to secure a good job in the future.

medicine is highest ROI if you take into account the risk of studying biz not getting an IB job

While you might be good at scoring in exams that allows you to join any discipline in a local U, I must say the way you have framed the whole question thereby reflecting your critical decision making process is rather underwhelming.

I would have expected a bit more maturity and clarity of thought then 'I wanna make big money so what to study'. This is the sort of juvenile and singular thought process seen in many private distance learning grads, but this coming from a straight A (I assume) cream of the crop undergrad is surprising.

I reckon padding my question with feel good platitudes, the glories of education and the unparalleled benefits a great mind would bring to society sounds pleasing. But that is besides the point, I know what I need, I know what I want, and I want the bluntest, most honest way to get there. Thanks.

If you have almost perfect grades then local scholarships shouldn't be hard to get. The worth of a degree is very hard to be quantified per se and depends very much on your networking ability and also how well you prove yourself to be in front of prospective employers.

If you're taking up a loan with the intention on maximising your ROI then you might as well take up a loan and learn to run a business that you are interested in. Learning how to run a business is worth many times more than merely earning a salary.

The next question would be: do you think you need a degree? Considering the nature of the job market and the need for skills. (rather than qualification) Some people make lots of money off making videos.

No doubt better-paying salary jobs(consulting, IB) do require a degree as a prerequisite, but these jobs hire across all disciplines and you need to pass anywhere between 4-8 levels of assessments/interviews to get hired. Most finance grads don't even land an interview with an IB firm let alone get hired by them.

Good luck!

You’re joking right? Have you seen the indicative grade profile for business at NUS? The 10th percentile entering has AAA/C for A levels. Even if you got in using AAAA you’d just be an average graduate in NUS business, and the overwhelming vast majority (99.9%) on this ‘top’ course won’t even come close to smelling an IB interview. Not sure if you’ve searched on LinkedIn recently, but you can literally count on one hand the number of new Analysts entering investment banking across Singapore from a local university (if any at all in the 2017 cycle)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but straight A’s for a levels is hardly excellent results but indicative of a average grade profile in NUS business. Commendable absolutely, but hardly exemplary. If you were truly the cream of the crop you’d be with PSC on a plane to the UK/US right now, not wondering which course to study in our ‘local ivies’. Sorry to be harsh, but a level grads with straight A’s nowadays are a dime a dozen in the top few courses in the local universities.

The jobs with the best starting pay out there are:

a) Investment Banking
b) Consulting
c) Other banking functions (trading, corp finance etc)
d) Prestigious MAPs
e) Law (big firms)
f) Certain government jobs (Economist Service, SAF,, DSTA, MFA, EDB etc)

For a) to d), the degree doesn't generally matter if you get top grades and top CCAs/case competitions /internships. So choose the course you can do well in. Of course, being in a quant course helps.

For law, you have to be in the top 30% or so to have a good chance in snagging a big law job.

For specific govt jobs, generally the niche jobs pay more e.g. DSTA, Economist Service, Intelligence Service. For the general govt jobs that pay more, these include EDB, SAF, and MFA.

And of course you have medicine and dentistry with decent starting pay but very good job stability and prospects. But the cost of studying medicine and dentistry is 2-3 times other courses, and work-life balance for medicine sucks.

All in all, if you want to open your doors the widest, you should take an engineering degree (preferably Mech or EE) and do very well in it. Easier said than done.

forgot to add, good CS jobs are now very well paying. and for CS you dont even need to do well in sch if you have an excellent portfolio. But doing very well for a CS degree probably opens as many doors as doing very well in Mech or EE, or even more.

My goodness, I can't believe I actually need to elaborate on this to a supposedly straight A student. You've totally missed the point. Where on earth did you get the idea I was alluding to nonsense like "feel good platitudes, the glories of education and the unparalleled benefits a great mind"?

The vast majority of Singaporeans would want to make big money and treat pay as the primary career goal. You are making this sound like you've got some unique perspective buttressed with an honest and blunt style. Give me a break - that's about as typical Singaporean on the street as you can get.

By immaturity of cognition, I am referring to your simplistic notion of tying up future pay to the course of study and somehow thinking you can calculate ROI for each course and thereby choose the course with the highest ROI. And seriously asking this sort of broad and generic question on an online forum?

The type of degree one studies is just one of the many contributing factors to long term pay. On an individual level, there are many other career elements, some within while others outside your control, that ultimately determine your lifetime earnings. Most people also do not experience linear pay growth, there are ups and downs, long periods of stagnation etc. over the years all subjected to vagaries of life.

Grow up dude.

Another clownfish dreaming of riches as a trader / investment banker but no idea what it is...

Then you should enlighten him/her.

I also dunno lah, dun think there will be real IB waste time chatting here. But keep seeing this sort of question duno whether to laugh or cry. Dun understand why so many local grads obsess with IB / lawyer / doctor when they dun even know or care abt the work.

Same can be said about any other job. I don't think one needs to know what goes on inside a job to know it pays well. And thus, your question on why these jobs garner so much attention from undergrads has been answered.

Getting a finance job is just about impossible regardless of grades. Straight A students with multiple finance internships and CFA level 1 battle each other in multiple round interviews only to be eliminated somewhere in round 7. Just forget about it. It is something people just refuse to accept and keep dreaming despite reality. If you think you are smarter than your competitors, look again. As mentioned, straight A student intakes are the norm, not the exception.

It is true that law is not doing well. And with current AI technology, both law and accountancy jobs will be massively disrupted by the time you graduate. Comp Sci and Engineering are good bets. However, Singapore is not Silicon Valley. Your expertise will not be as appreciated or recognized.

It is time to recognize that the Singapore job market has been in a race to the bottom and the consequences are hitting us hard now.

If ROI is your concern, then your surest bet is to take a civil service scholarship, study comp sci or engineering, then camp there in your ministry or stat board forever. Unless you are willingly to venture outside of Singapore, this is just about your only choice.

://.salary.sg/2017/graduate-employment-survey-2016-published-2017/
://pay.sgcharts.com/

There are plenty of resources out there to get you a good sense of the starting salaries of graduates, the operative word being "starting".

Success in life is one that has many variables and in my opinion, your basic degree's impact tend to lessen over time to degrees. Computing some kind of ROI is simply a fool's errand.

Excuse me but what does a finance job include? Does it include equity analyst? Is it hard to get an analyst job?

I'm pretty sure he's referring to jobs such as in M&A, Capital Markets, Private Equity, and Equity Research. The rest of the jobs in finance aren't that impossible to get.

How hard is it to get into a local uni business or accountancy intake? This is the most recent 10th Percentile to 90th Percentile range:

NUS Accountancy - AAA/A to AAA/A, 3.89 to 3.98
NUS Business - AAA/C to AAA/A, 3.85 to 3.98

NTU Accountancy - AAB/B to AAA/A, 3.80 to 3.97
NTU Business - AAB/C to AAA/A, 3.81 to 3.97

SMU Accountancy - AAB/B to AAA/A, 3.72 to 3.96
SMU Business - ABB/C to AAA/A, 3.72 to 3.94

Do you understand what this means?

Extrapolating from this, a 3rd class honours from a local uni biz/acc graduate typically scored ABB/C or 3.72 for their A levels or poly. The level of academic intelligence is that high.

The 10th Percentile to 90th Percentile. These are your competitors for mid end finance jobs, such as analyst positions that you mention. First class hons from science and engineering are also trying (and mostly failing) to get an analyst position.

For your lower end finance jobs like private banking and operations, you have your choice of first class/2nd upper SIM graduates depending on how low you want to pay.

For the upper end finance jobs that just about everyone wants, your competitors are those with double degrees - and got first class hons in both of them. Other fancy stuff include integrated Masters, CFA, overseas internships.

By the law of statistics, getting straight As for your A levels is now the norm. Your differentiating factor is actually the number of As. Do you have 7 As, 8 As, or 12 As?

In such a level of competition, you actually see very good candidates being forced into lower level jobs.

Actually this sort of question reflects why many locals keep getting pawned by employers and foreigners. Instead of seeing pay and promotion as combination of office politics, connection and work performance, they put all their focus on getting certs and choosing degrees to study.

Those who can make it to IB won't ask silly questions online, need to ask means not there.

Ask also no use cauz no IB around in a forum that mostly deal with student, unemployed or junior exec job seekers.

an ivy league or equivalent degree

Up to a few years ago bulge bracket IB's in Singapore did not even take in local grads... but since the government started a move to 'localise' the workforce because of complaints from the masses of the hoi-polloi they are now required to hire local grads into their IB teams

So you might have a chance to interview for an investment banking job... if you are doing a double degree with close to perfect GPA and multiple finance internships + case study wins.

I am pretty sure you're not working in IB!

I am in the industry and have many friends inside. Here is my two cents. Forget all the nonsense about the impossibility of getting in. It is really not that difficult to get in. Of all my friends who REALLY wanted the job, 90% got it.

And these are regular people with just Biz ad second upper honors finance graduates. Really nothing special. I can even list names if we want to get there but take it from someone who is actually in the industry... it's not that difficult.

The cutoff is second upper but from there, the hardest part is breaking and getting your first real finance related internship. Don't dream about making the cut for Goldman Sachs IBD internship as a 1st/2nd year. Instead, target a decently attractive firm (does not not have to BB), get in and learn the trade and manage the hours. From there, it's all about networking and more networking. I interned at Lazard and then proceeded to intern at a BB the next year.

I won't say it's ridiculously easy but very possible if you want it hard enough. Don't listen to the craptalkers here about how you need 20As or multiple case competitions nonsense. Actually, a pretty face is more important ;)

Good luck!

Thanks for the info. May I know how many years of experience do you have now and what is your remuneration package?

I'm in BB IBD in Singapore and I think I know who you are from the way you write... :)

What I don't understand is why people make it sound like breaking into IB is that difficult?

Actually, it is far harder getting an offer from MBB than a BB offer. I suspect that many of the commenters are not in the industry.

For the record, having an ivy league degree doesn't necessarily bolster your chances of a return offer. My nus friend beat out two wharton / LSE kids to get the return offer.

My personal experiences working with ivy league / top uk schools also confirm the same thing: if you're good enough to be selected, you're good enough to be there. The truth is that a lot of the kids who made it to ivies or top uk schools were only able to do so because of papa mama scholarship.

Aside from HYPSM, the top students at local schools are on par. I even have friends who got into Tier 2 ivies like Brown but turned them down due to cost. Not being sour grapes here because I fundamentally do agree that US/Uk schools provide a better experience/platform but you don't have to beat yourself down if you're from a local uni and think that you have NO shot at a BB IBD. Lol.

Btw, just to answer the OP's question since I think that has been neglected, there is no degree that offers a better ROI than Finance.

My rationale being that you don't have to study as hard as your medicine/law/dentistry/engineering folks and yet have the (potential) and very real possibility of getting a FO job or an MAP.

Your starting pay at the 80th percentile is roughly 5k as a fresh graduate. Easily. Top 20% of cohort is achievable.

Medicine is insanely hard and you will burn out unless you're dedicated and love the job. Law has now become lawl. You're paid peanuts, literally chump change from the fees of any M&A deal and you still work like a dog. I suspect mortgage specialists earn more. Accountancy i.e. big 4 is the most overhyped crap ever. Never do big 4 if you wanna earn big bucks, never. Engineering might actually be ok if you love it. The starting salaries of some of my friends at places like Grab or other niche software places is 5-6k. But that's software related... so I wager that's ok. Just make sure to stay steer of the funny, funny mechanical/bioscience blah blah nonsense.

That's about it for all.

Psc oms, ideally qualify for PS too.
For Singapore context, it offers you the best chance of becoming govt linked organisation ceo. Which actually have very decent renumeration , at least 1 mil per year. Once becoming ceo, your performance can be pretty average, but pay is still good. Hence high roi.

The scholars farmer side is still true.

Good answer!

Degree will open the door to any role you wish to venture into. A good starting base pay will help in the long run. At the end of the day, who you know will trump what you know.

I've been in sales and trading for more than a year, more specifically fx sales. Hours are fantastic, money is fantastic. I only have a private degree, but hustled my ass off supporting the desk before joining them. Totally worth it, no regrets joining. On the trading side, you have more stress meeting PnL targets. Sales side you have comms target but generally the current crop of clients we have makes it easy to meet targets.

this info whole thread is very outdated. now definetly highest ROI degree is definetly CS (NOT IS)

Spend 4 years in local U with MOE grant for tuition each sem pay only 4k+ for CS degree

Come out 2nd upper and if your coding skills are GOOD you can minimally hit 5k starting pay with tech companies like Grab, Shopee etc etc

Better if youre first class honors - companies like Indeed, GIC, Google, FB pay at least 6k to 7k as fresh grad

Even those go that into into tier 1 consulting (Mckinsey, Bain, Boston) which almost always requires you to have FCH only pay 5.5k for their entry level associates.

Source: I am a tech recrutier in one of the unicorn companies and have access to salary offers and competitors offer range as well

Sales and trading is 10k per month for freshies FYI...

These days probably data science or computing degrees

You're saying like as if every person who gets into B&F Degree makes that amount. The median for a run of the B&F mill chap is probably only 4k+ at best going into a MA programme in one of the local banks

Sure I only know a handful of traders and those require FCH and LKY gold award and the top of the education pyramid - probably that upside can be 9 10k

Do you think statistically speaking OP is of that caliber which would be the top 0.5% as above?

We should use run of the mill qualifications to compare. 2nd upper (know to be average grade in uni) CS student already command 5k+, what about B&F grads?

I'm not fch, no lky awards whatsoever. Somehow I got in. Many ppl say I'm lucky..

Yes statistically people who use salary forum belong to the top 1% of the population in EQ and IQ. So my calculations indicate he is likely to be top 0.5%.

Im afraid your model of run of mill grad does not work here

Best ROI is the ceca's Uptron cert, complete in 3 months then come to Singapore and make 60k/month. Pappies love cecas and their Uptron certs so that's the best ROI. Change my mind!

i only know hr is the least roi.. especially in private sector as hr is a job that dont require degree so if u find job in private sector, most likely the salary range is o level/diploma level range as they advertised dont require degree.

Fresh grad with hr degree starting pay in private sector around 2.2k to 2.3k only.

Unless you go govt sector as they are more structured.

Why are software engineers paid so much? My friends who are SWE in good companies gets paid 6-8k as fresh grads. I have been in the workforce for a few years already and still dont even get to touch 6k...