Lightmode wrote:
First, you should carefully interpret the information provided on the school site, since they publish only highly selected information. And the reason they do so is surely not because they love the truth that much but to sell the program and the school brand. Plus the program coins 160 grads each year, so no wonder you see a wide range of jobs there.
Second, we never talked about investment banking, in fact, msc in acc&fin is primary source for ib recruiting at lse. We talked about fi\equity research and prop trading. And this sort of job, believe it or not, implies knowlege in economics and math. Even on those pages you sent me it shows only a couple of research\trading jobs. But what the pages don't tell you is specific info which makes up the whole story:
a) Number of jobs taken. It may well be one or two out of 160 grads (+ diploma holders and earlier intakes)
b) Prior experience. It is falsely to assume that they talk only about 21-22 year old people straight from the student bench. We see lots of associates, senior something, even the head of something there. That means that those people had prior finance\management experience and not necessarily in accounting. And it's also likely true for those people who took research jobs. Furthermore, we can't rule out the possibility that those people didn't even change anything and just returned to their jobs they had before. As for a trader, this title also implies experience, since when you are recruited on trading desk straight from uni, you become an assistant trader. You don't fall in b) category, do you?
c) on the acc&fin page you gave there are no traders at all. Do you think if they did have traders they wouldn't tell you about them at least for the sake of diversity? And there are no prop traders on both pages. There is a difference between trading and prop trading requirements. BB firms don't give a prop trading job without trading experience.
Third, no one questions the lse brand per se, but normally people in the right mind don't take, say, MSc in Gender with the aim to land a job in Quant Finance no matter how strong the lse brand is. But surely not those who might argue that in high finance it is the name of the school that matters most.
In sum, out of more than 160 people, there may be 1 or 2 people who took trading related jobs and several research jobs after graduation. Was this because of prior research\trading experince, nationality, connections, mere luck or any other non-degree related factors, we don't know. But what we do know is that betting 20 000 pounds on something that has such a low probability is not a smart move.
Are you a little sour from not getting an LSE fin&acc acceptance or something? Give the OP a break. This guy/girl just got accepted into two very good programs, and he/she has shown you that people do get trading/quant jobs coming out of LSE. All that was asked for was a simple opinion, not an insult.
BTW, I would recommend LSE, OP. And congratulations.