I plan to work in London following business school which I hope to begin in 2017, and I currently have an offer from LBS (London Business School) for their MBA/MiF programs. I understand from others that M7 schools in the US may command greater presence even for roles in Europe. I believe the particular example I heard was that Columbia and Booth MBAs were beating out LBS grads for London finance roles. Any truth in this and if so, what do you think is the cutoff where LBS becomes a better option than going to the US?
Also, if given the choice between their MBA program vs MiF (1 year post-experience masters in finance), what would you go for? I am 25 years old, will have 4 years of work experience at that point in Real Estate Investment Banking and (currently) PERE. I am hoping to use this experience to transition into infrastructure IB at a bulge bracket in London.
The Financial Times ranking criteria are a bit sketch.
A full 25% of the ranking is derived from 1) having more women in faculty or the student body, or 2) having people with international background. European schools will have a dominant advantage under these arbitrary guidelines. Another 23% of the ranking is based on before/after comparisons of their graduates’ salary and career status. This is useful from a practical perspective, but it also subsidizes schools which recruit weaker applicants.
I like that they assign a heavy and explicit weight to salary of graduates. However, there seems to be something wrong with how they calculate “weighted salary” for this purpose. The #3 highest school in weighted salary for 2016 was “Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad” (which inexplicably ranked higher than all schools in the world except Stanford and Penn).
So my conclusion is that these rankings are made with some agenda; maybe to enforce some sort of cultural values, or even to purposely put European schools on the top. It’s possibly also made by Indians.
Thanks, yes FT rankings do seem arbitrary and might be misleading. I do think I will shoot for H/S/W + Columbia + Booth as the feeling I get, at least in Asia, is that the reputation of Top 5 US superceeds anything in Europe despite the rankings. I was not overly impressed at the calibre of students specialising in finance at LBS - quite a number from Big 4 advisory / government / small buy-side/IB boutiques. A few impressive placements into bulge brackets, I believe GS was the top IB employer, as well as MBB for those going down that route, but at the same time many smaller names so it’s hard to tell the careers services value added.
If you are looking to work in the UK why are you not choosing LBS over US ones? The on-campus recruitment is much better I’d imagine, the placement is probably due to large number of international students. But if you have authorization to work in the Uk it’s a no brainer, LBS has great placements for IB.