<p>I am choosing between getting an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley or Warwick (in the UK) and I want to know which college would give me more of an edge with job prospects. I've been accepted into Warwick for Economics specifically, which is supposed to be one of their stronger programs. With Berkeley, I'm planning on either declaring a major for Econ or applying to Haas (which you can't do until sophomore year). I want to go into banking in general, and not necessarily just investment banking. </p>
<p>Berkeley
+ I got the Leadership Award Scholarship (it might look good on my CV?)
- I am an international student. </p>
<p>Warwick
+ I'm a UK citizen so in terms of getting a job, I'm on the same level as other residents
- Though its Econ program is Top 5 in the UK, the "brand name" may not be as well recognized elsewhere (US and Asia)</p>
<p>I want to get some opinions about which college would be the better option if I want to do a career in banking. Also, regarding the schools specifically:
-> What kind of tier is Berkeley (esp. Haas) seen in among recruiters? Is it highly regarded? Is Berkeley as well regarded in the US as Warwick is in the UK, or vice versa?
-> Is Berkeley a target school for banks and investment firms in the US?
-> Does being an international student at Berkeley put me at a major disadvantage in terms of getting an IB job (especially in this financial situation)?
-> Do international companies recruit at Berkeley?</p>
<p>I'd really appreciate all the advice I can get, so please tell me about your opinion even if it can't answer all my questions. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>You’d probably have better chances of getting into IB coming out of Warwick than Berkeley (albeit only quite slightly), but I’d rather go to Berkeley if I were you to experience the American college life. Warwick is a great university and very-well regarded in Europe, but Berkeley is in California (one of the finest places in America) with loads of amazing, very intelligent people from almost all corners of the world. </p>
<p>There are also restrictions for internatioanl students to remian and work in the US that you will be dealing with, something that you won’t be facing if you’ll attend a university in the UK.</p>
<p>For IB in the US: Berkeley, even though Berkeley isn’t on the same level as HPW, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, etc.
For IB in the UK: Warwick is heavily recruited, but Berkeley won’t hurt your chances in London or Hong Kong either.</p>
<p>I recommend that you go to Warwick and work in London. If you don’t have a green card, NYC banks won’t hire you this couple of years even if you have 3.9+ GPA.</p>
<p>Is this actually true? By this, I mean that banks won’t take you on for internships or full-time work (i.e. you’ll be at a HEAVY disadvantage) if you’re an international student with a usual F1/2 student visa?</p>
<p>I just want to know the extent to which this is the case, as in the UK banks, you have a hell of a lot of international (non EU) students working there, from the likes of the US, India etc etc/</p>
<p>New York is not like London. You can probably do internships using OPT, but even then, some firms specific says they only hires applicants with permanent work authorization (i.e. citizenship & green card). When times are good, many international students get hired full-time, but these aren’t happy times. Therefore, it’s totally unlike the UK.</p>
<p>banks would take you on internships. However for full time offers it could be a problem. Nevertheless it doesn’t matter. If you go to Berkeley you can get recruited to work in london. I had friends in college from the EU who got jobs in banks in london. The case is not vice versa- no bank on wall street will hire a UK grad except someone from Oxbridge/ LSE or sometimes Imperial. They have to use an immigration lawyer to handle all the paperwork and its not worth it except you are a superstar and they want you.</p>
<p>That’s not entirely true. I have friends who received their undergradute degree from Southampton, Warwick, Durham, Manchester and St Andrews who are now in WS. LSE and Imperial don’t hold any distinction amongst the other UK unis I’ve mentioned. And the law re Immigration applies to all foreigners even to those who graduated from Oxford and Cambridge.</p>
<p>Oxford and Cambridge graduates are hardly in the majority of banking hires in the UK (LSE, UCL, Warwick and to a lesser extent Imperial have far more in numbers), let alone the majority of UK graduates on WS.</p>
<p>To clarify- I meant straight out of college. Like an IB would prefer to just hire you in your country of residence and then maybe do an intracompany transfer later to a base on wall street. I am sure your friends did not get the jobs straight out of college- they might I dont know and I have never heard of such a thing. Of course your friends from those schools might have worked in london for a while then transferred to wall street.</p>
<p>What I saw in college in the US was this-when an international student goes up to talk to recruiters at IB they would outrightly advise you to apply for the office in the country you have residence in. People from Singapore and HK are lucky in that they are a huge base for banks. If you are exceptional and have a couple of internships in an IB from you country- you could then luckily apply for a position in the United States. If you come from a country that an IB does not have an office in you could then have to try in the US- use your OPT and then if lucky get a H1B. My friends who were European got placed in IB in london or Switzerland- some were lucky to get placed in the US. Infact lots of Americans want to work in London but its very hard for them to do so.</p>
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<p>I meant you must be extraspecial for them to put an effort. They have to apply for an H1-B for you. Why would they do that when they could just place you in London? If he goes to Warwick and gets into an IB he could of course try and move to the US. But being hired straight from Warwick for the US office? I hope you know that people from Ivies with 3.8s cannot get jobs on WS and then an IB receiving TARP funds will now go to Warwick and hire their student over an American citizen.</p>
<p>^ You’re saying as if there really is a difference between those who graduated from Imperial/LSE and Warwick/Durham/Bristol/St Andrews. </p>
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If US banks would hire a few grads of those unis straight right out of undergrad, I don’t see why the same banks don’t do for grads from Warwick/UCL/Durham/Bristol/St Andrews.</p>
<p>This lacks consistency. Its like saying there is no difference in how banks view schools in the US when recruiting. Everyone knows LSE is held in very high esteem in the US and this pervades banking recruitment.</p>
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<p>Its quite basic- if you want a company to sponsor a work visa for you from another country you have to be extraspecial. They could easily place you in the country of your residence so why jump hoops to go through immigration. Rarely would you see in any analyst class in the US which has a foreign graduate except maybe an American who studied at a UK university and is trying to work in the US. </p>
<p>Basically for full time offers- study in the country you want to work in. Its more difficult to get hired cross-country. This is as basic as it gets. I am not trying to debate tiers in UK universities.</p>
<p>I was trying to tell you that there really isn’t much difference between LSE/Imperial and Warwick. They are in the same class, more or less, for IB placement. Recruiters will find “extraspecial” gradautes at Warwick as they would at Imperial/LSE.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks for all the input everyone! I just read all the comments and that was really helpful in clarifying the different opportunities I could get from Warwick and Berkeley. </p>
<p>I agree that it definitely makes sense to study in the country I’d like to work in. Personally, I think California would be a really beautiful place to work in every day but since it is really difficult for international students to get a job there or in Wall Street straight out of college, it might be better if I worked for a few years in the UK before trying to apply for a job in the US. And since Warwick and Berkeley both give similar opportunities in the UK itself, I guess Warwick is the safer bet. I’m just going to have to start thinking about how to be active in the clubs at Warwick so I can have as good a college experience there as Berkeley offers!</p>
<p>ref, I don’t know how they’ve done it, but a lot of Berkeley grads from overseas have found jobs in California banks and remained there for a while before going back to their homeland.</p>
<p>Its not that hard to find a job in the US if you know from the go what you need to do. However a risk-free path would be the warwick one. All the International students in my school who wanted to work in IB got a job easily but most had like multiple internship experiences. Some started interning in their sophomore year mostly in their home country.</p>
<p>^ I wouldn’t mind doing a lot of internships if that would boost my chances of getting into IB as an international student. In fact, I totally get why that’s important in order to stay competitive right now. I know some people who’ve just finished their freshman year in college and are already doing two internships each this summer. The only thing like you said is :</p>
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<p>Berkeley isn’t even an Ivy so if those students can’t get a job on WS, it must be much tougher for the top Berkeley students to get a job there…</p>
<p>^^^^ But are there internships within banking, or just another sector? Moreover, two internships within banking seems nothing short of impossible, given one is impossible enough…</p>
<p>ref, Berkeley grads don’t have to go to WS for banking jobs. Most of the very established ones have offices in California. It’s where Berkeley (and Stanford) grads establish linkages and raport. </p>
<p>Having said that, Warwick is still the safer choice.</p>