<p>Hey guys</p>
<p>I'm admitted by both UChicago (EA, may major in economics and math) and Oxford (Economics & Management). I'm an international student - I wanna find a decent job at wherever I go to college after graduation.. but a job in the US is always preferable than one in UK..</p>
<p>Quite clear about the major differences of those two great schools...</p>
<p>I wanna give it a poll but since I can't...heyy help me make the best decision guys!!</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>hasnt the reply date passed?</p>
<p>Oxford obviously, but you can’t go wrong with Chicago either I guess.</p>
<p>@rocncyber which college did you get in at Oxford? Does it matter?</p>
<p>thanks for the replies!</p>
<p>Yes, the reply date has passed but I think i can still choose between those two since they are from different countries…</p>
<p>I got St Hugh’s college (i’m not quite sure if that does matter or not, but I heard all the classes are held by Econ Dep and Said Business School -> which is not on par with Booth I believe…)</p>
<p>I don’t know much about Oxford. I know about it’s world renown. You said you are an international student. I also assume you are not a Brit. Where would you like to work and live post graduation? If USA, then Chicago. As is, it’s pretty tough to be a get job that comes with employee sponsorship for a work visa that leads to Green Card from which you can apply to citizenship a few years later. At least, if you attend US based university, you have better chance of networking and finding summer internship in USA and such that will lead you to a job with employer sponsorship. </p>
<p>I don’t know about ease/difficulty of getting a job as an international applicant that comes with work visa in Britain that leads to some sort of permanent residency paper.</p>
<p>Note that in USA, it has become very difficult as of late. For skilled workers, USA prefers engineers and other tech/science workers. Every year, companies like Google and Microsoft with awesome in house HR with resources and experience dealing with foreign/international hires fail to secure work visas for all of their foreign hires, and they have to “temporarily” house these new hires offshore to shoot for the skilled immigrant quota next year. (MS sends them across the border to Vancouver, easy distance, Google, I don’t know where: sometime they house them in their home country for a while). If my memory serves me right, the yearly skilled immigrant yearly application starts in April (not sure), and within several days, the quota is already filled as big companies with back log of international hires flood the system the moment the application is open. </p>
<p>At least, the likes of Google and MS have the incentive to go to this distance due to the fact that USA does not produce enough native engineers and tech types that meet their lofty standards. In other sectors, the picture becomes grimmer.</p>
<p>I heard some stories that financial sectors lately did not have much incentive to “sponsor” international hires for USA based position given the glut of the domestic candidates. In other sectors, I know excellent candidates who hit a dead end after their prospective employers learned that they have to sponsor them for work visa. </p>
<p>For all the international students prowling on CC, please understand that if your goal is to work in USA upon graduation, your first priority from the day one on any campus is to find a way to network, intern, whatever that will secure you that first job that comes with sponsorship for work visa. For you, nothing else comes close as a top priority. Of course, top grades and scores and whatnot are a basic requirement since you can’t under perform the locals - it’s a given and not even worth emphasizing. </p>
<p>Every once in a while, I read about international students who were completely ignorant about this aspect, and find out, much to their dismay, during the final year in college while they are looking for a job, that their international status is a major liability, and yet, they have done nothing to address this issue.</p>
<p>My niece is an international student who is starting a graduate school this fall. She wants to settle in USA after graduation. I told her that her number one priority from now on is to do everything and anything to get her best prepared to find a path for a job, any job initially, that comes with work visa. It’s tough and it seems unfair to young people who always thought their merit trumps everything else. But, this is the reality. (alas, she is not in a graduate school that leads to academia, so her problem is worse. For a Ph.D. going for an academic position, it’s a bit easier, provided you are good enough to land an academic job on merit, which is tough enough for anybody, local or international).</p>
<p>Of course, marriage is always a way out, and bypasses all the cumbersome issues. Are you extremely charming with an universal appeal? 
(note: I doubt gay marriage will be federally recognizable for immigration status any time soon, so if you happen to be a gay/lesbian, this option is also not available)</p>
<p>One caveat: my experience is about 2-3 years old. I doubt though that situation has changed much.</p>
<p>There are really three valid axes of analysis here:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The immigration one, which hyeonjlee has explicated well (I think).</p></li>
<li><p>Where do you want to live, for the next 3-4 years, and thereafter? No one here can tell you that.</p></li>
<li><p>Do you want a broad liberal arts education with a theory-oriented concentration, or do you want to study business and nothing else from Day 1? Again, no one here can tell you what you prefer.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Oxford = three years of drinking, followed by two months of cramming. The drinking age is 18, and there are no interim grades before you graduate, so no necessary homework, tests etc. to keep you occupied and sober. It’s a completely different experience.</p>
<p>OP, i think u should go to UChicago.</p>
<p>If you are a true international student without the right to work in the United States, then I would suggest Oxford hands down. Simply put, most selective American employers are no longer willing to sponsor work visa’s after putting up with years of artificially low quotas, since they invest significant money in recruiting only to be told their employee selection did not pan out in the work permit lottery. Meanwhile, outside of the cr</p>
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<p>I thought even that was not automatic. If it is automatic (get a degree, and you DEFINITELY get this opportunity), then at least it’s worth it for those who really want to settle in USA. </p>
<p>As for the uchicagoalum’s recommendation for Oxford, it depends whether getting a work visa and a path to permanent residency in UK is indeed much easier than it is for USA. </p>
<p>For the OP, the real issue is not whether Oxford or U CHicago is better than the other as an academic/education institution (both are excellent). Rather, it is the ease/difficulty of settling in either country coming out of a local (in country) university. (the odds of getting a work visa in USA fresh out of a school in US is much, much, much worse than that out of a USA school.) Both I and uchicagoalum provided input regarding the USA work visa issues. The OP needs to do some research on UK work visa issues. </p>
<p>Of course, if the OP is willing to go back to his/her home country and settle, truthfully, I would recommend Oxford: it’s a better known name).</p>
<p>I believe the STEM exclusion is automatic, but that only a fraction of programs are able to get it. When applying to graduate school back in the day, Columbia prominently posted which programs did and did not qualify. It seemed rather arbitrary to me, but it went a long way explain how apple pie some programs were.</p>
<p>I just think Oxford would be better. I would be redundant in stating many of the reasons above.</p>
<p>thanks for all your replies! it really gives me some general idea about those two universities: as you all have pointed out, one of the main issue is about the working visa and so on…</p>
<p>in spite of this visa issue, which one US employers will think better than the other? would US employers prefer oxford grads than uchicago ones?</p>
<p>at the level of such top universities, it’s less a matter of which university employers prefer. Rather, it’s a matter of from which university you have better access to the kind of employers you are interested in. Since you said economics and such, let’s assume you are interested in Wall Street type jobs. Then, definitely U Chicago, not necessarily because U Chicago is better than OXford for the subject matter, but because most top Wall Street firms recruit on campus at Chicago for their new hires. They won’t recruit on campus at Oxford. These jobs require at least a summer worth, or perhaps two summers, of internship at top WS firms. They do on campus recruiting at Chicago for summer interns too. Not at Oxford (let me know of they do on campus recruiting in foreign countries. I highly doubt it). It’s a matter of networking and access, and for that, definitely local (USA based) school! </p>
<p>By the way, WS firms only do on campus recruiting at select top elite universities, almost exclusively private ones. They don’t really get new hires that are not funneled through their on campus recruiting drives. That’s why unlike in other fields, for WS type jobs, it really does matter which school you go to: you don’t even get to be recruited for consideration, not to mention of loosing out to the competitors based on merit and experience, if you don’t go to the WS feeder schools. Of course, there are exceptions. I am talking about “generality”.</p>
<p>Incidentally, my son told me that he heard that U Chicago sends the second largest number of graduating seniors going to JP Morgan. He couldn’t verify it though. Anyway, Chicago is a very well respected presence at Wall Street, though number wise, it’s behind the likes of Harvard, Princeton, U Penn, etc, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve dealt with so-called WS firms, in funds, legal, regulation etc, at NYC, London, HK, and Tokyo over 25 years as a client, a dealer and a stake holder. I’ve worked with more Oxford graduates than UChicago graduates in those firms, including US based i.e. JPMorgan, especially for key position players,</p>
<p>I always thought Oxford graduates was most sought after by those firms as HY, UTokyo graduates; not just of selected recruiting schools.</p>
<p>My understanding is, foreign nationals graduating from overseas universities may end up at the US locations of the top WS firms AFTER they have established themselves in the WS firms’ international branches. </p>
<p>I heard that new hires just graduating from overseas universities are seldom recruited from overseas locations. </p>
<p>However, I heard this from a couple of old friends/colleagues who have family members at the WS firms. As such, I can’t say it with an authority of someone with a first hand insight into the whole matter. </p>
<p>My general thinking is, if the OP is hell bent on settling down in USA after graduating from college, start at a USA based college: I believe it’s still a better bet. If not, go to Oxford.</p>
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<p>In other words, you haven’t worked a day in your life on Wall Street. But that hasn’t stopped you from consistently giving (bad) “advice” re: WS to prospective students anyway. Such as the following:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064961300-post3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064961300-post3.html</a></p>
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<p>The “state school” in question (and at which you were thumbing your nose down) is UVa, which by all accounts is recruited as if not more heavily than Chicago for WS jobs. The prospective student in question is a Virginia resident, so s/he’d be spending approximately $100K more (over four years) for a Chicago vs. UVa education. S/he specifically stated that s/he was looking for “honest advice.” But you gave her mostly ill-informed (not to mention self-serving) “advice.”</p>
<p>You’re acting as if Chicago were Harvard/Wharton/Princeton/Stanford or something when it comes to WS.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064961300-post3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064961300-post3.html</a></p>
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<p>Sheer irony!</p>
<p>objobs,</p>
<p>I find your post absolutely useless and insulting to thoughtful readers and posters on this forum.</p>
<p>The poster you are maligning baselessly has been providing thoughtful insights and input over quite some time, and many of us, both students and parents got a lot of useful advice from her/him. </p>
<p>Apparently, this poster has a son at Chicago intending to land a job in WS and in the process s/he researched a lot on this subject and became quite knowledgeable. You do NOT need to have direct, personal experience to be knowledgeable about a subject matter. If that’s not the case, 99.9% of TV/newspaper commentators should lose their job. </p>
<p>By the way, his/her points about Wall Street being elitist and recruiting only from a select few colleges are absolutely on the mark. CHeck this forum: it’s full of discussion centering around whether certain colleges are good enough to be WS investment banking target schools or not. [Investment</a> Banking - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/investment-banking/]Investment”>Investment Banking - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>Please save your venting for genuine ■■■■■■, and leave the rest of the board for thoughtful discussion not contaminated by your useless insults.</p>
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<p>According to a thread in the IB forum you cited, Chicago is not better than some state schools (Cal) and only slightly better than others (Mich, UVa) when it comes to WS recruiting:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059765243-post3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059765243-post3.html</a></p>
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<p>I stand by what I said. Her dissing of some “state schools” in favor of Chicago as a WS target is wrong and not “useful” and “thoughtful” at all. It’s disingenuous to advise a prospective student to spent twice as much money to get exactly where s/he wants to go. Again, Chicago ain’t Harvard, Wharton or Stanford when it comes to WS recruiting. So stop tripping. Chicago just isn’t that elite, but it is arguably as elitist.</p>