The above is true. There are no guarantees. Still there are stats — percent placed and average starting salary.
I think in the long term it does not make a difference. And if the kids going to do a masters then undergrad won’t count.
Which is why I am keen on the kids doing an undergrad in Canada and having them save the money. If it doesn’t work out the backup plan would be to do an MBA here and return to the US.
Yes, for many degrees aspiring to do a PhD is perceived as having the highest status for the best students. College reunions focus much more on how many academic honors like Nobel Prizes have been won than how many alumni have achieved comparable success in politics or business.
Note that there’s no comparable pre-law or pre-med track in the UK: if you want to do law or medicine then for most people that’s what you do as your undergrad degree starting at 18. Similarly vets, PTs etc.
So instead of a broad liberal arts education you specialize in a subject, which naturally makes you think highly of academic specialization like a PhD. The fact that it was seen as a prestigious choice was certainly an important factor (along with not wanting to get a real job) when I decided to do a PhD. And because it’s only three years, you don’t have to feel like you are committing the rest of your life to academia.
I wasn’t specifically thinking of 6-year graduation rates but rather that these topnotch, straightA students simply need to prepare for a course so difficult they will be failing despite doing their best and trying their hardest thus having to retake it the following semester.
Students who have gone through the CEGEP system have had two years (what is Senior year in HS and freshman year in college in the “regular” system) to move to a larger school, get used to a new system, have more autonomy and less hand holding than at university, yet have relatively smaller classes, personable teachers, and somewhat difficult but doable assignments than high schoolers. For instance, where HS may have 600-2,000 Y9-11 students, the CEGEP has 2,000-6,000, students, the university 30,000-40,000. They arrive in Y1 more ready than students who start in Y0 from HS. (They still encounter at least one hard class that many need to retake to pass.) That’s especially true at McGill, UT, and Waterloo. In particular (although it’s known as a hard class) it’s much easier to take Linear Algebra in CEGEP in a small group with a teacher who knows you and can help than in a huge lecture hall.
In case someone is interested, the 6-year graduation rates are around 80-85% for the most selective Canadian universities and 90-95% for UNC, UVA, UMichigan (the most comparable American universities). Typically the 4-year graduation rate is 10-15 less.
https://macleans.ca/education/university-rankings/graduation-rate/
Wrt placement, top students and students with experience at Bocconi “place” as do LSE, Sciences Po, ETZH, Herriot Watt, UCD, Trinity, St Andrews, King’s kids… but in Europe (where salaries are much lower than in the US. A good salary for a college graduate is going to be €30-35k.) However the career centers tend to be anemic compared to US career centers. It just doesn’t work exactly the way it does in the US.
However they can get 2 years of solid work experience - getting th visa is almost automatic - then get into a Masters degree in the US, and rely on that to jumpstart the rest of their career OR use that degree to get into a 1-year Masters at a prestigious program/university directly.
The difficulty is being among the top students in a system that one doesn’t know then figuring out a non linear path that doesn’t necessarily take 4 years to a job.
My perception is LSE is a lot better in terms of placement odds compared to Trinity, St Andrew and King…
I have heard a lot of stories about US kids at St Andrew’s specifically not getting placed upon graduation. My perception is kids at LSE would be hot potatoes? King and Trinity likely similar to St Andrew’s?
LSE is far harder to get admitted to than the other three, much more comparable to Oxbridge. They could (and typically prefer to) fill their classes with better qualified students from Asia instead of the US.
But even if you got admitted, being a “top student” there would also be much more difficult.
Just to add, my niece who just graduated from a Russell Group university (but not one mentioned above) with a first in environmental science (and three A*s at A level), isn’t having any luck with job applications in the UK (she’d like to work in conservation/national parks etc), not even getting any interviews, despite having several internships on her resume. The job market for new graduates in the UK seems even worse than the US unless you do something vocational (particularly teaching or healthcare).
Yes I agree LSE is in the same league as Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial. Harder to get in, harder to do well and better placement odds.
From what I understand UK economy is in dire straits and job market especially for new graduates is very poor. It might or might not be different in 6 years but for now we are not very keen on the UK as a whole. LSE remains on the list and a top pick.
I know salaries in Europe are a lot less. The bit I don’t understand is whether Bocconi and IE are in the same league as LSE or they are a notch below like King and St Andrew’s in terms of placement. My thinking is Trinity is likely a St Andrew’s KCL type of situation.
To me Canada seems the best bet although the job situation there is not good either. But at least he won’t have the passport issue.
Need to add a reality check to the discussion.
1- Nobody gets “placed”. This isn’t the military where you sometimes get to select your top three interests and hope you get one of them. Every single competitive company/role is- competitive.
2- Y’all are missing the importance and relevance of the soft skills. Some competitive institutions are looking for “fire in the belly”-- they prize self-starters, new grads who have NOT had Mommy and Daddy micro-managing their lives, evidence of radical behavior sometimes, swimming against the tide. Others apply the “airport test”- if a Managing Director or other senior person is stuck on a 6 hour layover with this candidate- will it be a brutal snore or an interesting and stimulating conversation. Still others are just looking for intellectual horsepower- not in terms of grades and GPA, but how diverse and deep their thinking is. So “rating” universities in terms of ROI, who gets which job, ignores this entire bucket of qualifications.
3- If you care about ROI (and some of you do) you need to explore what happens to the kids who aren’t getting hired by Goldman et al. How will you feel about your kid getting a job doing financial analysis for a P&C insurance company (a fine entry level job, but usually does not lead to the big bucks/highly prestigious companies). How will you feel about your kid ending up working for the State of New Jersey (or any of the other 49) evaluating the performance of the various state pension funds and recommending different managers or doubling down on a particularly successful one? Fantastic roles-- very important to the millions of retirees who have spent their career working for the public good- but it’s a public employees salary even though you are doing work which could pay 5X if you were doing it in industry and not for government. How will you feel about your kid ending up working for a consumer products company doing sensitivity analysis on the costs of rolling out a packaging redesign?
3-- There is no such thing as placement. Lather, rinse, repeat. Kids who are getting the highly paid, prestigious jobs have fought tooth and nail for those jobs. The only exceptions to this are jobs in government in Europe and Asia, where there is a glidepath from a few universities to the “jobs that matter”. But as an American in Europe or the UK, your kid is not getting tapped for a cybersecurity role advising the PM/head of State anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
4- Remind your kid if they are going overseas (or across border to Canada) that “youthful indiscretions” don’t count when you are a guest in someone’s country. That applies to drugs, carrying a parcel for someone else, making sure you know the age of consent when you meet someone, etc. I’ve seen promising careers derailed by what a plugged in parent could have “fixed” in the US with a good lawyer, because the kid was thousands of miles away and the parent couldn’t find the good lawyer in time. Or it was the wrong lawyer. Your company’s head of Intellectual Property Law is not going to be able to get your kid off with a warning if the kid has been arrested overseas.
Rant over.
This was the expanded version of my “depends on the student too”! Indeed, if it was just about where you graduated and with what, companies wouldn’t bother doing interviews.
Interesting - I didn’t know this til recently. One of my colleagues was on a 5 year stint there but is back after 3 years. He loved it. I asked - why come back early.
He was forced back due to expense to the company (which is cutting). He said he could have stayed, becoming a local employee and thus giving up his rights to an American job…but to stay he’d have to take a 60% pay cut.
That’s nuts to me!! Maybe they get more social support there but still that’s a huge haircut.
And salaries level off in some countries in Europe. More comp gets shifted to benefits vs. the US. So you see middle managers driving Jags… “company cars”. But their raises have been 2% for the last few years, even with a promotion.
sounds like my last company 
2% would have been good - but I was high in the pay band and that mattered more for my “merit” increase.
Much different working for a US company and being sent over to Europe with an ex-pat salary vs working in Europe directly. My D makes more than double what a starting chem e would make at their sister plant in Europe. If her company sent her over to work over there, she’d get her US salary, her housing paid for, a company car, and a bonus for working overseas.
I’ve yet to meet a person doing hiring that has admitted they choose blindly based on undergrad institution. In my experience, they all have stories of people who came from top undergrads that ended up laughably bad applicants, and then of other people they found at less prominent undergrads who ended up fantastic hires.
Anyway, I do think “career services” is one of those student service categories that US students might take for granted and that may be far more rudimentary, or practically non-existent, at some non-US universities. I don’t think that makes it impossible to get a good job, but it might require a lot more self-education and hustling in some cases.
Question remains are Bocconi and IE more comparable to LSE or St Andrew’s.
I understand the remaining bit.
I think this partly depends where you are looking. For jobs in Europe, they are very highly regarded. I knew a number of people from example French and Swiss owned banks (you can probably figure out the types of names I mean), the European locations of our large investment bank etc who were graduates of these schools. That may not be what you mean by “placement”, especially if your son does not have what many of these graduates also have being (1) EU citizenship and (2) fluency in 3+ languages. (I can’t speak for all their grads obviously but the ones I met generally spoke, in addition to their home language, English and at least one other European language.)
When the interviewer asks “why Bocconi?” The answer can’t be “my parents thought it sounded more prestigious than Haverford or GW and it was also a lot cheaper”.
At least Canada makes logical sense.
Back in my days working in MBB type firm in continental Europe (so, pretty dated info!!!), Bocconi was one of the top b-schools (along with INSEAD) they liked to hire from. But what @SJ2727 writes is spot on. That was for European graduates looking to be hired into a European office.
INSEAD is graduate school only though, right? I knew a few MBAs from there among colleagues and clients, but that’s a step beyond where OP is looking for now.
In my view, St Andrews is a bit of an oddity among top UK universities in that it is more undergrad focused than most. Like, St Andrews last reported 10235 total students, of which 8388 (about 82%) were undergraduates, whereas LSE reported 13728 students, of which 6175 (about 45%) were undergraduates. Oxford reported being about 47% undergraduate, Cambridge 52%, and so on.
I think in US terms, St Andrews is sort of like the Dartmouth of top UK colleges in that sense–although even Dartmouth is still only around 66%. But that is a lot more than, say, Harvard, about 33%, or Chicago, about 39%, and so on.
Or alternatively, you could see it as like a William & Mary (its US partner for its joint degree program). W&M is about 72% undergrad.
For many undergrad courses, St Andrews is then quite selective. The Guardian league tables include an average entry tariff column (this is the “typical UCAS scores of young entrants (under 21) to the department”), and while that doesn’t fully capture all elements of selectivity, it is a reasonable proxy in many cases.
So for their undergrad course in Economics, for example, it goes Cambridge 224, St Andrews 221, Oxford 211, LSE 204. I don’t think St Andrews is actually more selective than Oxford, once you factor in the interview stage and such. But it is definitely quite selective in the sense it is popular enough to be able to turn away UK applicants who do not have very high UCAS scores.
For the Business course, it goes Oxford 220 (Cambridge doesn’t have this course), Strathclyde 210, St Andrews and Glasgow tied at 202 . . . LSE is actually down at a tie for #9 with Bath and City at 183.
Of course this is necessarily for UK students–US students at these colleges do not have meaningful UCAS scores. So it is plausible St Andrew’s courses are often more selective for UK applicants than US applicants (this is certainly the reputation, the suggestion being St Andrews wants the extra cash from US students).
I don’t know enough about Bocconi or IE to really comment on them, but they are such different types of institutions, and obviously in a different country, so I think it might be hard to really compare.
But I would say that for undergrad purposes, St Andrews, more so than LSE, or very much more so than Bocconi or IE, likely appeals more to the sort of US students who are otherwise looking at general interest private universities in the US, or even LACs (or William & Mary, which is on the same model despite being a public). And then Oxbridge in the UK.
Indeed, in my (admittedly limited) experience, a US kid applying to St Andrews for undergrad may ONLY apply to one of Oxbridge as well. The next-best choice for what they are looking for might actually be Durham, but they might not see it worth applying to Durham.
LSE in my circles is then much more known as a university you might consider for a grad degree (and conversely, St Andrews less so). But I know some US undergrad do consider LSE. I just don’t know whether they also consider Bocconi or IE.
For excellent placement you also have these programs
If quant kid
https://www.hec.edu/en/basc-data-society-organisations
They’re new but backed by very well known schools.