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But, I left school only with GCSE's and I had to work in some shitty factories etc before getting a job in an apprenticeship doing I.T.
I was already very good at I.T. and the apprenticeship didn't serve me much help apart from a few extra qualifications
Then I got my job in the current company starting on roughly 10K, within 3 months I was made the first trainer, then team leader, then I worked at British Council site doing some server maintenance etc, came back and carried on to shift leader on the out of hours team, I now take earn roughly 30K pa but that is with some overtime and shift allowance too, I'm happy with it for now as I also get other things like private health care etc
I also do a few things on the side out of work to top it up for now
I am in college at the moment upping my qualifications and have secured a new role in the company in a more technical position, within the next 6-12 months I should be able to secure a 30-35K basic pay permie job, and I'm aiming for 50K job within 3 years
That is Cardiff pay as well so the equivalent in most english cities for 50K seems to be about 65-70K! lol
I'm happy I can see a goal at the moment really, I still want more though so we are trying to set up a nursery for my OH to run in about 18 months, we'll see how that pans out though as the profit margins look very tight
There's lots of info about, if you do a google there's a careers website with different city careers and what kind of degrees you need etc.
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/p!eLaXi
And more specifically:
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Explore_types_of_jobs/Types_of_Job/p!eipaL?state=showocc&idno=387&pageno=1
It's fairly easy to look around and fairly in depth.
Firstly, the prestige/reputation of the university you go to matters much, much more than what you studied. May sound unfair but that's how it is. In the hard-to-get areas (like trading at Goldman Sachs) you'll have people who studied Classics, Geography, Philosophy, English, History at Oxford or Cambridge, but not those who studied Banking, Finance, Accountancy, Maths at unis outside the top 20.
Secondly, a 2.1 is essential for a lot of grad schemes, if you get a 2.2 you are f-cked. A 1st class is not essential, but is becoming increasingly advantageous. More and more people each year on the grad schemes have a 1st.
Thirdly, work experience and extracurricular activities, ie a packed CV, is just as important as your academics. If you graduate with a 1st class degree but a blank CV you are going to struggle. You really need to get a relevant internship whilst at uni for the more competitive roles.
- To get into the "front office" (the division where people actually generate revenue through sales/trading, M&A executions, IPOs etc) at a "1st tier" (there are plenty of banks but only 8-10 really good ones like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley etc), you need a 2.1 from a top 10 (ideally top 5) uni. A 1st class degree is an advantage. A subject like Economics, Mathematics, Finance is desirable but as mentioned above your uni matters more. About 75% of UK grads are from LSE, Cambridge or Oxford (usually in that order). And you need stuff in your CV to stand out like being president of a uni society, captain of a sports team etc. A few get in the back door still through old school network but this is decreasing.
- To get into the "middle" or "back office" (divisions which support the front office bankers - eg through risk management, trading technology platform development, settlements) you need a 2.1 from a top 40 uni and an OK CV.
- To get into the "front office" at a bank outside the top 10 people will typically have a good profile with one thing lacking - eg a 1st class degree from a top uni but not enough work experience, or brilliant experience but a 2.2.
If you want to find out more about if you're good enough / what it takes, just do a Google search, there's a lot of forums out there with students/young grads involved in the industry who will tell you the frank truth, as I said don't trust "official" guides, they are often full of sh*t eg an employer saying they don't care what university you go to if you've got a good personality. Just look at the bias with the grads they take on to see the real truth!
Hope that helps. I'll inevitably get flamed again for being elitist, or whatever...
just thought you were ricardo back again when you first started posting, thats all.
Depressing
Hopefully in my career this will have started to change though. I don't agree with [urlhttp://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/philip_hensher/article197311.ece]some [/url] that think think Oxbridge grads are automatically better... but I think they still do get jobs easier.
doesn't mean other grads don't work as hard as oxbridge ones though
Not necessarily but it's likely that they do work harder during term time. For one, their term times tend to be shorter, so have to cram in more work in the same amount of time.
Also standards and expectations there are going to be higher, you can pretend to yourselves all you want but certain uni's are better than others in general, and certain uni's specialise/are known for being great in particular areas, e.g. Loughborough and sport.
At this point I'm not getting into the arguement as to whether the content of all degrees is the same, but because of the stupidly short terms the work load per week is much much higher. Leads to needing pretty impressive time managing skills.
Need2Vent's post is largely fair but it's a bit too strict. Cream will rise to the top regardless of university. I've said before but one of GWST's friends is a high-flying graduate with a top investment bank (who shall remain nameless) and she got a 2.2 from a lower university. Equally, though, another of our mutual friends is doing well in the civil service and she got an Oxbridge first. Um.
In certain specialised fields a degree from a specialised university will stand you in good stead. Loughborough is widely-regarded as the best business university in Britain, Northumbria University is highly regarded for law and teaching, what was UMIST is highly regarded in scientific fields, etc. Equally a degree from a "top five" university isn't always that good- an IT degree from Durham is barely worth the paper it is written on.
My degree from Durham impresses people more than one from Huddersfield would, of course it does, but even then most people I know from Durham haven't got pupillages and haven't got paid training contracts and didn't get onto the graduate treadmill with PwC or Accenture.
York has 3 ten week terms but only 8 weeks of teaching per term because the first week is always exams or freshers week, and my course at least has reading week in wk 6.
AFAIK Oxbridge, like Durham, use the traditional term system, rather than semesters. We had exams once a year, in June, and they were all the traditional three-hour slogs. And we had various essays to be handed in during the term itself, roughly one every 10 days.
I do 2 modules a term, and thus have at least 2 three hour exams in the first week of the next term, unless the module is coursework assessed like one of mine is this term.
They're always referred to as terms as well, not semesters.
Freshers 'week' starts on the Saturday night when induction days are Wednesday and full teaching starts on the Thursday. No reading week half way through to catch up (much as we'd love one).
It's also one final set of exams at the end of each year, all or nothing unless you're a science student in which case you'll get some credit from your practical marks through the year.
My opinion on Oxbridge is a bit mixed. I got rejected from Oxford so had to go to LSE. Did me no harm whatsoever, in fact getting a job in economics/finance was probably easier with all the top firms right at your doorstep in London. Oxbridge is over-rated, most people I've met there are pretty mediocre - completely ordinary normal people who just happen to be naturally intelligent. However at the top end, the ones who get employed by Goldman Sachs, McKinsey etc, there are some fantastic top-notch people with 'the whole package' of perfect skills + attractive/charismatic. And they're still in the minority compared to European hires - article in BBC today saying how lots of employers favour foreigners to Brits at grad job level http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7218805.stm.
Hmm... I didn't go to uni (left school after GCSEs). At the moment, I'm on 1 application, 1 interview... I'll let you know if it's a job offer on Wednesday!
Stockton campus has always been part of durham university
I remember beforehand Durham was a consistent 4th/5th. Then people who got CDD A-Levels still got into BCC courses at Stockton, sending it outside the top 10 for a while. Slowly getting back on track.
Someone PM'd me this, list of careers Durham grads go into - http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/st-cuthberts.society/web06empcollegeUGfirstdeg.pdf. Lots of sub-£15k stuff, v surprising (although many will be doing stop-gap stuff before finding their career).
Durham is one of the top universities in the country, regardless of where The Times list puts it, given that some of the criteria The Times use are somewhat bizarre to say the least. Certainly it varied between position two and position 13, depending which guide you read, when I went there and it hasn't changed that much since I went there five years ago.
You certainly are obsessed by how great LSE is. Obviously Oxbridge graduates are "mediocre" compared to you lot :rolleyes:
That interview went so badly, but I got the job!
Nice one mate!!
about the most you'll earn from cs as a grad is £35k and that's in London. out of London £25k is average/just above average.