Ever stiffer competition

How many students now applying? 11.1% of all grads.

A new study suggests investment banking is back in students' good books. The 2006 UK Graduate Careers Survey found that investment banking is now a more popular destination for UK university students that at any time since 1995, with 11.1% of graduates applying to work in the sector this year.

The media and teaching are the only sectors currently more popular than banking, while accounting ranked as the fifth most popular career destination, behind marketing.

Martin Birchall, survey director at High Fliers Research, which conducted the study, says banks are benefiting from cumulative effect of the past few years' campus marketing campaigns. Students' perception of the market typically lags reality by good season or two, he says. The fact that banks have had a big presence on campus for the past few years is only now starting to have an effect.

How much could you earn as a new graduate? Up to 40k.

Banks are also helped by their hefty starting salaries, which Birchall puts at between 35,000 and 40,000. On average, students expect to earn only 20,300 in a first job.

The study found that by the time they're 30, 12% of students expect to be earning 100,000 a year, a figure strangely similar to the proportion applying for banking jobs.

And your odds of getting in? Now 60:1.

Birchall warns that many of those applying for banking jobs are set to be disappointed. Although the number of banking jobs rose 17% this year, while the number of banking applicants rose only 3%, he says applicants still exceed positions by around 60:1.

Most banks are absolutely swamped, he says. They are not looking for any more applicants, just for the best applicants.

The survey covered 16,452 final year students at 30 leading universities in the UK and Ireland.