Why you may still want to do your MBA at a US school
Yesterday, the London Business School scored a first, blowing US business schools off the top of the FT's global business school ranking to come first place.
So does this mean you should study an MBA at LBS - or elsewhere in Europe - if you want to get into investment banking?
That depends.
We spoke to various MBA recruiters for this article, and their opinion was clear: US business schools traditionally dominated EMEA banks MBA recruitment, but in recent years the balance has generally shifted towards Europe.
"Historically, most banks in London targeted US MBA schools like Wharton, Columbia and Harvard because the calibre of the courses was better and most of their senior bankers were alums," says the head of graduate recruitment at one major European bank.
"More recently, most banks have reoriented their hiring in favour of European businessw schools like LBS and INSEAD," he adds. "This is partly because it's become harder to find top quality MBAs in the US who are interested in coming to work in Europe."
However, while most banks now draw a significant portion of their European MBA intake from the likes of LBS and INSEAD (and occasionally IESE), there appears to be one exception to this rule: Goldman Sachs.
One former MBA recruiter for the bank said that only a few years ago Goldman still drew 80-90% of its MBAs from US business schools. We understand this still holds true today.
