You want a junior finance job in Singapore, but you didn’t study there. Which foreign universities are proving the most popular with banks who’ve been hiring 20-somethings in the city state?
We trawled through our CV database to find Singapore-based finance professionals with five years’ or less experience. We then identified the 30 most popular universities for people in this group who studied outside of Singapore, and we ranked these overseas institutions by a percentage of the overall top-30 total to produce the ranking below.
The results reveal the London School of Economics – historically a prime destination for elite Singaporean students aspiring to launch careers in finance – as the clear winner. You don’t necessarily need to attend a leading US or UK university to secure a banking job in Singapore, but it helps: Berkeley, Stanford, Imperial College, Cambridge and Oxford all appear alongside LSE in the top half of our list.
The top-10 universities are primarily based in Asia Pacific markets, however. As the closest Western country to Singapore, Australia has long been an obvious option for Singaporeans wanting to study abroad and this is apparent in high rankings for the universities of Melbourne, Queensland and New South Wales.
More interestingly, our list reflects the recent growth of Singaporean students studying in Hong Kong and China as universities in those markets gain more global recognition for their academic standards. Peking and Fudan universities are in fifth and ninth places respectively, which also suggests that their local Chinese graduates are moving to Singapore and finding work. Four Hong Kong schools make our top-30.
Twelve North American colleges are in the list, but many (including Harvard and Yale) are clustered in the bottom third, primarily because it’s generally cheaper to study overseas in Asia Pacific and the UK than it is in the US.
If you want a junior banking job in Singapore, you are advised not to study in continental Europe. Despite the abundance of English-language finance courses there, no European schools make our list.
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