Quicksand, Drunkard says $100k is too high, but this site thinks its just right http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm
So lets average and say I get a starting salary of $75k, I can easily pay off the loan in 5 years. About coming back home, I wouldnt necessarily look for a job in the commercial banks that you have listed, I would go into investment banking and wealth management. But my dream would be to be self employed and just manage peoples wealth, ofcourse for a fee. Thank you for your advice, much appreciated, nitasoma kwa/na nguvu!!

Ai headache! I think I will focus on finishing Undergrad first, hizi Quants are for later. Can you breakdown what it is that you do? As in at the office 9-5, what are the goals required of you? Do you cold call? Or do you look at numbers all day, some kind of day trader?
Yeah Prudential did infer that I neednt complete my schooling, nilifanya tests mpaka nikachoka!

Good guess, 42k to around 60k for a business school entry level undergraduate depending on the company and to extension, school. Top 10 MBAs average just about 95k on entry level basis, Quant programs entry level average just over 120k, but remember they're selected schools with very few intakes. In short 100k is a long shot for a newly out of college undergra. To trade you've to prove that you can actually make money, no one is going to hand you money to use to train, series 7 will not get you anywhere near JP trading desk as Jason Hill was saying. Don't confuse stockbrokers to traders, trading floors are full of Phd and Masters in quantitative subjects or people with proven records of extra-ordinary success,just to prove it, google wallstreet jobs, what do you see as the qualifications? Phds, Masters in quantitative subjects........ gone are the days when trading was top-down analysis then purchasing. These days you find the best programmers, mathematicians often called strategists, Quantitaive modelers, all these make a trading team, Trading is done by supercomputers(high frequency trading), these people's work is to design trading program and hedging strategies and the 20%

@ Mr Hill

I met this kenyan one time, very articulated; he told me he worked for Boeing and he seemed to know what he was talking about but something didn't seem right as we talked about plane manufactures he missed a number of basic things, I later learn he actually work for boeing nuts contractor, in short he was working for a company that supply nuts to boeing. There is also another Kenyan who claimed to be working for Freddie but turn out to be processing Freddie loans at a local bank. The list goes on and on. For those Kenyans in Kenya that is how alot of Kenyan in USA lie about what they actually do.

Mr Hill, it is not hard to actually figure out if someone knows what they're talking about or not, I know you threw out some technical IT stuff which are not technical to alot of us, nevertheless, you've called wrong shot over and over again. Everyone knows that Ivy league serve you better than other colleges, even Kenyan Ivy League( e.g strathmore) served Kenyan students better. In one of your previous post you claimed that you've done alot of recruitings for both Ivy and non Ivy schools and then you went ahead and said your interns don't get paid and I called that out as red flag for someone who don't know or haven't been anywhere close to recruiting.

You said you need to have alot of connections to get to great companies, no you don't, you need to be smart and know what to do, I don't beleive you were at JP at some point since you'd understand alot of these. My own experience, I had no connections but having 3.9 GPA and passing 3 actuarial exams before celebrating my 21 birthday earned me two thing a great internship and a ticket to a competitive master program. I have always told students I know to make sure they get their internship before they graduate, forget about summer school, often students just apply a month before summer but remember most recruiting starts a year before the entry date and offers goes out over 8 months in advance!

I don't thing you've had a great success in your personal quest to get into Investment banking or corporate finance because you're so critical of almost everything to do with corporate world and believe me people who work for these great companies and industries believe in what they do. Ask someone who have work on something no matter what it is, and they'll tell you they believe in it with whole their heart. I will never be critical of capital markets and by extension financial engineering, even the securitization which caused the credit crisis was a breakthrough in the world of financial engineering but the execution was poor, the design itself was nothing but great engineering, that is how much faith I have with wall street.

Again you said that most people in Wall street did not go to Ivy, I will make a quick calculation.... about 90% of them went to top 30 schools and going back to recruiting and if you've ever filled Goldman sachs application you'll know that they ask for SAT or ACT scores, low SAT score won't cut it and top 30 schools will require high scores to get you in. Yes there are no name schools in Wall street, but how many of them? few very few and when you get down to their stories you'll easly point out why they're there in the first place.

Heated debate, good pointers, good job gentlemen atleast I am getting an idea of how things work. Is JP the it bank on Wallstreet, I thought Citi was a better catch! Anyways thank you for your contributions, keep it going, maybe just maybe, you are both right. There are several ways to skin a cat. I am not really interested in working on the trading floor, or do you have to start there? Drunkard please give me a breakdown of what an Analyst does, and also what a Quants does, please! When Buffet worked for Graham, what was his job title? Coz I know soon after he went back to Omaha and started Buffett holdings, those are the footsteps im trying to emulate, which path do you take for that? Hill I thought you basically have to have gone to Harvard or Yale to even see the interiors of Goldman???
Quicksand, from what I understand, the bonuses are usually given based on departmental performance, not necessarily individual performance especially at the entry level.

I don't have to prove anything about myself, you don't even know where I work and what I do, we're not taking about me, we're talking about you, you're the one advicing people here not me, you're the one hiring people not me, you're the one who said your a former JP vice president not me, you're the one who is so American that he has lost his last name not me, I am just drunkard who happen to have been to some fancy schools and don't care much about it, what I care about now is exposing how fake you're.

Wazua meets mashada.....
Ehhh kumbe diaspora earn pesa kama ujinga. Wacha I take my 50K salo (Kenya shillings that is) away from this thread.

@accelriskconsult: 32? Is it a typo cause it does not add up. You typically finish a bachelors at 23 or 22. How did he do a Masters at Oxford, another Masters from Harvard and squeeze in 8 years working experience with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Consulting and Barclays Bank of Kenya? Must be a genius or older than 32. I am feeling woefully inadequate by this yardstick

If this is true then the guy has been running through life while the rest are walking.

Look at the link given above and let me know what you think.

And btw James Mworia, MD Centum also has some impressive credentials garnered over a very short time period.