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International students, particularly those not perfectly fluent in English, face some additional challenges when applying and interviewing with London Investment Banks. Nonetheless, many have successfully been able to frame their international experience into a selling point during investment banking interviews.

Practice is even more important.

Try to practice with native English speakers. For improving your English, there is no time like present to start to speak English with native speakers more often.

What is an MBA?

An MBA is a Master of Business Administration, typically a 2 year degree, but some schools have 1 year MBAs (Insead and IMD). You'll learn mostly about management and leadership, although you can specialise and have a major in finance, marketing, strategy, etc.

You will get taught in small groups of 30-40 people through a combination of case studies and lectures. There are also significant "off campus" learning opportunities such as club activities, trips to companies, competitions, etc, and MANY social events for you to network with fellow students and potential employers.

One of the most common questions that gets asked here: "How do I make it into Goldman Sachs?" Goldman Sachs is consistently ranked at the top of the investment banking league tables, attracts top talent, and pays the highest bonuses, so no wonder students and bankers all want to get a job at the prestigious investment banking firm.

Here are the tips we gathered from a "Goldmanite", who spent 16 years at the firm:

There is no magic list of courses, study, deals or anything else that will guarantee you to get hired by Goldman Sachs. Let me explain how this works:

Continuing on the pay surveys, here is another quite good survey done by Business Week on MBA pay after 5, 10, 15, 20 years and over their careers. The usual suspects Wharton and Harvard are on top. To take with a pinch of salt though, as the top schools have a large proportion of students going into finance (banking, PE, Hedge Funds), pushing salaries up.

You can find the latest London Investment Banking salaries and bonuses survey under our Banker's Corner Tab Salaries and Bonuses. Forget about what you saw on Google, heard on forums, or what you tried to extrapolate from US salary figures. Here are the real numbers.

Despite the recent financial crisis, salaries for analysts and associates have increased quite substantially and bonuses for 2010 and expected 2011 remain high.

The best hedge funds managers such as GLG (now part of Man), Brewan Howard, Och Ziff, Citadel, etc. earn sums that would make any investment banker drool. Unfortunately, for the very large part, they don't post any job offerings. How, then, can you get a job at a hedge fund?

The best suggestions are network, always have an elevator pitch ready (why you), and always have at least 2 investment ideas ready.

When hedge funds are recruiting, they will typically ask their collegues to ask their friends if they are interested and not go through headhunters. You should therefore do everything you can to put yourself on the radar screen:

> Reach out to all your friends in hedge funds to let them know you'd like to make the move
> Attend industry events

Life as an investment banker will be a dramatic change from your student days and your usual lifestyle. No more free time to play sports with your friends, eat healthy home-made food and get 8 hours of sleep.

A question that often comes from students and investment bankers is "how do I do to be ranked in the top tier?", and also "what happens during the year-end investment banking appraisal that will decide my bonus and promotion"

So let's plunge into the mysterious depths of the year-end appraisal process. At most investment banks, the process goes like this:

We ran a survey of our readers and colleagues, and here is a compilation of their most valuable tips on how to avoid work, leave a good impression, and retain some sanity as an investment banking analyst. Junior bankers and not the ones that will close deals or bring business, therefore, impressions you leave will be a big driver in your year end appraisal, as opposed to actual revenue generated.

# 1 Do not always answer your phone, and let the calls go to voicemail or let people emails you so you get time to prepare an appropriate strategy and subsequent reponse.