13. One Page Only, Not More Not Less

I hope this blog post will be able to save you from attending CV writing seminar and hence save your $25 (if this blog post ever serve that purpose, please donate your $25 to charity). The CV style that I am going to present to you is very common among LSE students. Most students who apply for jobs in finance or consulting industry always use this "1-page only, not more not less unless" rule. Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, let me introduce your (prospective) CV ! (Click on the image to make it larger)

Right, let me first start with the top section. Whether or not to include a photo in your CV depends on the firm you are applying to. In UK, you are not recommended to put your photo (let alone another person's photo) because either you will scare the recruiting manager to death with your handsome/beautiful face or you are trying to get the job based on your look instead of your skills. Firms are not allowed to ask for candidates' photos too to prevent discrimination against race and sex. However, this is not the case in Asia. Most of the time, you have to attach your photo in your CV or it will not be considered at all. Please attach your "professional" photo in which you are wearing business/working suits (with ties for males) and SMILE ! You want to leave a good impression when the hiring manager first look at your CV. 

The next important thing is your full name. Make sure the font size is BIGGER than any other letter in the CV and BOLD because it is the most important thing in your CV. You want to make sure that the recruiting manager remembers your name when s/he glance through your wonderful CV. The other personal details that you should include is your home address, mobile number and your email address. It is important that you use "professional" email address in the sense that it is in the form of firstname.lastname@domain.com (or without the dot separation), please do not use any cute nickname and/or put number like "HelloKitty" or "RonnyGoh888".  I also recommend that you use gmail or googlemail instead of other domains but it is not compulsory. Please do not include your birth date (unless it is 29 February) because it's completely useless and no one cares about it.

Always remember that each item in each section is listed in reverse chronological order starting from most recent to least recent experience.

For fresh graduates, always put your education before your working or internship experience. Now, you are probably wondering why you should put "University of London International Programme" instead of your school's name. The reason is that it is University of London that issues your certificate not the institution you are studying with. You certainly do not want to confuse your prospective employer's HR when you present your certificate. If you put your school's name instead of UOL, the (stupid) HR will probably ask you why the school's name in your transcript is different from the one you state in your CV.

State whatever academic awards and their nominal values that you received during your undergrad studies and if you have not graduated make sure you state your expected honours if you are already in your third year. Otherwise just state the name of your degree, year of study and the courses that you study. 

Please do not put Mathematics 1&2, Statistics 1&2 unless you are 1000% sure that the hiring manager is also a UOL graduate because no one is going to understand what those subjects mean. Imagine you are the hiring manager and some students from other universities put Economics A, Mathematics B, Statistics C in their CV. You will probably wonder do they study both micro and macro in Econs A and how advanced ? Do they study both linear algebra and calculus or is it discrete mathematics in Maths B? 

After your undergrads studies, you may want to put your pre-university education. In the example, I put A-Level qualification. If you come from polytechnic then you may want to change that, you can state your GPA (if it is a good one), final year project, etc.

What comes next is usually your working experience. If you are working and studying part time, then you have lots of things to write on this section. Otherwise, you can put your internship experience here. For you who have "lousy" internship experience in the sense that you did not do much useful things during your internship, please do not be too honest in your CV. Even though you only helped the associates cleaning their tables, arranging their folders, etc., you should list down your experience as if you had done something for the firm. Trust me, from all the people that I spoke to, almost all of them did nothing much during their internship yet their CVs show as if they saved the world from cataclysm.

The next section will be EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES. If you hold a top position in the the clubs such as president, vice president, or director, then I suggest you change the section's name to LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE. Now, when you list down each activity make sure it has something to do with leadership, organisation, and/or communication skills. Use keywords such as leading, assigning or delegating responsibilities, monitoring, etc. Do not forget to write down the impacts or results of your presence in the clubs. Notice that in the example, I put that "the work resulted in ..." and " led ... and won 2nd place" This also give signals to your prospective employers that you are result-oriented person. For World of Warcraft or other MMO players, please do not try to be funny and put your experience as guild leader in your CV.

Finally, the last section is SKILLS & INTERESTS. Usually people always state that they are highly proficient in MS Office even though they do not even know anything. If you are applying for jobs in finance industry, then you can list down Bloomberg and Reuters as part of your skills but make sure you know how to use these two otherwise you will shoot yourself in the foot. Next item is your language skills. Always start from your native language, then the most fluent to least fluent language(s). 

The last part is usually your interests. When you list down your interests, try not to making them sounds too general. For example, saying you enjoy playing tennis and travelling sounds phony because everyone can say so. However, if you wrote something like you are tennis national champion and you have traveled to 42 different countries then the hiring manager has no choice but to believe you that you do enjoy playing tennis and travelling.

Now, let me draw your attention to the title of this blog post. Nowadays, applicants have outnumbered number of positions available. If you cannot convince the hiring manager to invite you for an interview after s/he glanced through the first page of your CV, do not expect him to turn into second page.  If you are fresh grads, then your CV should be only 1 page long, not more unless the firm you are applying to CLEARLY state that they acceptCV that's more than a page long. If they do not state anything, then you better submit only 1 page.  Not less because you do not want to look like a antisocial lazy bum who does nothing but sleeps at home. If you do not have working/internship experience then you should have enough extra curricular activities to fill the gap. I suggest that you use 2 cm for top,bottom,left and right margins. You can squeeze those to 0.5cm each in case you need more space.

Make sure your CV looks neat, everything is in order and it is in pdf format when you submit unless the firm require you to submit in .doc or .docx format. In latter case, make sure you turn off spell check and save it. You do not want the ugly red wriggles hurt the hiring manager's eyes. Always send the CV once to yourself before you submit it to the firm. Open it from other computers and see whether it presents itself the way you want it to be. Always check out for typo. Sometimes a single letter can destroy your life. For example, Barclays Capital is also known as BarCap. If you accidentally add a letter "r" in between "C" and "a", then your relationship with the bank is over for the rest of your life.

My suggestion is always ask someone else to check your CV for you because as the author of your own CV, your eyes will often deceive you. But there is also a problem when you ask someone else to check typo for you, that is, they just glance and never read. I suggest that you put one obvious typo in your CV and see whether the person you asked to check at least notice that typo. If s/he does not, then you know that prick is not trying hard enough to help you at all. 

I hope I have covered what you need to know in order to write a good CV. But I may have missed something. So, if you have questions, please fire away in the comments.

12. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 4)

Nowadays, decent positions in investment firms require you to be able to read and analyze Financial Statements . Do not worry, you do not need an accounting degree or have to be an accountant. You can set up an Investment/Finance Society and "hire" those BSc. Accounting and Finance or whatever degree who study Principles of Accounting to teach you how to read and analyze Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. How they are linked together. Basic accounting principle Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders Equity. How to read, construct and analyze Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. Etc.

For you who want to be a banker, I have a cold joke for you. There is a bunch of candidates who went together for interviews with an investment bank. There was only one available position but they were all equally good and the interviewer had hard time deciding which one to hire. The interviewer then gave them a final task which test their ability to handle long calculations. Each of the candidates was given a laptop and they were asked to open the calculator application. All of them, except one, accidentally opened Excel and he got hired on the spot. The moral of the story is, you will be expected to be very good with Excel if you want to be a banker.

Since MS Office training is not part of UOL education, you can put them as one of your society/club activities. You can teach people useful shortcuts every week, for example, if you want to insert a row, you only need to hold "Alt" then "i" then "r" instead of doing the long right click, then Insert then choose entire row then choose OK. If you want to do a column sum instead of typing "=SUM(A1:A8)" on cell A9, you can immediately hit "Alt" and "=" on cell A9. All these shortcuts are very useful and will increase your productivity when you work in the future. There are lots more cool shortcuts out there, it is your task to find out if you want to be a trainer.them out.

Finance is a very broad industry. What I mentioned above is mainly about Corporate Finance, you may want to take a look at Capital Markets (hint: $$$) as well. Right, I will stop here, if you really serious about setting up an Investment/Finance society/club and need more ideas, feel free to email me.

Now, it is not mandatory for you to set up a club/society though you will be a bit cooler if you do. You can join Student Representative Council or the existing club/societies but please compete for some management position e.g. Project Manager/Leader, Executive Committee, etc. that can give significant contribution to your CV. Joining sport clubs is not a bad idea too, but try competing to be captain of the team instead of just ordinary members. Joining a Toastmaster Club is a good idea because it can give a signal that you have excellent communication and presentation skills. In fact, you may learn how to create effective power point slides when you are preparing a speech.

Even though I emphasized a lot of extra curricular activities, please never ever put them before your education. Do not join too many clubs/societies more than you can handle. If you think it's too much to juggle between studies and extra curricular activities, then join at least one and not more than two clubs/societies.

Do not spend all your time studying because too much emphasize on Education section in your CV signals that you are nerdy and dull. On the other hand, too much emphasize on Extra Curricular Activities section with lousy marks or honours may signal that you are a playful idiot. So, try to strike a balance between education and extra curricular activities.  

Anyway, it looks like I did not get my 50 comments but I do not want to disappoint those who had left comments on previous post. So, for those who had left comments, please post your email address in the comment section (on that post, not this one) so that I can send the exclusive CV to your inbox. I will remove your email address once I copy it down. 

Next week, I am going to cover about CV writing. The first 3 persons who put comments on my next post will get a free consultation with me regarding CV and Cover Letter. I will even help you rewrite your CV and Cover Letter if necessary.

See ya !

11. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 3)

For all of you who would like to know what the life of a consultant is like, I would like to recommend you to read The McKinsey Way. 

The link I provided shows you the outline of the book. This book is very nice to read because the author has good sense of humor. If you have a leisure time, please take a look at the book.

Right, let's continue where we left off last week. Market-sizing questions are also known as mini-case studies. They serve to test your quick calculation ability, analytical thinking, business acumen in making assumptions, and also your communication skills in describing your though process and making summary. These questions can be quite nasty because you are expected to give a sensible solution given minimal data. These questions are very popular and often asked during interview process with management consulting firms and also other top firms such as Google.

Here are some examples of market sizing question

1. How many laptops/personal computers are being used in Singapore today?
2. How many people are there at Changi Airport on Saturday 1 p.m.?
3. How many airplanes are there in the sky of London right now?
4. How many newspapers are sold in Indonesia every Monday?  

These questions are insane, aren't they? Well, believe it or not, sometimes consultants are asked this kind of questions too by their client, for example, demand forecast of their new products. Remember these questions are not asking for exact number. They just want some sensible number because the interviewers also do not know the exact number ! Let me answer the first question for an example.

How many laptops/personal computers are being used in Singapore today?

1. We can start by estimating the size of Singapore population, say 5 millions.
2. Next, we make an assumption about about average household size to calculate the number of households in Singapore, say 4 people per household, so we have 5 mill / 4 = 1.25 million households.
3. We continue by estimating the number of computers used  in each household. Given today's technology advancement, let's say it is 3 computers per household (1 for parents and 1 each for the children)
4. So we have about 3 x 1.25 = 3.75 millions of laptops/personal computers used in Singapore today.

Next, we have case interview. The case presented to you is usually a business situation where the hypothetical client is facing a difficult problem with the company/product/competitors or is thinking of a new opportunity to explore and asks you to help address some of the issues. The case can be a problem, a situation, a riddle, an example of a real client situation (based on the interviewer's experience) or a contrived scenario. It is an exercise for the firms to test your analytical thinking and to examine how well you can handle problem-solving questions. At the same time, it is also a great opportunity for you to determine whether consulting is right for you. If you do not enjoy problem solving then the likelihood that you will enjoy consulting is very small.

The interviewer does not expect you to give the right answer. They are looking at the method you use to derive your answer, the questions you raise, the assumptions you make, the issues you identify, the areas of exploration you prioritize, the frameworks you use, the creativity involved, the logical solution you recommend, and the confidence and poise you present.

As usual, let me give you an example of a case which involves profitability framework. Imagine that you are now a management consultant. Your client's company has made losses over the past 2 years and you are hired to fix this problem. The interviewer stops here and then look at your eyes. That's all the information s/he has for you at the moment.

Since you have studied Introduction to Economics, you know that

Profit = Total Revenue - Total Cost

Since the company is making losses, you know it means that revenues have been declining and/or the costs have been rising. So, you ask the interviewer what happened to the company's revenues and costs over the past 2 years. He tells you that both revenues and costs have been rising. Now, mathematically, it means costs increase more than revenues does. Before you start recommending the firm to fire their unproductive labors, you suddenly remember that

Total Cost = Fixed Cost + Variable Cost

You proceed to ask, what happened to both components and then the interviewer tells you that the variable cost has not changed much since the past 5 years but there has been a sudden surge in fixed cost. I am not going to continue any further, but you should get the idea what the interviewer is trying to get from you using case interview.

There are still lots of other cases which involve more sophisticated frameworks such as the Porter's Five Forces, Kotler's Four P's, Value Chain Analysis, BCG Matrix etc. I am not sure whether you learn those in UOL 107 Introduction to Business Management. But don't you think it is fun to learn what those MBA students learn at business school? In fact, I suggest all of you regardless of what degree you are studying to take part in practising case interviews if someone ever set up a consulting club in your school. Not only your business acumen will be sharpened but also your communication skills will be improved. 

"Yes! That sounds very interesting but where can we get more information about case interviews and the business frameworks ?" For starters, you can try www.caseinterview.com . The registration is free !

If you are getting serious, then you may want to take a look at this book.

Consulting club is very common in business schools. But it does not mean that you cannot set up one eventhough you are not studying at a business school. Gather your friends who have similar interests especially those students who study BSc. Business or Mathematics or Economics or Management related degrees. In addition, you may want to give some cold calls to consulting firms, ask them to make presentations or even conduct case interviews in your school. 

Next week, I will give some ideas to some of you who want to set up a Finance/Investment Society and probably wrap up this series. 

Have a nice weekend ! 

10. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 2)

Alright, lets pick up where we left off in previous blog post, shall we ?

Many students sign up to be members of any club or society just for the sake of getting discount for the events organised by that club or society. This is a reasonable and logical action since by joining two or three events, you will get back your membership fees from the discounts. But, do you actually realise that at the same time, all these members are actually being "used" by the top management of the club ? That is, for the sake of their CVs to show their Leadership and Initiative skills which I will refer as L and I from now on.

So, if you want to demonstrate that you have L and I then one way to show that is to be a founder and also president of a club. But please do not set up any Tom, Dick and Harry club, set a club or society that will fit your story of why you want to work in a particular industry. For example, if you want to work in finance industry, then set a Investment or Finance club/society. If you want to work in business or consulting industry, then set up a business consulting society. If you want to be maths teacher/lecturer, then set up a Maths and Stats society.

Like what Spiderman says, "With great power, comes greater responsibility", being a founder and/or president of a club or society is not an easy task. You must have a clear agenda of what your club/society is going to do. For example, if you are going to set up a Maths and Stats society, you can recruit second and/or third year students to conduct homework help session every week for maths and stats 1 and 2 and also the new linear algebra and calculus.You can ask maths lecturers in the institution you are studying at to explain the application of mathematics in real life. You can also teach less mathematically inclined people to think analytically and effectively using quizzes or puzzles.

Let me side-track a bit. Those of you who want to join banks' treasury department, you will often get a brain-teaser questions and you have to answer them very quick. Here are few real questions which I had been asked before in interviews.

1) Count how many Xs are there.

        X     X     X
    X X     X     X
X X X     X     X X
X X X X X     X X
X X X X X X X X

There are many smart ways of solving this, one way of doing it is sort them into  4 + 3 x 8 (see the picture below)

        X      X     X           

    X X     X     X

X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X

Now, you may think 3 + 4 + 5 + 2 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 3 is also a trivial sum, but this way of thinking is wrong. When the problem gets more complicated, the trivial sum gets longer and longer and hence inefficient.

2) Today is July 23 2011 and it is Friday. What day is 2152 days after today ?

This question also tests your analytical thinking. The information July 23 2011 is irrelevant, some people may think it involves leap year in your calculation. We know that given today is Friday, every 7 day after today is still Friday. So, what we need to find is the remainder of 2152 divided by 7 (in Abstract Mathematics, we call this 2152 modulus 7). We can write 2152 = 2100 + 49 + 3 which is equal to 7 x 307 + 3. So, the remainder is 3. 3 days after Friday is Monday.

3) If you look at a clock now and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands?

An idiot would immediately say 0 degree. The distance between any two hours is 360 degrees/12 hours = 30 degrees. At 3:15,  the minute hand will point at 3 and the hour hand will move towards 4 by 15 minutes / 60 minutes = 0.25 of the distance between 3 and 4. So,  0.25 x 30 degrees = 7.5 degrees.

The 3 questions above are asked during face to face interview. However, before that you may have to sit through lots of quantitative questions (by SHL, Kennexa, etc). The quantitative test usually require you to answer 20 questions within 15 minutes, that is, less than a minute for each question.

"What about Business Consulting Club ? What kind of agenda does the club have ?" There are lots of interesting activities you can organise if you are going to set up a consulting club. Let me share with you a bit about the interview process with management consulting firms. Some firms like McKinsey and Oliver Wyman require candidates to sit through GMAT-like questions before face to face interview while others immediately invite you for face to face interview. They are going to ask about your interest, why management consulting and then followed by market-sizing question and case interview which I will cover more in details next week if not sooner.

I am trying to hold this "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" series as long as possible while gathering comments from 50 people on my previous blog post. Do not worry, I will still continue blogging even though I do not get those 50 comments. I can use some generic CV to illustrate my points at the end of this series.

Have a nice weekend !

9. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 1)

During my undergraduate studies, I only joined few societies during my first year. Starting second year, lessons getting tough and tougher and I spent most of my time studying in library. Little did I know how important joining sports/students club or societies was until I started writing my CV in my third year. I struggled a lot as I did not have any interesting story to describe my initiative, leadership and teamwork skills and even worst, my interest in finance.

Let me show you what my CV looked like back then.

Yes ! I heard you, it's horrible ! Even the present-I would not hire the past-me based on the CV for the following reasons:

1. The font-size for his name is bloody small, I definite won't remember his name if I have to glance through lots of CV.
2. Look at the white spaces between his details and his Career Objective, this guy definitely did not know how utilize resource fully - very inefficient.
3. Career objective ? What is that ? and what the hell did he write there? Junior Analyst ? That is a rank in a hierarchy ! I think this guy had no idea what he wanted to do.
4. Look at his education details. BSc. Mathematics and Economics.. major in Mathematics and Economics, thanks for the info Captain Obvious !
5. What is that SIM PEARLS ? The name is fancy.. Hm.. so what if you have completed that programme ? Does that mean you have excellent communication skill ? Leadership skill ? I don't think so...
6. "An active member of SIM - YEN bla bla as project manager and marketing executive bla bla" So what did he do ? Did he contribute something to the project?
7. Typing 63 words per minute ? He said he wanted to be junior analyst something and then he wanted to be a typist..
8. Of course we use powerpoint for presentation and word for document creation, thanks again Captain Obvious !

I can still come up with lots of insults toward the past-me's CV but I think you should get my point. 

The funny thing is that, after I came back from London and looked at my friends (also UOL graduates)' CV, they still have the same format and lousiness. Now, I understand why that is the case. The reason is that we did not have decent training in job search. Most CV examples that you find on internet are crappy. The CV writing seminar that we attended was crappy too. Everyone has a lousy CV and hence we do not know what a good one looks like. This is not really a surprise because writing a good CV is quite difficult.

The moral of this story is that I do not want you guys to repeat the same mistake that I did. Start planning your "story" so that you can land on your dream job easily after you graduate. Start writing your CV as soon as possible, do not wait until year 3 because you will need it to apply for internship during year 1 and 2. If you are UOL student and studying under an institution, chances are that your institution does not have good career service which is understandable because, honestly, only top schools that invest a lot in their careers service since that's what most students are after aside from schools' reputation. Anyway, do not worry, I will share you what I have learned so far from LSE Careers Service.

Let's get back to post "Regret Always Come Late". That job vacancy that I posted was one of many vacancies that I often found on the LSE careers service website. Those requirements are common and expected from fresh graduates who want to work for any decent company.

Since you have studying very hard and smart and also have taken my study tips seriously, let's assume that you are going to graduate with First Class Honours (aren't you ?). So, we can tick out point one and let's move on to point two. 

Imagine you are a recruitment manager and you have 2 CVs in front of you. One candidate claims that he has excellent initiative, leadership, and teamwork skills and another one shows those qualities through her extracurricular activities, which one do you believe? Clearly actions speak louder than words.

I used to think that student clubs and societies were waste of time. Students should spend most of their time studying in the library rather than organising stupid events and competitions. Well, what can I say ? I was young and naive back then.

If you are working and studying part time then do not worry because your prospective employer will not ask you about this "silly" stuff. However, if you are studying full time with an institution, then it is important that you join some student clubs or societies because you need those extra curricular activities to fill in your CV later on (in fact you will need this too when you are applying for scholarships that require you to be all-round). Don't be an anti-social student who go home straight away after lectures.

So, how can you demonstrate those so-called desired qualities through your extra curricular activities ? We will find that out next week !

Now, you should know that blogging is not easy. I do hope that my blog benefits lots of people. There are about 50 visits to this blog everyday and I want to make sure it's 50 people not just 2 freak visiting my blog 25 times a day. This is what I am going to do. I have a friend who is an LSE undergraduate and she got a summer internship with Goldman Sachs. It was very difficult for me to ask for her CV but then I got it in the end. In fact, I promised her that I will not share her CV with ANYONE! Now, I will probably break that promise (she is not going to find out anyway since GS is screwing her 20 hours everyday). In the end of "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" series, I will post her CV as model for all of you to follow PROVIDED that I get 50 comments from 50 different people on this blog post, saying "Hell yeah! Please share her CV with us !"

Do not cheat by posting more than 1 comment, because I can see your IP address ! See you next week (hopefully) !

8. For The Love of Money

So have you guys decided whether you want to be an investment banker or management consultant ? I hope you guys did go to each of the companies' website that I listed in previous post and find out about their businesses. Kudos to those who went to their careers section and start looking at the job descriptions. Anyway, in case you have not decided yet, maybe the following videos can help you to make a decision.

Right ! I just re-read my last blog post and I promised to tell you guys how to break into those industries with UOL degrees. Well, I must be out of my mind when I typed that because these industries mostly recruit directly from top schools (and unfortunately UOL degrees are less branded than those from top schools). Don't worry yet! You can still work in those industries but probably not directly after you graduate. 

If you are interested in IB, you can start by joining boutique investment / asset management firms or even the Big 4 (PwC, E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte) corporate finance related advisory, then build up relevant experiences and most importantly, networking ! If you are interested in management consulting, your best bet is to get internships and then hopefully full time offer from the firm you work for. I will (hopefully) cover about how to do that in detail later.

I still have lots of things to share with you all but I am extremely busy at the moment. However, I will not leave you guys with nothing to read this week. So, for all of you who are interested in IB, let me direct you to this wonderful website called Mergers and Inquisitions which tells you how to break into investment banking industry (it also tells you a bit about private equity industry) but note that the author of that blog is based in US so the context may not directly be applicable to Asia  (still it is worth reading). 

On the other hand, if you are into management consulting and want to find out more about this industry, this website called Management Consulted is worth reading (again note that the author of that blog is based in US, so the context may not be directly applicable in Asia). 

Next week, I will start covering about what you (UOL students) should do during your undergraduate studies other than studying, studying and studying.

Have a nice weekend !

7. Life After Studies

Lots of people did not have much plan for life after studies. They did not know what kind of jobs are available out there. In fact, many only started looking for jobs after they graduate. However, this is not the case for the students at the LSE (and all other top schools or those schools with excellent careers service). When I first arrived at the LSE, I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere on campus. I saw lots of students went to campus wearing full business suits. They were busy attending companies' presentations and networking. To make sure we are on the same page on this post, let's first watch the following two videos.

From the videos, it is clear that Investment Banking is what most LSE high flyers (and (MBA) graduates from top schools) want to work in after they graduate but there are 2 other more.

1. Investment Banking
   Big bucks and long hours are the hallmarks of the investment banking industry. One of the main reasons that Investment Banking being the top choice is because of its notoriously high starting salary for fresh graduates. It is a perfect career for those graduates who have taken huge loans to fund their studies at top schools. If you want to know more about investment banking, please read "Investment Banking Explained"
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Here are the list of bulge bracket investment banks (list is not comprehensive) that fresh graduates from top schools want to work for; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Barclays Capital and so on.
2. Management Consulting
   Wetfeet provides a good overview of this industry. If you are interested to find more about this prestigious career, please read the following:
   http://www.wetfeet.com/Careers-and-Industries/Careers/Management-Consulting.aspx
   
   
   Here are the list of top consulting firms (list is not comprehensive) that fresh graduates from top schools want to work for: McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney, Accenture, Monitor, Oliver Wyman, and so on.
3. Private Equity
   The following is an excerpt from a famous review magazine. It gives us a short introduction for PE industry.
   
   "Private equity firms raise funds from institutions and wealthy individuals and then invest that money in buying and selling businesses. After raising a specified amount, a fund will close to new investors; each fund is liquidated, selling all its businesses, within a preset time frame, usually no more than ten years. A firm’s track record on previous funds drives its ability to raise money for future funds. 
   
   Private equity firms accept some constraints on their use of investors’ money. A fund management contract may limit, for example, the size of any single business investment. Once money is committed, however, investors—in contrast to shareholders in a public company—have almost no control over management. Although most firms have an investor advisory council, it has far fewer powers than a public company’s board of directors. 

   
   The CEOs of the businesses in a private equity portfolio are not members of a private equity firm’s management. Instead, private equity firms exercise control over portfolio companies through their representation on the companies’ boards of directors. Typically, private equity firms ask the CEO and other top operating managers of a business in their portfolios to personally invest in it as a way to ensure their commitment and motivation. In return, the operating managers may receive large rewards linked to profits when the business is sold. In accordance with this model, operating managers in portfolio businesses usually have greater autonomy than unit managers in a public company. Although private equity firms are beginning to develop operating skills of their own and thus are now more likely to take an active role in the management of an acquired business, the traditional model in which private equity owners provide advice but don’t intervene directly in day-to-day operations still prevails. 

   
   With large buyouts, private equity funds typically charge investors a fee of about 1.5% to 2% of assets under management, plus, subject to achieving a minimum rate of return for investors, 20% of all fund profits. Fund profits are mostly realized via capital gains on the sale of portfolio businesses. 

   
   Because financing acquisitions with high levels of debt improves returns and covers private equity firms’ high management fees, buyout funds seek out acquisitions for which high debt makes sense. To ensure they can pay financing costs, they look for stable cash flows, limited capital investment requirements, at least modest future growth, and, above all, the opportunity to enhance performance in the short to medium term. 

   
   Private equity firms and the funds they manage are typically structured as private partnerships. In some countries—particularly the United States—that gives them important tax and regulatory advantages over public companies." 

   
   The top well known private equity funds are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and The Blackstone Group.

"So what is the point of telling us this ? These firms only recruit from top schools." Well, the point that I am trying to convey is plan what you want to do after your studies. For example, if you are pursuing UOL BSc. Accounting and Finance, and you want to be an accountant, then start doing some research regarding the industry; ACCA or ICPAS or CPA, The Big 4 Accounting Firms (KPMG, PwC, E&Y, Deloitte), when they start recruiting, what is the recruiting process like, and in case you don't get any offer from them, what are your second best options (Grant Thornton, BDO ?) 

However, if you are interested in one (or more) of those 3 industries, then stay tuned with this blog. It is possible with UOL degrees to break into those industries. How do I know? Because, I personally know 2 UOL graduates (Indonesian) who did that; one is working for Accenture and another one is with Credit Suisse. I will share with you how and what LSE students do during their term time to break into those industries. Oh yeah, if you are doing non-business or management related degrees and you are interested in Management Consulting, please don't quit. You are perfectly alright.

6. On the Battlefield

In exams, time is diamond especially if you are sitting for a 2-hour paper. You will be surprised that time flies very fast. Make sure you always bring a watch or a stopwatch if you like. The following are common stupid things that may cost your precious time but they can be minimised:

1. Answer is too long for a 5 marks question.
   The amount of time that you should spend on a x marks question is x / 100 * duration of exams. So if it is a 5 marks question for an economics paper, then you should not spend more than 5/100 * 180 = 9 minutes.
   Speaking of economics, you should always include a diagram for every answer whenever possible instead of waffling a full page answer. I usually draw a diagram (half a page) and then explain how it answers the question (half a page). Always remember to ANSWER the QUESTION. When you are answering True/False question, always start with the statement is true/false and then followed by your diagram and explanation. Sometimes it's easy to see whether it's true or false, but sometimes it's not clear. For the latter case, leave the true/false blank after "the statement is" and do not forget to fill it after you have figured out the answer! The reason of doing this is to show the examiners that you understand economics, you already knew the answer just by reading the statement although most of us know the answer only after we draw and analyse diagrams.

   
   

   Remember: if a picture is worth a thousand words, a diagram is worth a lot of marks.
   
   
2. Spend too much time on drawing diagrams.
   I have been asked many times whether we can use pencils to draw diagram. The answer is YES ! I don't see any reason why we can't. Drawing diagrams using pens is very risky if you make a mistake. You have to cross out the whole diagram and redraw again whereas with pencils, we can use eraser to correct the mistake.  
   
   
   Also, make sure you already know the measurement; how long should the y-axis and x-axis be, scale, etc. Don't spend time figuring those in exams. If your diagram requires steep budget constraint or IS or LM curve,  you should know roughly what the gradient should be.
   
   
3. Run out of paper and being idle for few minutes.
   I had seen the case where a student who sat next to me in exam had her time wasted for about 10 minutes. She waved her hand to get attention from invigilators for about a minute until she was noticed. The invigilator took his time walking to approach her. She asked for an extra answer sheet but the invigilator thought she wanted to go to toilet so he didn't bring any blank answer sheet with him. So, he took his time again to get the answer sheet and to get back to her. This case can be quite common if you are sitting for an exam where there are thousands of candidates.
   
   
   Ladies and gentleman, the moral of the story is don't ask for extra answer sheet only when you are run out, you should anticipate worst case scenario when the invigilator don't have any answer sheet in his/her hand. Keep your idle hand up if you need something from invigilator while your other hand keep writing.

It is expected that exam questions will be difficult but sometimes the difficulty can be totally beyond our expectation. Let me share with you all that this has happened once.

In 2009, the chief examiner for paper 133 (advanced statistics : distribution theory) left the LSE and a new guy took his position. The questions he set are absofuckinglutely difficult. The standard was way too high compared to subject guide and the previous exams. I still remember when I looked around, everyone was panicking. It was our first exam (for year 3 BME students) and we were already screwed. 

My friend who sat behind me said that I kept shaking my head and she even heard me cursing. I saw about half of the candidates who took the exam left the hall after an hour. Honestly, I wanted to join them because I was very sick on that day and I already secured my first class honours even though I fail the bloody paper. But then I remembered that I was competing for the LSE scholarship, so giving up was not really a good option. So, I decided to sit through the 2 hours torture. I only managed to do half of each questions and was expecting to get at most 40 marks.

After the exam was over, many people complained and one of my friends claimed to solve all questions. We agreed that whoever passed this exam must be bloody genius let alone getting a distinction. Three months later, results were released. From SIM , there were only 2 people who got distinctions. Surprise surprise, I was the world top scorer with 87 marks. 

Here are my advices should this happen to you in the future:

1. Take 1 minute to spit out vulgarities (but not too loud) if that helps.
2. Everyone around you is now your competitors. Pray that they leave early because you have high chances of scoring higher than these people. Even 1 mark means a lot in this scenario. You want to make sure you belong to at least top 40% percentile in case the examiner want to fail 60% of the candidates. Remember, there is no such a thing called re-examination. Instead moderation will be applied.
3. Specific to maths units; note that each question usually consists of 3 parts. Most of the time, part (a) asks you to state theorem. Part (b) asks you to prove something. Part (c) asks you to use theorem in (a) and result in (b). Make sure you state the theorem CORRECTLY ! It's the easiest part to score. Part (b) may be difficult. Part (c) should be easy so you better answer it even though you did not manage to prove part (b).
4. Write down your thought process. Let the examiners know what you were thinking so that they can give you some credit. If you hand in blank paper, even God can't help you.

5. Turning the invisible into the visible

Now, you have been studying hard and (hopefully) also smart but have you asked yourself what you have been trying to achieve so far ? Do you want to get a full marks in mathematics 1 and 2 ? Do you want to get distinction grades for all the foundation units ? or including all the further units ? Or do you just want to get 5 distinction grades so that you get a First Class Honours classification ? Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the concept of "Achievements".

Let me sidetrack a bit, I used to play World of Warcraft and got the concept of "Achievements" from this game. Now you see that being a gamer is not actually a bad thing.

The purpose of "Achievements" is to offer satisfaction to goal-oriented people who manage to overcome the challenges. You can think of it as a recognition to your hard-work. Here are some list of Achievements that I have thought of during my studies.

 The list given above is definitely not comprehensive. Feel free to add more on your own.

The achievement number 6 was originally named "Flawless Victory" but when I told my friends about it, their reactions were "Are you nuts?" and I decided that their expression was more appropriate.

The achievement number 7 is only applicable to degrees which only have 4 foundation units and BME is one of them.

I was inspired to introduce achievement number 8 during my third year. Third year BME was one of the most stressful years in my life. I found out that the competition for the LSE External Study scholarship was very strict. Most recipients had obtained achievement number 10. Not to mention, I had to sit for 6 exams (each subject is not closely related to each other) which were very painful. Honestly, I was really afraid that I would lost my mind before the exam began and hence the achievement.

The achievement number 10 was created due to the large number of First Class Honours recently. I suspect that these people only obtained 5 distinctions out of 9 units. So, I was thinking that  the First Class honours should be categorized as follow (this is not from UOL, but from me)

a. First Class among the First Class (9 units of distinction)
b. Second Upper among the First Class (8 units of distinction)
c. Second Lower among the First Class (7 units of distinction)
d. Third Class among the First Class (6 units of distinction)
e. Just a simple First Class (5 units of distinction)

Usually I attach the achievements that I want to get, together with my exams timetable. I call this end product "Motivational Timetable". So if you are Diploma in Economics students sitting for exams in May 2011 then your Motivational Timetable should look like this:

The purpose of listing down the achievements is also to make you aim as high as possible. Do not aim just for "pass" or "merit". Most of the time you will get the grade below what you aim. I personally always aimed to score 90 and above for each subject and as you have seen that I ended up getting 70 - 80+ .

4. Study Hard and Smart (Part 2)

The next important thing is past examination papers and reports/commentaries which you can find at:

http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

It depends on what year you are viewing right now. You will get at most 3 years x 2 zones = 6 papers which are not enough. So, where can we find more ? We can use "time machine" to download older papers at

http://waybackmachine.org/

copy paste the link to past exam papers above and you will probably get nothing (if you do this in year 2011). The reason is because London International Programme is a new name. The old name was London External Programme. So, change the word "international" to "external"

http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

and paste it to the wayback machine, you will see that the oldest paper you can download is from year 2003 (link is given below)

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20051028203413/http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/current_students/programme_resources/lse/exams.shtml

I recommend that you download all the exam papers and reports that you need RIGHT NOW before they are gone.

Now, there is a reason why UOL only post the latest 3 years papers and reports. The reason is that syllabus change and old exam papers may not be relevant anymore and hence misleading. But do not worry, changes of syllabus do not apply to all subjects. Most questions in old exam papers are still relevant. In fact, you can see some questions are recycled after 3-4 years.

Having said that, you have to be careful as there are some subjects that have changed completely in terms of examination style and syllabus. For example, Introduction to Sociology had been changed to Principle of Sociology in 2006. Always check out the latest papers for latest exam's instructions.

Past exam papers are good for practicing before you sit for real main exam. Practice as many papers as possible until you get the feel of the answers that the examiners are looking for. 

Next piece of advice is always try to understand instead of memorising. Memory is volatile and it often let you down if you rely too much on it. Recall that in maths 1, you have to remember all the basic differentiations and one of them is 

It is much better if you know how to derive the formula above. Here is one way to do it.

Notice that it is actually ln a NOT ln x. If you didn't notice that in the beginning, it's the problem that I am trying to point out.

Another advantage of understanding is to prevent you from making silly mistakes. For example, if you don't understand what demand and supply curves mean, you can label them wrong in your diagram. The same thing goes for IS (Investment-Saving) and LM (Liquidity preference Money supply). I have seen many of my peers make mistakes in labeling the curves.

Another best example I could think of relates to Oligopoly. Oligopoly is everyone's favourite topic in Microeconomics and Managerial Economics. If you are not taking either subject then please skip to the next part. Otherwise, recall that in the standard Cournot duopoly model (homogeneous product), Firm 1's (or 2's doesn't matter) best response (or reaction) function should take the following form:

So, if your best response function end up with something like

then you should be alarmed. The positive coefficient tells us that if our competitor increase their production, we should follow suit. Clearly this does not make sense since the products are assumed to be homogeneous, if two players flood the market with their products then price will decrease because of excess supply.  This is definitely not good for both parties.

Careless mistake like this will cost you "25 marks" in exam which you could have scored easily.

3. Study Hard and Smart (Part 1)

Note: I will assume that you are already familiar with UOL-LSE system when you read my blog.

If you are doing fine with your studies, then you can just skip all the posts with title "Study Hard and Smart"  . Otherwise, keep on reading.

Good ! Now I have your attention. The reason I post my transcript is not to show off but rather to show you my credibility and hopefully to inspire you as well. 

The first thing that probably comes to your mind is "Oh my god, you are genius! There is no way I can get those marks!" Now, hold that thought! I would like you to know that those marks do not reflect my intelligence but rather the blood and sweat I shed throughout the years. I am being honest rather than modest. I graduated from high school in 2004 and was rejected TWICE by NTU and NUS. In 2006, I did not even get the invitation to sit for the entrance examination any more. That's when I found out that SIM - UOL started to offer Mathematics and Economics course. Anyway, the moral of the story is... If I can do it, you can do it too !

If you are not first year student then you should already know by now that you should study consistently since day 1 (very first lecture). Anyway, I am going to skip advising you to be hardworking, organised, and discipline. You are an adult so you should know that.

Let me first start by emphasizing that Subject Guides are the most important notes you should read before lecture notes. Find out the syllabus and what you are expected to know from each chapter. 

When you see that the author of the subject guide is the same as the author of the main textbook, it is mandatory that you read that textbook. For example, for 02 Introduction to Economics, you have to read the textbook written by Professor Amos Witztum. The sample questions at the end of every chapter are past exam questions which are very important. You should follow his guide and style of answering the questions. 

The same thing applies for 20 Elements of Econometrics, you should follow closely the textbook written by Christopher Dougherty (not Daughtry) instead of one by Damodar N. Gujarati unless you have spare time.

Having said that Subject Guides are important, they cannot replace textbook (but few can, for example 40 Game Theory and 42 Optimisation Theory)  There are some subject guides that are not really useful; either they are too thin and contain very little information or badly written and hence confusing. 

Either the subject guide is good or bad, I recommend you do the following extra works instead of blaming the author of the subject guide (because the latter is futile):

1. Go to other universities' website and search for relevant materials.
   I started doing this when I was frustrated with explanations from subject guides and lecture notes. There are always some people out there who can explain better than subject guides.
   
   Subjects like Economics, Finance and Mathematics for undergraduates usually share common materials among different universities. For example, if you have problem with 118 Advanced Linear Algebra, you can always go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website and search for OpenCourseWare and then find the subject Linear Algebra.
   
   Here is the link : http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/
   
   Do not try their exam because it's too difficult and different from LSE exams style. Instead, go to the video lectures session, select relevant lectures, download them and, of course, watch them.
   
   "How do I know whether any particular university teach the same subject?" Here is one way to find out. Google the key term with quotation, plus the word "lecture notes". For example, if you want to learn more about IS LM model, you should google ==> "IS LM Model" lecture notes. The search result will you give some pdf files.
   
   
   
   Now, we have seen that Lecture 9 is about Closed Economy, and supposed that the lecture notes is good and you want to find out about Open Economy from the same lecturer, how can we do so ?
   
   Look at the picture above, I have highlighted the URL to the lecture notes which is www.wellesley.edu/Economics/weerapana/econ213/.../lect213-09.pdf
   
   Remove everything before "econ213" and now we have
   www.wellesley.edu/Economics/weerapana/econ213/
   
    Copy paste the link above on your browser and go to the website. Click either econ213.html or the folder. You will see all the lecture notes for the course econ213 in that university.
   
   You can try googling the subject name (don't forget to put quotation around it) + lecture notes. For example, "Mathematical Economics" lecture notes, or "Corporate Finance" lecture notes.
   
   
2. Read beyond recommended readings.
   Sometimes there are textbooks which are much better than the ones in the recommended readings. I personally prefer textbooks written by US academics to those by UK academics.
   
   For example, the textbook "A First Course in Probability" by Sheldon Ross (not Cooper) is not listed in the Statistics 1&2 or 134 Advanced Statistics : Distribution Theory recommended reading but I find this text very helpful.
   
   "Microeconomics" by David Besanko and Ronald Braeutigam is also useful for 66 Microeconomics but not listed in the recommended reading. In fact, when I sat for the exam, I saw 2 short questions were taken from this textbook. Imagine a free 10 marks to boost up your morale in exam !
   
   Let me remind you that the texts I mentioned above are only useful for some relevant chapters and they should not be used to replace the main readings. If the book you are reading has different notations or definitions from those in Subject Guide, please follow Subject Guide's style. The least thing you want to do in exam is to confuse the examiners who are marking your papers because they are not going to call you and ask you "What do you mean by this notation?"
   
   Now, you probably ask "The recommended readings are already a lot, how can I cope with these extra textbooks?" Let me share with you how I read textbooks. I never read any book from cover to cover. I only read relevant sections which contain answers to the questions in my mind. The questions usually come from tutorial or past exam questions. I find that my mind focus much better than just reading the books "blindly". Without questions in my mind, I will fall asleep after 2-3 pages (paragraphs, if the subject is Sociology).
   
   

2. Regret Always Come Late

Imagine that you had finished your studies. Yes ! No more mugging nightmare. No more staying in the library from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. No more hair-pulling because of Bolzano-Weierstrass. Bellman and Kuhn-Tucker theorems and proofs.

Now, it's time to find a job to repay the "piece of paper" that had made you suffer for 3 years. You start browsing for job vacancies. You see your dream job and it requires the following:

1. Graduates with 2:1 (second upper class honours) or above
2. Shows initiative, leadership and teamwork skills
3. Good interpersonal skills and communication ability
4. Fluent in written and spoken English and Mandarin.
5. Proficient in MS Office especially Excel and Powerpoint
6. Shows interest in finance 
7. Preferably have finished one or two internships

You quickly prepare your CV and try to recall what you had done during the last 3 years.

1. You didn't do really well for your studies because you were a "last-minute" student - you started studying 4- 5 weeks before the exams and unfortunately (and as expected) you only got a 2:2 if not a pass degree.
2. You did not get involved in any of extra curricular activities. You went home straight away after lectures and tutorials.
3. You were "shy" type and only mingle with few people at school and seldom talked.
4. You only hang out with friends from your own country and only spoke your own language.
5. Oh come on ! Since when UOL required students to use MS Office ? Hmmphh !
6. You took BSc. Mathematics and Economics or Management and didn't take any finance course.
7. You remembered you were offered an unpaid internship but you turned it down.

Time flies and 1 hour has passed but you could not remember any experience or skill you had garnered to match most the criteria above. You remembered that you had spent most of your time (other than studying) watching Korean dramas, Facebook-ing, and playing DotA or World of Warcraft. Tears starts flowing from your eyes, you regret all the "crimes" you had committed and wish that you could turn back the time.

Fortunately, it was just a imagination! Your wish had been granted and now you are back to the present time. However, the nightmare is still vivid in your mind and you hope it never occurs to you in the future. You quickly wipe your sweat and seek out the remedies.

1. Introduction

Welcome !

Hi, my name is Ronny Goh. I am from Medan, Indonesia. Following high school, I worked as a freelance computer programmer for two years. After successfully saving enough money, I pursued BSc. (Hons) Mathematics and Economics degree with University of London (International Programme) at the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM). Upon the completion of my undergraduate studies, I was awarded an LSE External Study Scholarship to study MSc. in Applicable Mathematics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2009-2010).

Studying at the LSE is an enlightening experience. I have met many interesting, inspiring and amazing people from around the world and learned a lot from them. This is the reason why I write this blog - to share with you what I had learned and what I would do if I could turn back time to the year 2006 when I started my undergraduate studies. 

The intended audiences for this blog are the  undergraduates who enrolled in a degree with University of London International Programme (Lead College:  LSE).

My hope is that after you visit this blog:

• You will have a clear direction of what to do during and after your undergraduate studies.
• You will be inspired by those who have inspired me and (hopefully) by my own story. 
• You will spread the word !

Let me first give you a warning before you proceed to the next section. This is going to be (hopefully) a powerful "inception" (don't worry if you haven't watched the movie, you only miss the joke) , you will soon experience a paradigm shift. Tighten your seat belt, let the brainwashing begins!