Inside Singapore’s cutthroat campus finance clubs where 10% get in and stress runs high
Facing intense competition for banking jobs, students hope membership in these clubs will help differentiate them to potential employers
Lengthy interview rounds and days of working on PowerPoint slides have become de rigueur as a gloomier job market in the banking and trading hub raises the stakes for college students seeking a career in finance.
“It’s low-key crazy – it’s quite absurd how competitive it is,” said Maya, a social sciences graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS) who now works at a global payments firm and says the pressure was worth it.
“Without it, I wouldn’t be able to ‘sell myself’ to the recruiters who have thousands of business students they can choose from.”
Her angst comes as financial institutions in the Southeast Asian banking hub added fewer people in recent years. Students now view the clubs as a crucial line on their résumés, adding to a hyper-competitive cauldron for students in Singapore alongside tuition and so-called internship stacking.
As hiring gets tighter, the number of graduates from popular business and administration courses has climbed for most of the past decade. It topped more than 3,500 in 2023, according to government statistics. And while 84 per cent of business graduates found jobs last year, that is a decline from the previous two years.