The City as an Employer of First Resort

Proximity compounds. A student ten minutes from a firm's front door attends three times as many events as one who has to travel, and the difference shows up in conversion rates rather than in enthusiasm.

The City's recruiting calendar has also moved earlier, with spring weeks and penultimate-year internships now doing the filtering that final-round interviews once did.

For programmes with an integrated placement year in London, this timing is close to ideal: students are inside firms during the window when those firms are making decisions.