For 28-year-old Krishnan Rattan, his masters in finance course at University of California at Berkeley was a world away from his electrical engineering studies at Cochin University in southern India – in more ways than one.

“I found it extremely intense; I had a lot of sleepless nights,” says the recent Deutsche Bank recruit. “You are evaluated on a relative training curve, which means you’re competing against people who already have PhDs in finance or physics.