Doing Masters

[lugano]

I will soon graduate with a BSc degree in business and economics from a tier one European economics university. The coursework involved lots of quantitative, economics and law courses. The predicted final mark is (almost) maximum, or first class honours. The raw gpa is about 3.75/4 including couple of law courses as outliers.

I had some special circumstances which allowed me to start attending university trough a talents' program in my home country in Eastern Europe at a very young age. Thanks to it I boast a strong quantitative background and with couple of exams left I could also complete regular BSc studies in applied mathematics engineering (with major in financial maths). I believe that Eastern European math schools are pretty demanding. I hope to graduate (if) there with gpa of about 3.8/4, first class honors.

I traveled across almost all continents and numerous countries and lived in several. I also had semester stays at few established universities and earned good marks, even did some graduate coursework with professors from leading UK and French quant programs. Also had opportunity to attend lectures and speak to major EU decision makers and major IB executives.

I have lots of experience with algorithmic programming from an academic perspective (not related with finance) and simulations (also some physics simulations) and some awards in this field.

I consider doing graduate studies in finance, which seems natural. My question is whether to go too much into quantitative finance, as I believe that my managerial and leadership skills are also promising (I received a prestigious honor at a top 5 US business school). So long term, I believe that doing a MBA would position me very well in the corporate world.

Relevant courses that I took:
Mathematical Finance, Financial Economics, Financial Econometrics, Corporate Finance, Brownian Motion, Optimal Stopping, Project Finance, Credit Risk, Industrial Econ, Public Econ, Micro/Marco Econ, Financial Maths, Statistics, Operational Research, ODE and some PDE, some Complex Analysis, Algebra 1&2, Calculus 1&2, Numerical Methods in Linear Algebra, Accounting, some Management, about 5 law courses...

Programming experience in environments: Mathematica, Javal, Pascal/Delphi, C#, C++, SPSS, Origin...


Schools that I am considering: Finance and Economics @ LSE 1yr, MSc Finance @ LSE (part time 2 yrs, evening lessons), MPhil Finance Cambridge 1yr, MFE Oxford 1yr, MSc Finance @ Bocconi 2yr (of which one semester internship), MSc Quant Finance @ ETH (3 semesters), Elite MSc Finance at Copenhagen Business School (2yr)


The last three offer good funding opportunities. I believe that all of these are great schools and graduates won't have (much) problems finding jobs afterwards. As far as I know, entry level jobs are paid pretty much the same in big banks, and later it is mostly pay per performance. The degree at LSE would cost I guess about 40k euros with all expenses included. I don't know much about compensations to judge whether it pays off or not comparing to the alternatives with full funding. I would need to rely on an expensive loan.

I would also appreciate any farsighted advice on picking a field in finance. For know it seems logical to me to get into risk management, financial engineering and structuring. I guess it is very important to make a good pick of field as earnings will mostly depend on such choice in the long run.
Also, I guess that doing degree at ETH would open to me the Swiss job market. I heard that compensations might be higher over there than in UK considering finance sector, with certainly better work conditions and better quality of life. Does this sound reasonable to you?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Financial engineering is a broad term so you don't actually "pick a field". It's not like in medical school where you must specialize.
I'm aware a few schools that have "specialization track" but majority of the good schools do not have that. Instead, they offer a well-rounded education which is evident in the fact that their graduates end up working in various roles such as risk managers, structurers, traders, developers, etc. The idea of the degree is "trained to adapt" so you will learn the backbone knowledge in order to perform increasingly complex tasks.

The choice of schools will boil down to your preferred career path. UK has the largest quant job market in Europe but Swiss is a very nice place to live. I'm not familiar with the career service at the schools you mentioned so you should contact each individually and ask about where they students end up.