Oxford MSc Financial Economics 2024

[applying]

Hi all! I am creating this thread because if I am not wrong, nobody has done it yet.

Any update on the process?? Anyways, the release of decisions is quite soon, good luck!

 

[BigClout]

Hey I’m actually interested in this course. Do you think this course would be favoured for Quant roles? What are you trying to do with it?

From my research it seemed like it didn’t have that much of a quantitative foundation. Most of the stuff seemed like you could be taught it in a good BSc Economics programme. This course did feel it suffered from business school syndrome. It also wasn’t clear how much programming you would learn. Probably some R, but do you get any Python or anything like that or are they shoving Stata in your face?

 

[QuantImposter]

I’m in the program right now, feel free to inbox if you have more questions!

The programming language was recently changed from Matlab/R to Python in all courses (more aligned with industry). Two of the four core courses will require you to use Python to complete the assignments. The electives can be tailored to be a bit more quantitative, although Continuous-Time Finance and ML aren’t offered every year (fairly disappointed about that in my case).

In terms of coursework, you don’t really get the Business School feel (aside from the lectures being physically hosted there). Aside from the electives shared with MBAs, the teachers are primarily from the econ faculty. The core courses do feel like a condensed (and finance-oriented) BSc Economics. Quite academic, heavy notation, rigorous, but not the place to learn “maths” per se. Some people with math/engineering backgrounds were still challenged by some of the quantier stuff, e.g. where we do some fairly advanced time-series modeling and touch copulas and c-t stochastic processes, for instance.

Still, most of the class is going for IB/PE/Consulting, and the Career Office is very much geared towards that. With a technical undergrad, good quant jobs are very much within reach, as can be seen from alumni. However, coming from a business/finance undergrad, I definitely felt as a tweener during recruiting, hence why I’m going for further FinEng/FinMath studies.

Hope this helps!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@QuantImposter
Thank you for sharing. Can you touch on the career services aspect there? What does it entail?

 

[QuantImposter]

Well, while the academics flow much more from the Econ department, the ''Career'' aspect goes through the Business School's career development centre. Sure, it's much closer to industry, but its all about what ''industry'' you covet.

The direct recruiting (done through the alumni network/BS connections/BS-dedicated career portal), the seminars/workshops, the organized firm visits in London, the co-curricular stuff, it all pertains to IB/PE/Consulting/traditional AM positions (with some S&T postings, but not on the exotic end). You can book Career people for consulting case preps or mock IB interviews and the likes, but the help I was able to get for S&T interviews was very high-level.

I'm not complaining; it's perfectly normal when most of your MBAs and 80-85% of your MFEs (FinEcon) target these roles. And sure, all the prop shops and major hedge funds post through the university-wide career portal. There are other ways to get resources; I reached out to people in the MCF / Maths department, and there's a well-connected ''Quantitative Strategies'' group at the uni's student-run fund. I'm sure you can get a good mock quant interview somewhere. But I just guess that it's different from the tailored resources that you can get in Financial Engineering programs.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Thank you. I just want to get a sense of how these UK programs operate compared to their counterparts in the US. It seems they do differ a great deal. It makes sense since the UK job market is different from the US and programs tailor their practice for the local environment.
My take is that if someone wants to work in the US, they should go to a US program and vice versa. I've seen a few questions from people asking if it's a good idea doing a UK program to work in the US.

 

[BigClout]

Well, while the academics flow much more from the Econ department, the ''Career'' aspect goes through the Business School's career development centre. Sure, it's much closer to industry, but its all about what ''industry'' you covet.

The direct recruiting (done through the alumni network/BS connections/BS-dedicated career portal), the seminars/workshops, the organized firm visits in London, the co-curricular stuff, it all pertains to IB/PE/Consulting/traditional AM positions (with some S&T postings, but not on the exotic end). You can book Career people for consulting case preps or mock IB interviews and the likes, but the help I was able to get for S&T interviews was very high-level.

I'm not complaining; it's perfectly normal when most of your MBAs and 80-85% of your MFEs (FinEcon) target these roles. And sure, all the prop shops and major hedge funds post through the university-wide career portal. There are other ways to get resources; I reached out to people in the MCF / Maths department, and there's a well-connected ''Quantitative Strategies'' group at the uni's student-run fund. I'm sure you can get a good mock quant interview somewhere. But I just guess that it's different from the tailored resources that you can get in Financial Engineering programs.

Hey mate you’re a superstar I really love the incite you’ve given.

From what I can tell, this might not be the course for me. I took BSc Economics before you see, and your notion that it’s a condensed BSc Econ gives me trepidation. I’m not sure the value it would add to my skill set (as opposed to my CV), other than maybe some more Python experience.

For me, what I’m mainly focusing on are focus on mathematical depth and rigorousness, and then high performance programming (C++). It seems like this wouldn’t serve me much better than taking a Masters in Statistics for example, which I think I have a similar (if not better given how competitive this course is) chance of getting onto. The lack of careers service focus is also a bit of a red flag in my personal circumstance.

Could I ask, how would you compare the level of mathematics and programming to the standard MPhil Economics? From what I can see that is advertised, the MPhil seems to go further. What do you think?

 

[BigClout]

Thank you. I just want to get a sense of how these UK programs operate compared to their counterparts in the US. It seems they do differ a great deal. It makes sense since the UK job market is different from the US and programs tailor their practice for the local environment.
My take is that if someone wants to work in the US, they should go to a US program and vice versa. I've seen a few questions from people asking if it's a good idea doing a UK program to work in the US.

Hey Andy. Just checking will your ranking be purely for Financial Engineering masters, or cover all degrees that are likely to help you become a Quant (so pure maths, CS, Stats, Data Science, Physics)? If the latter, I’m wondering if you’re noticing that MFEs are less preferred in the UK whereas the other unapplied degrees seem to translate more to the job market ironically.

 

[QuantImposter]

Hey mate you’re a superstar I really love the incite you’ve given.

From what I can tell, this might not be the course for me. I took BSc Economics before you see, and your notion that it’s a condensed BSc Econ gives me trepidation. I’m not sure the value it would add to my skill set (as opposed to my CV), other than maybe some more Python experience.

For me, what I’m mainly focusing on are focus on mathematical depth and rigorousness, and then high performance programming (C++). It seems like this wouldn’t serve me much better than taking a Masters in Statistics for example, which I think I have a similar (if not better given how competitive this course is) chance of getting onto. The lack of careers service focus is also a bit of a red flag in my personal circumstance.

Could I ask, how would you compare the level of mathematics and programming to the standard MPhil Economics? From what I can see that is advertised, the MPhil seems to go further. What do you think?

My pleasure!

There's a lot of Econ undergrads in the cohort (almost on par with business/finance UGs) and most of them seem to enjoy the program. Not all BSc Econ include extensive applications/exposure to corporate finance, asset pricing and derivatives, and I think that combining the two sees you better equipped academically than most when competing for ''traditional'' finance roles.

However, if you want to extend/complement your Econ UG with more maths and programming with a view towards quant finance, there are better platforms that will have a greater focus on that. As for the comparison to a more ''standard'' graduate degree in economics, I'm unfortunately not too knowledgeable on the topic. I assume you'd go a lot deeper in terms of formal derivations and would see some pretty convoluted differential equations, at the expense of practical relevance (not that the Oxford MFE cuts corners in terms of academic rigor). But, at the end of the day, you'd be manipulating more complex mathematical tools, but still in the context of doing/learning economics, not maths. It's a distinction that I only really grasped this year, bumping from ''finance'' to ''financial economics'' with the aim to - just like you - brush up on maths/coding.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Hey Andy. Just checking will your ranking be purely for Financial Engineering masters, or cover all degrees that are likely to help you become a Quant (so pure maths, CS, Stats, Data Science, Physics)? If the latter, I’m wondering if you’re noticing that MFEs are less preferred in the UK whereas the other unapplied degrees seem to translate more to the job market ironically.

There are so many ways someone smart and ambitious with a STEM degree can get a quant job so I can only focus on the master programs that specifically tailored to train students for such jobs.
We will see what the hard data reveals about each program. Maybe we will learn more about them and can make a better decision when choosing which one to join.

 

[WSBquant]

Hi @Andy Nguyen will the UK rankings be released this month?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Hi @Andy Nguyen will the UK rankings be released this month?

No sir. The UK programs told me they are busy with admission season right now so they need extra time.
That said, we will release it as soon as we have the info from all the programs.

 

[WSBquant]

Thank you @Andy Nguyen!