LSE's MSc Finance and Economics
Hi all, I get accepted from MSc Finance and Economics at LSE. I plan to work as analyst after I get master's degree. My goal is to become a fund (or risk) manager in the future.
Yesterday, I talked to a student who took the LSE's program before. He does not like the program at all. He said that the program was not practical at all. The program was good for students who want to continue their Ph.D in Finance (or Economics).
Do you guys have any idea about LSE's MSc in Finance and Economics program? Can anybody tell me about your experience there? How's the courses?
Given your level of English, I see this MSc (which is good btw) as your best chance to land a FO role in London.
If you're looking for a practical programme, I wouldn't really recommend the MSc Finance and Econ.
Consider the three (out of four) core modules you're going to be taking: Microeconomics (for MSc students), Financial Economics and Financial Econometrics.
If you want to get an idea of what the micro course is like, check out Frank Cowell's website (http://darp.lse.ac.uk/Frankweb/courses/EC202/default.htm) - he doesn't lecture the course but the contents pretty damn similar. As you can see, it's not in the least bit practical from the perspective of someone wanting to work in the financial services industry.
Financial metrics is what it says on the tin - certainly going to be of no use in IB environment and very limited use in the vast majority of markets environments.
Financial economics is again kind of self explanatory, although I emphasise the economics component to the course's title - the course isn't just a load of finance, there's a lot of general equilibrium, choice under uncertainty, etc. sort of stuff to it.
Then you have two half-unit options. Here you could probably do something a bit more 'real world', perhaps applied corporate finance or, considering you aim, financial risk analysis and quantitative methods for financial risk analysis. These modules might actually be pretty good if you're interested in risk management - you get a bit of hands on experience with data, Matlab and R and think about the 'real world' issues. Bear in mind one of these will form a dissertation though.
Overall though, I think it's a great course if you're into that sort of stuff, and if you take the research track it's probably the 2nd best thing LSE offer for pre-PhD students interested in finance (after the MSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, but you'd have to be super intelligent and/or suicidal to take that masters).
Just for the love of god be aware that 80+% of what you learn wont have any practical applications if you're not interested in academia, economic/financial research. You'd be amazed by the amount of students who bitch and moan every year about how the course isn't practical enough - you'd think they'd take a minute to look at what they've signed up to before shelling out £20,000+ for the course and a year of their life.
what would be a good practical 1-year Masters in the UK/US, in your opinion? thanks!
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