Durham or QMUL for Msc Management (Finance) / Msc Investments and Finance?
So I've received offers from 4 universities for masters, and I've narrowed my choices down to Durham University: Msc Management (Finance), and QMUL: Msc Investments and Finance.
I am looking to work in Asset Management, and have secured myself an asset management internship within a Tier 3 investment bank, which I am hoping to convert to a grad role starting 2018 (they are expecting me to do a masters). If I was unsuccessful, ideally I would want to go to the university which will be best placed for me to restart grad applications, although I am hoping this will not be the case as the bank converts quite a lot of their interns.
Of course, I'm aware that the highest regarded universities for Msc Finance are Imperial, LSE, Oxford, CASS, but these were all out of my budget (Queen Mary is only just affordable for me, including living costs) and also I was originally not too confident about my chances for those.
I like the modules on offer at all three, although the Management course is more strategy focused, however Durham Business School is very well renowned. Queen Mary offers CFA support, is ranked well according to the FT, and I would be really keen to live in London. Most people I've spoken to consider Durham more well renowned , including a recruiter, however I also thought that the course at QMUL would be more relevant for investment management, and at the moment QMUL is ranked higher than Durham for pre -experience Msc Finance courses.
If anyone has any advice that would be great!
Hey, i'm currently an MSc student at Durham but i'm doing Economics, and to be honest I would recommend QMUL, have you looked into Warwick as well? The reason I recommend QUML is because it's in London so it gives you better networking opportunities and the course sounds more applied rather than Management(Finance).
As to Durham in general, it's a really nice place and even though it's in the North-East of the UK it really isn't that cold. There are plenty of University and College clubs you can join and round yourself as a person spanning from clay-pigeon shooting to the rowing club(which is pretty huge and in top in the UK).
There is also a finance club, consulting club and the business school has a private-equity club and investment club which have a limited intake. The University has a "college" system going on similar to Cambridge or Oxford which makes social life much easier as well. The city is pretty small and you can get anywhere by foot
In terms of rankings Durham is above QMUL but sometimes location is more important but i'm pretty sure both universities have a good alumni presence in City.
Why don't you try to apply for the MSc in Finance at Durham? though I will tell you from the beginning that there will be a lot of Chinese students in the course, actually all courses have a lot of Chinese students but the finance ones have the most, so if you also want a more international setting you might slightly disappointed. Also everything is divided into terms here and not semesters so it's slightly different.
Also do you have previous internships/work experience? since this will have effect on hard/easy it will be for you to find future FT work opportunities.
In terms of my course, I know 2 peers who have secured jobs in economics related firms.
Thanks for the reply! I applied to Msc Finance and Investments at Durham but they said I did not meet the quantitative pre-requisites. While I did well on my finance modules, I messed up my Econometrics module, and when I went to the postgrad open day there, they did advise that they would take into account my Econometrics grade.
I have looked at Warwick but the tuition fees are just out of my budget.
I have done an internship in corporate insurance, and will be doing an internship in Asset Management this summer at a well known investment bank, which has the opportunity to convert to a grad role.
Well, you should be good no matter from which of the 2 you pick, I would probably recommend picking up some technical skills like knowing R for finance or some Python for finance maybe even some MATLAB.
But if you're also looking for also having a nice social life Durham is good.
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