Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Financial Economics with Placement Year

at City, University of London United Kingdom

On the Quantitative Finance master’s you will learn technical and practical skills useful in pursuing a career in front or middle office positions.

To successfully complete the Quantitative Finance course, you must have a good understanding of mathematics.

You may well have studied finance, economics, engineering or maths or physics as an undergraduate. Or you might have a bachelor’s degree in a science subject, in particular computer science.

You should have a general interest in mathematics and statistics, including the more quantitative and mathematical techniques used in financial markets; but you don’t need to have a background in finance.

You’ll study core modules focusing on asset pricing, risk management and introductions to key financial securities such as equities, fixed income securities and derivatives.

From there you’ll progress to specialist learning in econometrics, and cover a large amount of stochastics and numerical methods.

You’ll cover basic and advanced topics in econometrics including ARCH and GARCH models, co-integration and dealing with high frequency data.

You will also have the opportunity to work with a number of different estimation techniques, including OLS, Maximum Likelihood and GMM.

You’ll work extensively with programming language in the core modules.  In term 1 the focus of programming teaching is on Python alongside other languages such as VBA or Matlab which are also available as optional modules.

You’ll choose five from around 40 optional modules in your final term. You can also choose to complete a traditional dissertation, which counts for four optional modules, or a shorter ‘applied research project’, which is the equivalent of two optional modules.

This degree offers a broad understanding of these two complementary subjects, with a special focus on how the local and the global relate to each other.

You’ll study topics such as culture, identity, class, international political theory, and the global political economy.

You’ll learn about how specific actors and institutions emerge, how ideas shape global politics, and how social dynamics affect us all. You’ll explore the organisation of contemporary societies and the structures that define our everyday lives.

• Develop transferable skills in the analysis, interpretation and production of social data, including sought-after data literacy and quantitative skills
• Gain knowledge and expertise for a future career in politics, policy making, the civil service or government
• Become a critical thinker with an in-depth understanding of the complex interplay of local and global forces
• Benefit from our central location in a global city, close to national political institutions and organisations, and with access to a wide range of internship opportunities
• Boost your employability with an optional placement year.

This three-year degree has been designed by world-leading researchers in the field. You’ll learn about the latest thinking in crime and society, and develop the skills to conduct your own original research.

You’ll study topics such as criminal justice, penology, policing, news, violence, and social change. This develops your analytical capability to engage with crime and social policy debates. Modules in qualitative and quantitative research methods develop your data analysis skills.

• Become a critical thinker with an in-depth understanding of the complex interplay of local and global forces in relation to crime and criminality
• Boost your employability with an optional work placement year
• Develop highly sought-after data literacy and quantitative skills, thanks to our strong links with City’s Q-Step Centre
• Opt onto a Q-Step quantitative methods pathway: benefit from a heightened focus on data skills, a workplace Data Placement in Year 2, and an optional international work placement

Take advantage of excellent internship opportunities thanks to our central London location, including access to organisations in crime and justice, human rights, migration and refugee support, and mental health.

Our finance courses are for students who want to progress with the knowledge and skills required for a successful career in the increasingly competitive world of global finance and banking.

Your goal is a career in the global banking industry, with no limitations on the country where you end up working. As a vocational course, BSc Banking and International Finance is tailor-made for your ambition to go straight into a job in banking after you graduate. Thinking about a postgraduate qualification? Its academic rigour will prepare you equally well for further study.

Our three finance and banking degrees (Finance, Banking and International Finance, and Investment and Financial Risk Management) provide detailed knowledge of how financial markets work, how companies make investment, financing and acquisition decisions and how modern banks operate. Whether your interest is domestic or international, this well balanced course has been designed to propel you to the top of the industry.

We offer a wide variety of specialisations: central banking, managerial finance, commercial and retail banking, financial analysis, operations, or strategy.

You can also choose how you complement your core modules, choosing from a wide variety of optional modules including quantitative techniques and financial management, all of which will allow you to gain a good understanding of financial markets, its activities, and its products.

The jobs in this field are both exciting and well paid. They demand intellectual rigour and commercial acumen, and by selecting this course, you too can prepare yourself with the skills and competencies these jobs require.

Our accredited bachelor of Computer Science degree provides a comprehensive overview of all areas of computing. This allows you to keep your career options open and explore a wide range of in-demand topics.

Elective modules in your third year let you tailor your degree to your developing interests, such as computer vision, AI and advanced game technology.

• Develop systematic knowledge of computer science, with a focus on how software and programming can be used to solve real-world problems
• Learn to evaluate solutions to computer science problems
• Develop commercially valuable skills for your future career
• Work with City’s internationally renowned research groups to develop knowledge at the forefront of computing science
• Acquire state-of-the-art approaches to a wide variety of technologies
• Learn to code creatively and use programming languages accurately
• Study in City’s computing labs, which include the latest hardware and software, such as state-of-art NVidia GPUs
• Boost your expertise and employability with an optional one-year work placement
• Gain three years of professional experience with our innovative Professional Pathway Scheme, combining paid employment and study.

You are fascinated by the financial world and that complements your love and talent for mathematics, especially modelling and probability. You love solving problems and setting up, then challenging, hypotheses.

The Finance with Actuarial Science undergraduate course will equip you with financial risk management and analysis skills that will boost your career prospects in investment management, risk management or actuarial science. Financial engineering or financial analysis careers will also be open to you.

Discover the different aspects of the financial world and in particular how assessing and managing risk is vital for success. To develop the skills you need to understand these ideas, you’ll take a mixture of financial, mathematical, statistical and actuarial modules. You will apply your new technical and analytical skills to solve a wide range of business problems.

In the first year your focus is on building a firm foundation in mathematics, statistics and economics as you begin to develop your understanding of financial risk.

In the second and third years you will broaden your understanding of the financial markets. This will include analysing the various types of financial instruments that are available, how they are valued and how they can be used to provide suitable solutions to financial problems involving risk and return.

You will develop a strong understanding of the main areas of psychology – cognition, development, biology and the history of psychological theories – as well as key theories and concepts of criminology and criminal justice.

Learning from research-active staff and practitioners across two academic departments, you will have the opportunity to study topics combining your two specialisms, including: forensic psychology, memory and the law, and judgement and decision making.

• Acquire criminological expertise and skills to give you the competitive edge in applying for careers in crime and crime control, criminal justice system and related fields
• Develop the research expertise to investigate crime and criminal justice data, applying technical skills to carefully appraise evidence
• Gain analytical skills to engage critically with real-world criminal justice policy debates
• Study a broad range of topics within the discipline of psychology, including the application of psychological knowledge in a range of professional areas
• Shape your studies to suit your interests, with a very wide range of elective modules
• Boost your employability with BPS-accreditation and highly sought-after data literacy skills.

Realise your passion for words and self-expression through a flexible creative writing programme that will develop your skills in your chosen form: fiction, genre fiction or non-fiction. This degree combines a passion for the power of the imagination with intensive study of craft and critical approaches to writing.

You will learn how to read and think as a writer and explore the choices faced and decisions taken by writers. This serves to inform and enrich your own work.

We aim to give you an understanding of the business of writing in all its forms, from print and electronic publication to public performance and the use of social media, as well as the role of editors, agents and publishers.

While you will choose a form of creative writing as your focus (fiction, genre fiction or non-fiction) you will develop technical awareness across a range of genres, and acquire transferable skills

Who is this course for?

If you are seeking a way of developing creative writing skills in your preferred genre, this programme is ideal.

Whether your interests lie in fiction, non-fiction or particular genre fiction, we can empower your creative journey.

Our programme is underpinned by the conviction that imagination is a vital mode of perception and enquiry, and language and literature can transform individual lives and cultures. We hope you share that same conviction.

This degree provides the analytical skills, and theoretical and methodological tools that will help you address the key questions that are central to understanding politics today.

You will learn to look beyond borders to develop an international understanding of politics in today’s increasingly interconnected world, understanding the central issues and trends that characterise twenty-first century politics.

Why are some countries becoming democratic while democracy is failing in others? How is political power distributed in different societies around the world? How has globalisation reshaped state and market institutions in different countries?

• Develop strong analytical skills, learning how to compare political phenomena taking place in different countries to improve your knowledge of contemporary politics
• Broaden your regional and country-level expertise with a range of modules on the politics of emerging powers
• Secure a micro-placement and work on a research project of your interest at a politics related field such as an NGO, a think tank, the house of commons, a political risk consultancy, the civil service or public affairs lobbying
• Benefit from our location within a department with a strong international focus, and our exciting opportunities for work placement and studying abroad.

Develop a deep understanding of the complex global economic system and its socio-political relationships with this MA in the heart of London. You will build a valuable knowledge base covering economic and financial dynamics, subjects of global order and state strategies.

Your learning will span from global inequality and tax evasion to financial regulation and financial crises. You will also pursue your own specialist area.

You will gain analytical skills alongside the ability to critically evaluate the relationships between markets, governments and networks.

We aim to give you an advanced concept of global capitalism problems in the 21st century and allow you to examine rapid economic change and its socio-political roots.