At the recently held MSc Financial Economics Webinar, the prospective students learned about the admission requirements, instruction, and prospects after graduation. Invited to speak before the audience were also programme graduates. They shared their experience of starting a career and gave tips on how to achieve academic success and jumpstart career.
The Webinar opened with a presentation by ICEF Associate Professor Anna Yurko. Anna’s role in the programme is that of Assistant Academic Supervisor and Microeconomics teacher. She spoke about the history of MSc Financial Economics and presented its design. MSc Financial Economics builds on years-long experience of the London School of Economics in the delivery of Finance education with focus on advanced academic training.
Combining fundamental and practice-oriented courses, MSc Financial Economics offers advanced training in mathematics and economics. With a wide array of electives, its students have the opportunity to build their own learning path. The electives embrace data management, programming, corporate finance, quantitative finance, and are complemented with an extra range of soft skills courses. The latter have been developed in collaboration with major employers and involve ICEF Career Services whose team deliver the activities designed to prepare students for the job market.
Professor Yurko emphasized particularly that the programme courses are taught by international academics and visiting lecturers from the industry, enriching student learning with their unique experience and expertise. She also gave examples of the career tracks being pursued by ICEF graduates, concluding that banking and consulting aren’t the only sectors where they add value, since many land jobs as IT specialists and quants in Russia and abroad.
Programme Coordinator Olga Nizhevich spoke about the admission process and requirements of 2023. ICEF offers early acceptance through early portfolio review, and there are scholarships and part-time work opportunities that can benefit fee-paying students. Olga further recommended the prospective students to join ICEF Summer Bridge, a three-month brush-up course designed to prepare the future master’s students for the core curriculum.
Join us for the talk with ICEF master’s graduate Anatoly Potashov on June 10. Anatoly serves as an investment manager at Dubai Holding Investments and is our visiting lecturer for the Private Equity and Venture Capital course. His interactive talk on alternative investments will be followed by Q&A and experience exchange session.
Invited to speak before the audience were two graduates – Timur Zekokh, senior data analyst at Avito and lecturer at Avito Analytics Academy, and Suleyman Karibov, who serves as a risk analyst at the Nordic investment company NREP.
In his talk, Timur Zekokh shared his experience of studying at HSE Faculty of Economics Sciences and preparing for the admission to ICEF. He sees it as a great advantage that here at ICEF students can adjust their learning path based on their learning needs. During his master’s study at ICEF, Timur was able to focus more on mathematics, financial econometrics and programming using different languages. The strong tech skills he obtained here have helped him to enter the data science job market. Timur said he was able to start his first job thanks to ICEF: “It was largely thanks to Dzhangir Dzhangirov and his master’s course that I got hired to VTB Risk Department. Many of my classmates chose to be in risks also because of him.”
In his later career, Timur continued to benefit from his excellent tech skills in capacity of data analyst at Avito. His experience showcases the importance of the knowledge of mathematical analysis, statistics, econometrics and financial econometrics – the core courses of ICEF’s MSc programme. “Programming and mathematical statistics are the courses that have benefitted me most. It’s great that Python is currently taught at ICEF as a separate course. This programming language is nearly everywhere,” said Timur. As a data scientist, Timur sees ICEF as a provider of an exceptional blend of skills. He also mentioned Avito Analytics Academy’s plan to team up with ICEF for one more data course leading to advanced programming skills.
Suleyman Karibov earned his master’s from ICEF in 2021 and did his study abroad programme at the University of Luxembourg. Currently a risk analyst, Suleyman is preparing to obtain his CFA and CQF. In his talk, he shared his experience of applying for a job at the Nordic company NREP and gave advice on how to seamlessly enter the job market. “As a job candidate, you first need to think about the ethics, values and beliefs you wish to be a part of. Once you know them, start your search. You need to find a corporate culture where you know you’d be feeling fine communicating. The support and feedback from your team members on your own performance are key to creating an effective career plan,” said Suleyman.
Suleyman said he owes his current job to the knowledge he obtained at ICEF. The level of theoretical knowledge he displayed during his job interview came as a pleasant surprise to his director. “ICEF benefits its students by giving them the knowledge which is truly versatile and presents a perfect blend of theoretical and hand-on skills – exactly what employers are looking for in candidates and what makes ICEF grads preferred candidates,” said Suleyman.
One project Suleyman is currently engaged in as its initiator is called Quantitative Finance Academy and involves professors of the University of Luxembourg and the local regulator. Suleyman complemented his talk with a short presentation that provided an overview of European and American investment funds and NREP’s core business.
After the presentations, the prospective students were able to ask questions and get more advice on training and employment.
