A week in the life of an MSc Finance student

Hi everyone, my name is Preciana and I'm on the Master's in Finance program here at Imperial College London. I come from Bulgaria and we are pretty much midway through our degree and I thought now it's a fun time to take you with me and show you what our week is like, what lectures do we have, what facilities do we have and as well I'm going to show you my really nice walk to uni and the library where I'm going to be spending most of today. So we just finished our derivatives lecture which is one of the more quantitative sides of our course. There's quite a lot of maths but it's actually quite useful and enjoyable. So I think derivatives is our hardest course so far, lots of maths. And you're also a women's finance scholar right? I am. We're involved in the finance club, we're pretty active, we've been organising a lot of events for the classmates, anyone who's interested in their career in finance. So it's pretty fun. We're about to go for lunch. Every Tuesday there is a farmer's market on campus. There is a variety of stuff, it's really cool. We're gonna go and fuel up and then maybe go to the library. We'll take you to lunch. Yeah, come with us. So I've just gotten myself home. Tomorrow I'm hosting a women in finance webinar. I am a women in finance scholar which is awarded to women with potential in the future. We're going to be discussing a variety of things such as how we're finding the course, networking events, job applications and everything that the business school offers to prospective students. And tomorrow we're also hosting a fantastic event with a lady who is on the board of directors Morgan Stanley with the finance club. And yeah, tomorrow should be a busy day. It's quite a busy day. I have a meeting before university in Canary Wharf but then I have my favourite lecture which is private equity. It's one of the electives, very hands-on course, I'm really excited. So yeah, let's go. So I thought I'm going to share a bit more about the course and the university itself. We have three main terms. In the first term it's only core modules. We study quite a lot of maths, it's quite a quantitative course. We study quite a lot of options pricing, corporate finance, also some coding as well which some people love, some people find quite hard. I personally find it hard but I think it's incredibly useful for the future. Also portfolio management, so it's kind of like a range of things depending on which area of finance one wants to go into. This term it's core modules, health electives. Next term actually it's largely electives and also a applied project. I'm really excited to be taking an international module. So you could pick Dubai or New York and I will be going to Dubai which we're going to be able to meet startups and in general consultancies there. So I'm really excited for that. Also in terms of my experience, I joined after having worked in investment banking for a while and I thought I want to go into consulting as a bit of a career change and the university has been so great in helping me do that progression. I just actually came back from an offeree weekend with McKinsey where we were doing skiing and kids fuel and that was incredibly fun. I just wanted to share a bit about my experience and the careers team and how fantastic they have been and also how great the professors are in teaching everything. Now it's time to go back to uni and get on with some work. Hi, I'm Carolina. I'm a classmate in MSc Finance and we are about to go have a guest lecture for our private equity venture capital course. The professor brings in people from the industry so we get to learn from them. This week there's someone coming from Investec so it should be really interesting to hear what they have to say. Good to hear you have the academic but you also hear what's going on in the industry and how you can actually use the course in real life which is really cool. We had our grades come out from last term. I'm glad everything went well. We also had an assignment today so a lot of our courses actually have weekly or bi-weekly assignments that sort of keep us on track. It's with teams that are three to four to five people and we work together so that's a good way I guess to practice our teamwork and get to know more people in the course well and it's quite fun. So I wanted to also chat to Vivian who is together with me in the finance club so we'll take you to the event as well. One of the problems we have is the unconscious bias that when we interview women we end up saying stupid things like my goodness you are so good you sound like you'd be so good with people I think you should be a salesperson but if that's not the job you want don't get railroaded into it because of your gender. So I just got back home from the talk with Terry which was one of the most inspirational talks. She is really incredible not only as a speaker but as a woman and her career is just phenomenal. Tomorrow there will be another webinar that I'll be hosting at the school and we have a few tutorials for our lectures and I'll be meeting more of my classmates tomorrow introducing me to them and let's see how it goes. Good morning it's another very spring like day here in London we have some university tutorials, group work, I'll go to the gym as well and then later on I'm taking some evening German classes. So yeah let me take you with me for another fun day. Hi everyone. Hi I just grabbed a coffee with my friend Chris he's a fellow Bulgarian. We were just chatting about language opportunities. There's so many people from every country around Imperial so anytime you want to chat in a different language there's somebody around you. Exactly pretty cool. Yeah and I also subscribe to the evening courses. So we're about to do the women in finance webinar. So I'm here with Annie and Lilfrank. So really exciting we have about 50 people signed up today. So this is both I think offeree holders but also just in general people interested in the university. Most courses start from the basics and they teach you all the all the finance terminology so but the university really prepares you from from the beginning. So we just finished our derivatives tutorial quite challenging but I feel like I'm learning for the exam. Then I'm going to prepare for my German class because I have some which means homework in German. So this is my friend Omar he's a classmate on the MSc finance program. So I'm a I'm a careers leader with MSc finance. Honestly I came here for the international experience and for the networking opportunities and I feel like Imperial is well situated to provide on both this opportunity. So I haven't filmed that much today because it was a little bit quieter. We didn't have lectures so I spent a lot of today at home and in a nearby cafe when I was just doing a bit of work. Now it's Friday night so I'm going to go for a meeting with Anita who is employer relations manager and we work really closely alongside her in the finance club. She supports us all along the way inviting firms inviting recruiters. So she's really great and really I always love meeting her she's so positive. Then we have student ambassador drinks and I'm a student ambassador so I help promote the university to any potential students. So that's going to be great I'm just going to catch up with fellow ambassador fellow students. Also I wanted to take this opportunity to just say how proud and grateful I feel to be part of this university. Every day that I open the sort of the front page the internet I see so many news about new research about discoveries in all fields neurology medicine cancer research both in the as well in finance which I'm in and it just makes me feel very humbled to be part of this. I'm studying and growing with some of the brightest minds out there it's just fantastic. So my experience couldn't have been better and I'm really excited to see what it brings and I hope that anyone considering Imperial would really would really choose to come here because they combine both the best life in London to be a student but also an amazing research at the forefront and great people. So let's go for Friday night and see you soon. So I guess this is time to say goodbye I've had so much fun filming this week and taking you with me. It's as I said before an incredible experience here at Imperial and as you can see I've met so many amazing people this is only a small part of all my close friends and people that I work with. So yeah let's see what the future brings I'm really excited and hope to see you again soon. I'm gonna go and grab another drink.