I am considering a few options to attend MSc Financial Math degree part-time in London.
I work as a quant and am satisfied with my current role.
This is my second master's degree to really gather up classical quant finance math knowledge.
May expect some baseline recognition from a known institution hopefully, but I definitely oppose high tuition fee as well as distance from the Bank district.
Premium on university name-tag is quite useless for me.
Amongst the viable ones from K/I/UCL, I declined the offer from ICL pretty quickly in that manner as their tuition fee is criminal and is too far.
Considering UCL to drop as well, I have been advised from several people to consider choosing UCL instead of KCL.
In my perspective frankly, UCL requires a few useless (for me) courses to take whilst KCL goes straight and only requires what I suppose to take.
KCL programme doesn't offer one or two critical courses but I can cross-enroll those in another London universities (UCL, LSE).
My thought was that quant finance degree's curriculum is quite stable and any quality universities including KCL provides that.
Courses are satisfying, and KCL's programme is satisfyingly affordable (14£k total in contrast of 24£k for UCL, whopping 43£k for ICL) offering me the freedom of not thinking about the cost at all for my study - a big thing for me.
Still, understandably, that also reflects their reputation in major quant organisation (major IBs buy-sides) are "premium-free" - I saw a few striving quants from there tho.
I thought of continuing to a PhD programme once this FinMath master's degree is done so this is purposed to be a bridge to prove myself to academics to enter.
KCL ticks every boxes except that reputation bit which unfortunately seems to be a deal-breaker for general people in the industry.
Not that I mean that UCL is target-school (Oxford+ElKaroui, then ICL+M2MO, lastly Warwick and a few other continental places), but apparently it is just right below the target-school range and is understood to be a baseline institution and is not a deal-breaker.
Actually, it makes me feel inappropriate to think about this aspect especially when I know this intitution name-tag doesn't substantially matter especially those beyond in early stage career.
However, the reputation seems to be definitely a thing and I would like to hear your opinion. Thanks.
I work as a quant and am satisfied with my current role.
This is my second master's degree to really gather up classical quant finance math knowledge.
May expect some baseline recognition from a known institution hopefully, but I definitely oppose high tuition fee as well as distance from the Bank district.
Premium on university name-tag is quite useless for me.
Amongst the viable ones from K/I/UCL, I declined the offer from ICL pretty quickly in that manner as their tuition fee is criminal and is too far.
Considering UCL to drop as well, I have been advised from several people to consider choosing UCL instead of KCL.
In my perspective frankly, UCL requires a few useless (for me) courses to take whilst KCL goes straight and only requires what I suppose to take.
KCL programme doesn't offer one or two critical courses but I can cross-enroll those in another London universities (UCL, LSE).
My thought was that quant finance degree's curriculum is quite stable and any quality universities including KCL provides that.
Courses are satisfying, and KCL's programme is satisfyingly affordable (14£k total in contrast of 24£k for UCL, whopping 43£k for ICL) offering me the freedom of not thinking about the cost at all for my study - a big thing for me.
Still, understandably, that also reflects their reputation in major quant organisation (major IBs buy-sides) are "premium-free" - I saw a few striving quants from there tho.
I thought of continuing to a PhD programme once this FinMath master's degree is done so this is purposed to be a bridge to prove myself to academics to enter.
KCL ticks every boxes except that reputation bit which unfortunately seems to be a deal-breaker for general people in the industry.
Not that I mean that UCL is target-school (Oxford+ElKaroui, then ICL+M2MO, lastly Warwick and a few other continental places), but apparently it is just right below the target-school range and is understood to be a baseline institution and is not a deal-breaker.
Actually, it makes me feel inappropriate to think about this aspect especially when I know this intitution name-tag doesn't substantially matter especially those beyond in early stage career.
However, the reputation seems to be definitely a thing and I would like to hear your opinion. Thanks.
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