If you are browsing this site, there is a fair chance you are a student or graduate in engineering, math or statistical sciences. You have had a top-quality education in one of these areas and are now considering a career in a different field from that of your initial training: finance.
And quite rightly so: few areas of business offer such exciting, fascinating and enriching careers as finance. You are at a crossroads in your life. On the one hand, increasingly sophisticated financial management, the complexity of financial products and the technical expertise required for trading have created a need for very high-level specialized training. On the other hand, a large number of high-quality programs do exist in France and in Europe, and you are wondering which one you should choose.
We have designed this site with the intention of providing you with precise facts and answers to your questions. It will not come as much of a surprise to you if I say that the two essential criteria in your choice must be the quality of the course and the international recognition of the diploma awarded at the end of the program.
Primarily, the quality of a program depends on the men and women who teach in the program. Whether they are researchers or finance professionals, they must be among the best in their field. The quality of a program also depends on the structure of the curriculum, which must be sufficiently technical to make you immediately operational in your first job, while remaining general enough to provide the broad foundations for your career development over the years.
International recognition of the diploma has become more and more important over the years, as the globalization of financial markets leads to increasingly international teams and recruitment. Whichever bank or fund you dream of working for next year, whether in France or abroad, it will have chosen just a few campuses in Europe from which to carry out its recruitment, and you will be in competition with students from the very best European schools. After that, your career may well take you to London, New York or Asia, as has been the case for one-third of the MS Finance class that started studies in September 2006. In any case, it is essential that your diploma be an asset in achieving your objectives.
I believe this site will answer most of these questions about the MS Finance HEC. Over the coming months, further information (such as the results of the “three years after ” Specialized Masters graduate salaries survey, for instance) will become available and we will put it on the site. I hope that my colleagues and myself will have the pleasure of seeing you among our students on the HEC campus at the start of the year. In the meantime, happy browsing!
Jacques Olivier
Scientific Director of the MS Finance HEC