Postgraduate Students

Applying:

University of St. Andrews Admissions (postgraduate)

Please note, the following course are not available for 2012 entry:

M.Sc. Analytical Finance
M.Sc. International Finance

MSc in International Finance

Files:

Welcome to the MSc in International Finance (IF) course, in the School of Economics & Finance at St Andrews. It has been developed to reflect the increasing interest in this technical area displayed by postgraduate applicants to St Andrews, allied to a long standing tradition, within this University, of placing our graduates in a wide variety of posts in the financial community. This is commonplace for the UK, Europe, and North America, and is becoming increasingly true of further afield, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. St Andrews has a deep academic tradition in finance, dating back over a hundred years, to W R Scott's famous work on the form and finance of joint-stock companies, and the genesis of speculative crises. Today, we have a well established group of staff who are active in teaching, research, consulting and publishing in finance, over a broad range of topics.

The aim of the programme is to develop high analytical ability, to provide candidates with transferable skills in empirical modeling (both spreadsheet and econometrics based), and to make candidates knowledgeable about: the functioning and rationale of international financial markets and institutions; real and nominal exchange rate modeling; international capital flows, and their links to commercial and central banking activities.

There are two types of students on this programme. Some are on the Postgraduate Diploma in International Finance course, which runs full-time for two semesters. They are appraised by both continuous assessment during the teaching of modules and by their performance in end of semester examinations in January and May. Others are on the MSc in International Finance course which runs full-time for the full academic year. They are appraised by continuous assessment, end of semester examinations in January and May and by a dissertation of at least 10,000 words (but no longer than 15,000 words) which is returned by the end of August. A basic requirement is that both Diploma and MSc students must gain a total of 120 credits from modules taken.

All candidates take three compulsory modules in International Finance in the first semester, and two compulsory modules in the second semester. Each module carries a credit weight of 20 credits. They must then study one further optional module in the second semester, of 20 credit weight. Candidates select from the optional modules listed below. Both Diploma and MSc candidates are appraised by continuous assessment and an examination paper in each module. Examinations occur at the end of the semester in which a module is taught. Subject to performance students may proceed to write the 60 credit Dissertation for the MSc in International Finance.

PRELIMINARY READING

It is expected that all students will have studied and mastered a significant body of the preliminary reading, as given below.

The Economist, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and their associated website and pages are a good way to grasp contemporary insights, examples and issues, relating to finance.

As accessible introduction to studies in International Finance, we recommend:

Keith Pilbeam (2005) International Finance, Macmillan.

Laurence Copeland (2008) Exchange Rates and International Finance (5th edition), Prentice Hall/Financial Times.