Basic Stats
# of Students: 29
# of Applications: ~500 (bear in mind the admission test narrows this down considerably vs. other schools)
Length: 10 months
Cost: ~25k GBP (tuition and college fees) + 1-2k living costs per month?
This should be on the website:
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/courses/mathematical-finance/msc-mcf
Employment Statistics
Post graduation employment statistics aren't given so I'll give this year's breakdown from what I know.
Full Time: 5 - 7 (2 had return offers from before the course)
Internships: 6 - 9
Further study: 1 - 3
(Statistics taken just before the end of the course - no doubt some will find jobs after the course etc..)
From my sources, previous cohorts also had similar employment statistics at this stage in the course.
All jobs are based in London, except for 1 in Europe, 1 in Hong Kong and 1 in the US.
Employers include the top tier IBanks, a quant hedge fund and a trading firm.
You will get (some) interviews from the reputation of Oxford mathematics but this alone will not secure you a job.
What I liked
General Oxford experience - old architecture, punting, societies, Oxford Union etc...
Top notch facilities - especially the new Mathematical Institute building. It's arguably the coolest math building in the world :D.
Excellent teaching - Apart from one or two lecturers, the quality of teaching is exceptional. You are taught by some fairly big names in financial mathematics.
Solid coursework - The coursework is very rigorous and a lot more theoretical than other programs. The overall focus of the course has been on derivatives pricing although you have an option next year to focus on data-driven topics e.g. algo trading and market microstructure.
What I didn't like
Course structure - This is by far the biggest complaint among the current students and to Oxford's credit the course will be restructured next year (2014/2015) in light of this. We learned programming far too late to be useful in interviews and were expected to find jobs at the very beginning of the course when the graduate recruitment season began.
C++ Programming Courses - You learn the basics and then learn how to use and extend the lecturer's own library. This is inadequate preparation for quant interviews and actual quant work. You will need to study some Comp. Sci (e.g. sorting algorithms) yourself.
Course is too intensive/long. The course tries to pack in too much material for the 10 months and as a result you will be pressed hard. By the start of the final semester only less than 40% of the course marks have been assessed. Make no mistake - this course is one of the most difficult in Oxford.
No careers service - you have a careers office (outside of the department) but nothing else. No one is actively searching for roles for you unlike at some top US programs. You might also get some networking sessions/presentations from banks/HF's but that's about it.
What I'm neutral about
Dissertation and Miniprojects - These were very time consuming - you need to do all of these during Trinity term. That's around 60-80 pages of stuff you are required to write in 8 weeks or so. On the other hand, these projects were a good way to reinforce material learned in the first two semesters.
Overall opinion
Overall, the course was stimulating and engaging - definitely worth the money. Although the course wasn't as great as I expected it to be, it was still excellent.
Advice for potential applicants
If you want to pursue a DPhil/PhD, this program is for the most part theoretical enough to help you in admissions interviews especially in stochastic processes/PDE's. The issue is with timing - ideally you should apply towards the end of the course when you have marks and know the faculty better but unfortunately the isn't usually the case.
If you want to apply hoping to find a quant job after graduation, my advice is to be prepared.
Students with no experience in finance beforehand only managed to secure internships at best. Those students who managed to obtain full time work had internships behind them and the Oxford brand only helped to land interviews. The job hunt begins as soon as you arrive - banks' graduate recruitment opens near the start of the course. You will not have had sufficient time to study programming/brainteasers/stochastic calculus etc. to succeed in any early interviews. Statistics/Time-series analysis are also useful skills to have going into the course.
Also Oxford's location should not factor into your decisions - the bus to London takes only 1-2 hrs.
US vs. UK
The top US quant finance programs (Columbia, CMU, Princeton etc.) have better careers services - they have active alumni recruitment programs or whatever they call it.
US programs are longer (1.5-2 years) and UK programs are shorter (1 yr). More time to get internships and to land that full time job.
In the US you get jobs via networking and over here you have to apply online mostly.
The US market seems a lot more competitive than in the UK.
It feels like that there are more investment banking quant jobs in London but fewer prop shop or hedge fund jobs.
What other courses should I consider (in the UK)?
Imperial has better careers services and employment outcomes - I'd do their industrial training over a dissertation anyday! LOL
Cambridge Part III is cheaper and just as employable/reputable as Oxford, imo. However, some say it's even more 'hardcore' than even the Oxford MSc MCF.
I don't know about LSE but my fellow students say its much worse than Oxford.
Frankly, you will have difficulty finding quant jobs if you are in lower ranked universities. Banks' tend to hire from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, LSE in no particular order.
