Postgraduate profile: Masters in finance

Stian Westlake's plan to study a masters in finance came about from his work in consulting and the public sector.

I spent a year doing graduate study at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. I then spent two years as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company, which led to a one-year post at HM Treasury's newly established Private Finance Unit. These jobs made me aware of the importance of financial issues to real world problems, both in the private sector and in public policy. However, I felt that an in-depth understanding of the theory and practice of finance would be very helpful in my future career.

My postgraduate course

I chose to undertake the masters in finance at London Business School because of the quality of its finance faculty and the focused nature of the degree. The programme included core subjects, which brought me up to speed on the basics of finance, and electives, ranging from private equity to macroeconomics to financial engineering. Work is typically done in teams, and is a mixture of case studies, projects and problem sets. I was lucky enough to be sponsored by a financial journalism trust, so spent a fair amount of time looking into this as a possible career and working on articles in the area of finance.

Getting a job

The course also gave me the opportunity to return to McKinsey & Company in a more senior position working on a number of interesting corporate financial issues. Although I was not looking to move into banking, my fellow students were and found that the networking events, interview skills workshop and employer presentations allowed them to refine their job searches.

Stian studied a masters in finance at London Business School after his undergraduate degree in modern history at Oxford university.