[Ibanez]

Hi everyone,

I applied to a MSc Financial and Industrial Economics programme at Royal Holloway and MSc Economics and Finance at York and already have conditional offers from both. But am now having doubts about which one to choose. I am in my final year of an undergraduate degree (BSc Financial and Business Economics) at Royal Holloway and applied to York basically because it was more competitive and its Economics department traditionally had quite a good reputation (didn't apply anywhere else).

However, the most recent RAE and league table rankings all place York relatively close to Holloway (with RHUL outperforming York in 2008 RAE) in Economics. Combining this with generally low graduate prospects rankings from York (slightly puzzling but I am assuming this is due to location more than anything else...), I am wondering if it would still be worth it to move to York for a Masters.

How much would an MSc from York improve my career opportunities over an MSc from RH (assuming I get the same grades)? How much better (in terms of reputation) is York's Econ department over RH?

Thanks in advance for any help!!! Really appreciate it!

[Paulwhy]

(Original post by Ibanez)
Hi everyone,

I applied to a MSc Financial and Industrial Economics programme at Royal Holloway and MSc Economics and Finance at York and already have conditional offers from both. But am now having doubts about which one to choose. I am in my final year of an undergraduate degree (BSc Financial and Business Economics) at Royal Holloway and applied to York basically because it was more competitive and its Economics department traditionally had quite a good reputation (didn't apply anywhere else).

However, the most recent RAE and league table rankings all place York relatively close to Holloway (with RHUL outperforming York in 2008 RAE) in Economics. Combining this with generally low graduate prospects rankings from York (slightly puzzling but I am assuming this is due to location more than anything else...), I am wondering if it would still be worth it to move to York for a Masters.

How much would an MSc from York improve my career opportunities over an MSc from RH (assuming I get the same grades)? How much better (in terms of reputation) is York's Econ department over RH?

Thanks in advance for any help!!! Really appreciate it!

Check out the Msc Economics Admissions Guide:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=896049

But IDEAS has York a bit above RH:
York (147,40,12)
RH (166,51,14)
(World,EU,UK)

1) Have you considered applying to other unis?
e.g. Warwick are still open and I know they have taken RH graduates in the past

2) Which graduate prospects figures are those? e.g. the newspaper graduate figures will be (totally/mainly (?))) for undergraduates.

3)unistats for Postgraduate courses has York at 95% but no economics entry for RH. (Although there is an RH entry for social studies).
So that raises concerns about how big the RH postgraduate programme is.

If you want to investigate further pleases reply with the RH and York links.

[Ibanez]

(Original post by Paulwhy)
Check out the Msc Economics Admissions Guide:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=896049

But IDEAS has York a bit above RH:
York (147,40,12)
RH (166,51,14)
(World,EU,UK)

1) Have you considered applying to other unis?
e.g. Warwick are still open and I know they have taken RH graduates in the past

2) Which graduate prospects figures are those? e.g. the newspaper graduate figures will be (totally/mainly (?))) for undergraduates.

3)unistats for Postgraduate courses has York at 95% but no economics entry for RH. (Although there is an RH entry for social studies).
So that raises concerns about how big the RH postgraduate programme is.

If you want to investigate further pleases reply with the RH and York links.

The IDEAS ranking does put York above Holloway but the difference really seems very small.

1. I didn't apply to Warwick mostly because I was slightly concerned that my undergraduate degree was not particular quantitative and hence I would perhaps struggle to achieve a 2:1 or above at Warwick which I understand specialises somewhat in Micro. There is also the issue with fees as the Warwick Msc in Finance and Economics is part of WBS and hence would require 17,650 tuition. So I'd limited to pure Economics which still costs 3000 more than York (http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/econ/pro.../grad/fees.htm) and 5000 more than RH (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/stud...c/Funding.html). Perhaps Warwick is superior enough in terms of reputation and graduate prospects to be worth the extra fees and a risk of a lower grade? Not really familiar with any of the other topish tier Unis at all...

2. I was actually thinking of the newspaper figures for undergraduates. But I assumed the postgraduate figures would be similar as I attributed the cause for York having such low prospects to location, which would apply to undergrads and postgrads alike.

3. The 95% employment rate for postgrads for York is certainly encouraging!! But I am not sure how unistats compose their figures? How reliable is it?

Here are links for the 2 programmes:
York
http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/econ/pro...ses/msc-ef.htm
RHUL
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/stud...graduates/MSc/

Thanks a lot for your insight, really helpful already. Not sure what other links would be helpful...

Thanks again!