Seeking Advice: Finance vs. Health Data Science - Which Master's Program Should I Cho

Hello everyone,

I'm facing a dilemma and would really appreciate your input. I have a finance background from my undergraduate studies, and I've been fortunate to receive two offers from St. Andrews University - one for a Master's in Finance and the other for a Master's in Health Data Science.If anyone has experience or insights to share, please help me decide which program aligns better with my interests and future prospects. Your advice means a lot!Thank you!

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by lalala726

Hello everyone,

I'm facing a dilemma and would really appreciate your input. I have a finance background from my undergraduate studies, and I've been fortunate to receive two offers from St. Andrews University - one for a Master's in Finance and the other for a Master's in Health Data Science.If anyone has experience or insights to share, please help me decide which program aligns better with my interests and future prospects. Your advice means a lot!Thank you!

Firstly, it would make significantly more sense if you tell us what are your itnerests and future prospects. It's very difficult to advise if we don't know this.

Secondly, are you an international student (the way you write makes you sound like one)? If so, I don't know what the entry requirements are for your specific country for specific professions.

If you intend to work in the UK, then I would point out the following:

•

A master's in finance (or most finance degrees) won't guarantee you a place in the financial industry; you would need specific professional finance qualifications for specific roles, and you get most of these qualifications through colleges or specific institutions.

•

The only 2 qualifications that you might possibly need a degree for to meet entry requirements are the CFA and CQF (you would need to check their websites to be sure)

•

A master's in health data science would be helpful if you intend to work in bioinformatics at the NHS, since you don't have such a degree at undergrad level

•

If you want to do a PhD (and hence go into research or academia) in finance or health data science, you would likely need to pick the appropriate master's for the PhD that you want to study. With some PhD courses you can get away with just an undergrad, but you often need a relatively high score to bypass the requirement for a master's,

Note: if you intend to work in finance in the UK (and most likely in any other country), you would need to be very specific about which role you want to go into, as the qualifications you would need will vary widely e.g. if you intend to be a stockbroker, you can't use the same qualification to become say an insurance salesperson.

I don't know the specifics of studying at St. Andrews, so you would need a second opinion about it.

Reply 2

lalala726

OP

4

Original post by MindMax2000

Firstly, it would make significantly more sense if you tell us what are your itnerests and future prospects. It's very difficult to advise if we don't know this.

Secondly, are you an international student (the way you write makes you sound like one)? If so, I don't know what the entry requirements are for your specific country for specific professions.

If you intend to work in the UK, then I would point out the following:

•

A master's in finance (or most finance degrees) won't guarantee you a place in the financial industry; you would need specific professional finance qualifications for specific roles, and you get most of these qualifications through colleges or specific institutions.

•

The only 2 qualifications that you might possibly need a degree for to meet entry requirements are the CFA and CQF (you would need to check their websites to be sure)

•

A master's in health data science would be helpful if you intend to work in bioinformatics at the NHS, since you don't have such a degree at undergrad level

•

If you want to do a PhD (and hence go into research or academia) in finance or health data science, you would likely need to pick the appropriate master's for the PhD that you want to study. With some PhD courses you can get away with just an undergrad, but you often need a relatively high score to bypass the requirement for a master's,

Note: if you intend to work in finance in the UK (and most likely in any other country), you would need to be very specific about which role you want to go into, as the qualifications you would need will vary widely e.g. if you intend to be a stockbroker, you can't use the same qualification to become say an insurance salesperson.

I don't know the specifics of studying at St. Andrews, so you would need a second opinion about it.

Thank you for your thorough response; it has been incredibly helpful. As an international student, I am currently uncertain about the direction of my career. Health data science, which involves programming knowledge, captures my interest, as I believe these skills are highly sought after in the job market. My goal is to become a data analyst in a pharmaceutical company. However, I do have some reservations about how the health data science course is recognized and esteemed compared to the well-established field of finance, which may potentially offer better recognition and job prospects.

Reply 3

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by lalala726

Thank you for your thorough response; it has been incredibly helpful. As an international student, I am currently uncertain about the direction of my career. Health data science, which involves programming knowledge, captures my interest, as I believe these skills are highly sought after in the job market. My goal is to become a data analyst in a pharmaceutical company. However, I do have some reservations about how the health data science course is recognized and esteemed compared to the well-established field of finance, which may potentially offer better recognition and job prospects.

I am not entirely sure what the entry requirements for data analysts outside of the UK would be, but strictly speaking within the UK and US you don't really need a degree in data science or data analysis to get into data analysis. Which industry you choose to work for is contextual, so it's more about the role that you're going after.

The things that often comes up for data analyst roles include:

•

Knowledge of SQL

•

Knowlegde of PowerBI (you can get a professional certificate in this), or any platform that you're using

•

Programming knowledge (usually Python)

•

Knowledge of statistics

See the following for information:
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/data-analyst
https://targetjobs.co.uk/careers-advice/job-descriptions/data-analyst-job-description
https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/data-analyst-statistician
Again, I would check the entry requirements for data analyst roles in your home country if you don't intend to stay in the UK

When it comes to recognition and "esteem", degrees are usually regarded as degrees. It's great that you attended a top end university, but that's not going to be the defining factor to getting the job in the UK. Employers care more about your experience and skills.
It's similar with finance, but it's a lot tougher due to the level of competition. In finance, it's more about your people skills once you get the appropriate professional finance qualification (which you still haven't specified).
In my opinion, recognition and "esteem" for job roles aren't what they are used to in the UK (it might be a different story elsewhere). You can earn high level qualifications and get all the titles that you want, but you can be earning next to nothing (ask as many post-docs, engineers, and doctors for example). In contrast, you could have next to no qualifications, work in sales, start a business, or go into a marketing role and outearn anyone with a PhD. Bottom level staff who are paid commissions along with their salaries can outearn the CEOs, politicians, and even the most "respected" of professionals.
This wasn't the case a few decades ago when having a degree can generally mean a higher salary. Times can change within a few years. If you read books by Michael Lewis, he can describe how for example being in mortgage sales was considered a dread in the US until the early 1980s when it was the lowest earning department, but things quickly turned around in the later part of the decade when it became the biggest earner. Likewise, prior to the 1990s, traders were the biggest earners until everything became automated and quants ended up running the show.
Data science wasn't really considered a thing until about 5 years ago when you started seeing people earn six figures due to analytics and AI, then it lost momentum about a year and a half ago.

Nothing is stable and everything and anything can change within a few years. It's more appropriate to pick a profession you would love doing instead of going for recognition and "esteem".

Reply 4

dk321

1

Original post by lalala726

Thank you for your thorough response; it has been incredibly helpful. As an international student, I am currently uncertain about the direction of my career. Health data science, which involves programming knowledge, captures my interest, as I believe these skills are highly sought after in the job market. My goal is to become a data analyst in a pharmaceutical company. However, I do have some reservations about how the health data science course is recognized and esteemed compared to the well-established field of finance, which may potentially offer better recognition and job prospects.

msc in finance from st andrews is a joke

Seeking Advice: Finance vs. Health Data Science - Which Master's Program Should I Cho

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