Quant Guide 2020: University of Paris

Paris, France

 

The Master in Statistics, Probability and Finance course has a new home in 2020. Its former locale, Paris Diderot University, is no more – in 2019 it merged with Paris Descartes University to form the University of Paris (not to be confused with the original University of Paris – often referred to as the Sorbonne – which in 1970 was divided into 13 colleges, including Paris Diderot and Paris Descartes)*.

Professor of mathematics Huyên Pham continues to supervise the degree. The programme is known as an M2, or ‘second-year’ master’s programme, designed for students who already have a master’s qualification of some sort. International students, the programme reports, normally attend after earning a graduate degree in mathematics or a related field. It takes a year to complete, including a five- or six-month internship.

Two tracks are available: a data science track, focused on statistics and big data; and a finance track, prioritising advanced quantitative finance topics. Core modules are taken regardless of specialisation, and they include classes in stochastic calculus and diffusion processes, Markov chains, machine learning and data modelling.

The programme’s cohort of 67 students is of a similar size to that of the previous year. It has 38 teaching staff, nine of whom have an industry affiliation. Its six-month average employment rate in financial services remains at a solid 90% over the prior four years.

*To complicate matters further, another Sorbonne programme makes this year’s quant guide: a joint degree offered by Sorbonne University – itself a combination of another two of those 13 colleges – and the Ecole Polytechnique.

View this institution’s entry in the 2019 guide

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