Quant Guide 2021: Paris-Sorbonne University/Ecole Polytechnique

Paris, France

 

 

The Master’s in Probability in Finance, hosted jointly by Sorbonne University and Ecole Polytechnique, climbs two places in this year’s Quant Guide, to 16^th – the third-highest European programme featured.

The course lasts one academic year, across two semesters and an industry internship. The first semester includes classes in probability and optimisation, derivatives, econometrics, and European Union markets. The second semester involves more advanced material, with classes on stochastic algorithms, US options, parallel computing, high-frequency trading and machine learning.

A set of introductory ‘refresher’ classes are also available, prior to the beginning of the first semester, for students who want to revisit the fundamentals of quant finance.

The course, like last year, is led by a trio of responsables: Emmanuel Gobet, a professor of applied mathematics at partner institution Ecole Polytechnique; Gilles Pagès, a professor in the faculty of sciences and engineering; and Mathieu Rosenbaum, a professor at Ecole Polytechnique’s centre for applied mathematics.

Course founder, the mathematician Nicole El-Karoui, is teaching an expanded range of classes this year in: longevity risk; interest rate models and derivatives; and stochastic processes and derivatives.

While the programme, like many others, reports a fall in its average graduate employment rate compared with last year’s Risk.net Quant Guide – 77% versus 90% – it remains highly competitive in other key areas. The average starting salary for its graduates has leapt to $94,211, compared with $58,000 last year, and the course has become even more popular among offer holders. Last year, 75 out of 83 offer holders accepted, a rate of 90.4%. This year, 71 out of 78 offer holders accepted, pushing the rate to 91.0%.

It also remains one of the least expensive of all the courses represented in the guide, with tuition fees of just €330.

View this institution’s entry in the 2020 guide

View other universities and a guide to the metrics tables