Quant Guide 2022: Paris-Sorbonne University/Ecole Polytechnique

Paris, France

 

 

The Sorbonne’s Master’s in Probability and Finance has made huge gains in this year’s rankings, polling 4^th, leapfrogging UK rivals to become the top-ranked European programme in the process. The programme, now led solely by mathematics professor Gilles Pagès, has seen its graduate employment rate climb to 81%, a 45% increase in applications since last year, and a $9,289 boost to graduate salaries, which have risen from $94,211 to $103,500.

The master’s has become more selective in line with the rising interest of applicants. It made 74 offers to 453 hopefuls for the latest intake, 69 of which were accepted, for a strong offer-holder acceptance rate of 93%. Last year, 78 offers were made to 312 applicants.

Instructors on the course include: famed financial mathematician and course founder Nicole El Karoui, who teaches three classes; Nizar Touzi, who leads a course in optimisation and stochastic control; Mathieu Rosenbaum, who teaches a class in statistical techniques for high-frequency finance; and Emmanuel Bacry, who lectures on multi-scale statistical analysis and modelling for financial time series.

Students can also take classes in: asset allocation and multi-asset arbitrage; machine learning-aided trading; stochastic algorithms; and a range of quantitative strategies. The second part of the one-year course sees students embarking on supervised internships, designed, as the programme says, to allow students to “confront the realities” of financial markets. Recent sponsors have included JP Morgan, Natixis, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas.

The course remains one of the cheapest programmes in the Quant Guide: its cost has also fallen from last year’s figure of €330 to €243, and is the same for both domestic French and foreign students.

View this institution’s entry in the 2021 guide

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