Operations Research & Analytics MSc

Having a background in finance and economics, I aimed for a Masters programme where I could develop mathematical and programming skills to solve industry problems in operations research and data science. Enrolling in the Operations Research and Analytics programme at LSE was the right choice for this goal.

The programme features a diverse student body with the majority of students having majored in mathematics with some engineering and finance students. Even though only a one-year programme, the programme achieved a good balance between theoretical foundations and industry applications and allowed us to study topics such as combinatorial optimization, advanced statistics or algorithmic techniques for data mining.

The high academic level and relevance of the programme is due to the academic staff, who have excellent academic credentials, partially have worked for renowned industry companies and are well connected in the academic community. Graduating from the programme, I had an offer from BCG Gamma, the advanced analytics team of BCG, which I rejected for a PhD in discrete mathematics.

I came to the LSE with the main goal of improving my quantitative problem-solving skills, and subsequently landing a job in investment banking. The School and societies provided extremely good network opportunities, which really helped to land the job that I aimed at. After only two months at the LSE I landed a job offer with one of the top global investment banks. However, upon finishing the Operations Research & Analytics programme I quickly realised that I would rather pursue a career in data science, and once again the university's reputation opened doors for me last minute. Currently I work as a Data Analyst in the Telenor Digital data science team in Norway. There I code various machine learning algorithms in R, all of which I have all learned during this degree.

Overall I can say that coming from a non-quantitative, business background I have learned more in this one-year Masters than I did in my entire three years of my bachelor degree. The programme was challenging but manageable. In particular, I highly appreciated how much face time I received from all of my professors, as well as the professor who supervised my thesis. The decision to come to the LSE and studying Operations Research & Analytics was one of the best I have made so far and I can highly recommend LSE and the degree.

Studying this Masters was my third MSc, after studying Applied Mathematics and Economics, four years of experience in Economics and Finance, moving country, two kids, and four years at home with them. It was a challenging experience to find myself among young, inspired and able students from around the world. It also took some time to get used to the pace of study, and to network with people and share skills and knowledge. I needed some psychological help at the start of the journey and I had an opportunity to get it at LSE, which makes me feel grateful.

I liked that the programme was flexible in what courses you could choose in order to make it fit your personal interests and academic goals. I encourage students to research and think hard about their course choices before starting the programme. Also, it is useful to have an understanding of which direction you wish to head in (e.g. academic or business) so you can utilise LSE’s resources properly.

I found the careers events to be very valuable in my experience here. For example, I met a member of the Data Science team from Deloitte and after many rounds and following my MA425 Project there in the summer, I found myself with a full time job after finishing the course.

I enjoyed my journey, my job, and my experience with LSE. Whenever I get a new research heavy task, I start dreaming whether I could eventually turn it into a PhD, so my journey is not over.