Joey
Soudant
Teaching Assistant & PhD Student at UNamur
As I was finishing my bachelor degree, I knew I wanted to go abroad for my master. At the beginning, I wanted to go far away, possibly in a different continent. However, I found the joint degree program with the University of Geneva and I immediately liked the program. Now that it is over, I don't regret it at all as the program was extremely rewarding and the city very beautiful !
The program is a good mix between compulsory and optional courses in finance and macroeconomics subjects. You can take macroeconomic classes in Belgium while in Geneva courses are mainly in quantitative finance. Amazing professors who are still very active in research or consulting and regularly share their experience with us teach them. Moreover, I liked them to always put the course into perceptive and show us how they relate to present matters. The international environment also gave me the opportunity to meet people from all over the world and to participate to seminars and conferences given by lots of different people. Finally, this program gives us, without any doubt, a big advantage towards mathematical and econometrics courses, which is imperative if you want to do finance. This makes the double degree very challenging but it is complete and give you a good preparation for a future job. As I was looking for an internship or for a job, I noticed that recruiters are always very interested by this part of my CV, they value both the international experience and the advanced program in finance. As a proof, as I was in Switzerland, I got the chance to do a summer internship in a big bank in Lausanne, which I probably could not have done without participating in this program.
About the city, this is an amazing place to live. You have both the lake and the mountains. You can easily go skiing in the winter. The rest of the year, you can walk around the lake or in the parks, you can swim in the lake in summer or visiting other very nice cities of Switzerland. Even if it is true that life is quite expensive in Switzerland, the Swiss mobility grant is very helpful in this matter. Moreover, classes are given in small groups, lots of activities are organized and bars are really nice, which give the opportunity to meet plenty of people in the city. Living not much than 100 meters from the lake it was really nice and difficult to come back home ;) !