- Headline
- Oxford MCF Review
- Class of
- 2024
Reviewed by Verified Member
Lectures - 8/10:
The lectures were generally of good quality, except for some guest lecturers which did not live up to the same standard as the university ones. The content was generally challenging (and could be very challenging without a solid background), but delivered well. My main complaint is that they often felt crammed in to 16 hours due to nature of the Oxford term structure where other universities would offer 20-30 hours to cover the same content.
Seminars - 5/10:
The quality of the seminars was largely dependant on the DPhil student delivering the class (as with many universities). There were some courses which had very useful and informative seminars, but many which were poor and disengaging. This was often made worse by them being held in large lecture theatres (likely due to increased numbers of students on the course), meaning there was often little student engagement.
Careers - 7/10:
I'm quite torn with this one. I (naively) started the year thinking that having this course on my CV would walk me relatively easy into an entry level quant job - this is not the case. In the end the whole application cycle was completely demoralising with little support but a lot of pressure from the course director and other students to keep on
applying. However, I ultimately did walk away with two internships (one as a dissertation organised through the university and one off my own back), so in a sense the process worked. Hence I would say the university does everything you would expect it to to help you, with a decent careers service, and does organise dissertations in industry for some students, but does not go to the lengths some other courses do.
Exams - 8/10 (written papers), 7/10 (C++), 2/10 (Stats/DL):
The written exams are as you would expect (although it can be difficult to prepare with no revision lectures or solutions to past papers). By far the worst exams are the 48hr Deep Learning and Stats exams. While being open book eases revision, they encourage people to work through the night and are horrendous.
Student Experience - 3/10:
The intense and short nature of the course makes the student experience hard and isolating, with occasional parts that make you remember you're at Oxford (like matriculation and formals). As with any degree, it's what you make of it, but the workload on top of the internship applications makes it hard to find time to do other stuff compared to standard 12 months MSc with a bit more time.
Misc:
- Despite the above, the name of this course and the Oxford name goes a long way.
- The introduction week is horribly intense and can feel completely overwhelming, and was actually much worse than the main course for me. Try to prep some stuff in advance (particularly probability theory) if you can.
- I would not recommend this course for people wanting to do PhDs - they barely talk about them and this year of studying was so intense it put me off doing one (and it's way more expensive for most people than the 4th year of an integrated masters).
- Recommend
- Yes, I would recommend this program
- Students Quality
-
3.00 star(s)
- Courses/Instructors
-
4.00 star(s)
- Career Services
-
3.00 star(s)