MSc Economics: Why I changed direction and transferred to Queen Mary.

31 August 2026

 When I started researching master's programmes in economics, I knew a few things with certainty:  

• I wanted to stay in London. 

• I needed the cost to be justifiable because I was funding this myself. 

• I had a very clear career vision: I was going to become a micro-economist working in policy. 

That was the plan. I had done my research carefully, scrutinising faculty profiles, research expertise and value for money across several programmes. I was not going in blind.  

And then, almost immediately, the plan fell apart. 

My first-choice institution turned out to be nothing like what I had expected. Within weeks, I realised the programme simply wasn't the right fit. I had made the difficult decision to leave and start again. It was, to put it mildly, a debacle. The programme I kept coming back to, and one I had been most drawn to but also most afraid of, was the MSc Economics programme at Queen Mary. 

What held me back? Honestly, mathematics. The Queen Mary programme has a reputation for being technically rigorous, and unlike many of my eventual classmates, I wasn't coming from a quantitative undergraduate degree. I had been working professionally and hadn't studied economics formally for some time. I feared being out of my depth and simply not following along to the lecture. 

Apparently, the Universe enjoys testing people, because after two weeks at my original institution I decided to leave and move to Queen Mary. Two weeks of core material missed from the very start of a technically demanding programme, followed by additional weeks of catching up in the evenings just to reach the baseline everyone else was already at. It was at times genuinely chaotic. 

I am so glad I did it.

The module I was most afraid of was Econometrics. I came into it with less mathematical foundation than most of my peers and came in with the understanding that this module could unravel my plans to become an economist. Instead, I achieved a distinction. That result meant more to me than perhaps any other in my academic life, precisely because of what it cost to get there.  

But the bigger surprise was what I discovered I enjoyed. Queen Mary's programme offers modules you simply won't find elsewhere. ‘Applied Time Series and Forecasting’ is unique to the MSc Economics programme at Queen Mary, alongside ‘Introduction to Machine Learning’ and a range of applied, hands-on components that pushed me to develop data science and coding skills I genuinely didn't expect to acquire at postgraduate level. I came in wanting to do policy-oriented microeconomics. I am leaving with a deep interest in macroeconomics, international finance, and quantitative methods, with a foot in the door of long-term investing through extra-curricular activities such as QUMMIF. A 180-degree pivot. And yet, the original policy-facing opportunities are still there, the programme never closed that door; it just opened a great many others. 

The highlight of the programme was being competitively selected from the entire cohort to complete my summer project with the Bank of England. This, as an economics student, was perhaps the most exciting opportunity I've had the honour to accept. My project sits at the intersection of international trade and inflation dynamics: using trade data to develop new methods of identifying and quantifying imported inflation shocks, particularly where fragile supply chain links are the underlying cause. It is exactly the kind of applied, real-world research I hoped to do when I started looking at master’s programmes. The fact that Queen Mary made this possible, and that the technical skills built over the year made me competitive for it, is something I could not have anticipated at the beginning of the year.

If I could offer one piece of advice to future students, it would be this: know why you want to do this programme before you start but hold that answer loosely. 

I came in certain about where I was headed. That certainty was useful, it got me through the door and kept me focused on the difficult early weeks, but it would have been a shame to let it narrow what I was willing to explore. Ask yourself whether you're switching careers, deepening an existing interest, or still searching. That answer should shape which modules you take and which opportunities you pursue. But come with an open mind. The programme will show you things about your own interests that you didn't know were there. 

P.S. As a postgraduate student, I made sure to develop my own memories of the university, just so I wasn't a passing student, but that it felt like home. I did it by partaking in the extracurricular activities, spending time outside of class with my cohort and attending cultural events at the university. Do not forget to do that. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.