BSc Finance with Placement Year

at Durham University

Year 1
In the first year, you will study five compulsory modules that provide the key fundamentals to examine and evaluate modern financial markets, including introductions to financial and management accounting, economics, finance and mathematics and statistics. These will be complemented by an optional module from the areas of business, global economics or foreign languages.

Year 2
In the second year, you will study three compulsory finance modules to allow you to be able to examine financial issues and the institutions, markets and securities that facilitate the vast array of financial transactions that occur continuously across global markets. Furthermore, you will acquire numerous quantitative tools which enable you to interpret financial data and price financial securities. The finance modules are complemented by one compulsory economics module – macro – and an optional module from the areas of law, accounting, tax or foreign languages.

Year 3
All of our degrees offer you the option of spending your third year gaining practical experience on a placement. Placement years are a great way to develop your employment marketability and to engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. A placement requires a minimum of 40 weeks of work experience and the placement begins in the summer following completion of the second year, and this then becomes the third year of a four-year degree programme. This allows you to really explore and understand your job and to find out if the career or company is for you.

• You will develop your practical skills, confidence and maturity.
• You can focus on a specific career path – many employers recruit graduates from their placement programme.
• You will be able to contextualise your studies better, be more mature in your attitude to work.
• You may decide to draw on your working experiences and access a more fulfilling dissertation research subject.
• You will gain invaluable job search and graduate research skills by engaging in the competitive placement recruitment process.

A strong proficiency in Mathematics is required. If not taken as an A level, a grade 7 (or grade A) in Mathematics at GCSE is required.

We welcome the Core Mathematics Qualification and accept a grade 5 minimum (or grade B) in lieu of our GCSE Mathematics requirement.

A level offer – AAB.

BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma/OCR Cambridge Technical Extended Diploma – DDD.

IB Diploma score – 36 with 665 in higher level subjects. If Mathematics is not taken at higher level, then it is required at standard level 5.

The tuition fees shown for students are for one complete academic year of full time study and are set according to the academic year of entry. Fees for subsequent years of your course may rise in line with an inflationary uplift as determined by the government.

Of those students who graduated in 2019:

• 96% are in paid employment or further study 15 months after graduation across all our programmes

Of those in employment:

• 81% are in high skilled employment
• With an average salary of £29,000.