In the past few months, I have advised candidates on their application and the interview process. The experience often reminds me of when I was an anxious applicant. I feel that a few things would be super beneficial for prospective students to know before they start applying.

Read the  ‘Admissions’ section of the website thoroughly

The MSc Management programme's admissions section has very detailed and useful information regarding application progress every step of the way. I remember over a year ago I was reading Imperial's website carefully and that helped to answer almost all my generic questions regarding entry requirements and the process.

Doing so gave me a clear direction and plan of how I should proceed and how to organise my material and made me aware of what I might miss and where I might need help. I can't stress enough that you should go through the admissions pages before reaching out to staff and students of the programme.

Dig out insider information

When applicants come to me with questions which are already answered on the website, they will likely get very similar answers because I often refer to the website when typing in my responses. To create meaningful interactions with people in the Business School, I strongly suggest that applicants ask questions that can only be answered by 'insiders'.

For example, which modules are interesting, which clubs are fun and active and what services Careers provide. Such first-hand information assists you in demonstrating genuine interest in the School in your personal statement. Additionally, it helps you to further understand if the School fits your academic or career goals.

Set up a positive mindset

Applying for a prestigious institute like Imperial College Business School is daunting and stressful. It is crucial to have a healthy mindset so that you can benefit from the application process no matter what the final result is. When I was applying for a Master's, I found the process itself to be rewarding.

Figuring out which programme to study and how best to present myself to the Admissions team offered me a valuable opportunity to reflect on my personal and professional life, which I should have done a long time ago.

In hindsight, reaching out to Student Ambassadors also helps candidates to build meaningful relationships with the alumni early on, which is beneficial to future studying and job hunting.

Applied Strategic Marketing

Some of the concepts covered in this module, such as disruptive businesses models, are changing the way we do business. Our lecturer James Eteen, an experienced consultant and former co-lead partner of Ernst & Young UK Strategy Practice, used real case studies to explain different concepts and always makes sure that the content covered is up-to-date.

For example, we covered the impact of COVID-19 on different businesses and how it is changing buyer behaviour, as well as how businesses should react to this complicated situation. Not only do I find the concepts very interesting and insightful, but I love how our thoughts were challenged, which encouraged an analytical mindset.

One of the interesting things about this module is that we sometimes had classes with the Global Online MBA cohort. It gave us the opportunity to meet students from other backgrounds and learn from those with different areas of expertise.

Reflections on the MSc Strategic Marketing (online, part-time) programme

As this is an online, part-time programme, and a lot of us are working full-time jobs, I appreciate the fact that the Programmes team always tries to understand how we are coping with the modules and take on board our opinions about the materials with the aim of making continuous improvements.

The Business School provides a safe environment for us to express our views to student leaders of the Student Staff Committee, who meet every month to provide support to students throughout the term.

In the summer term, we get to choose three electives that interest us, and I have chosen Advanced Strategy, International Business and Leadership. I am very excited for the next semester. Hopefully we get to travel soon so I can meet some great friends and teammates that I have met through this online programme in London!

On 31 March 2021, participants were invited to celebrate the launch of the 2021 UNESCO and Women@Dior: Women Leadership & Sustainability programme. In 2021, Dior has joined UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition in a unique collaboration to address the serious educational crisis spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This collaboration has also allowed Women@Dior to expand and reach a new public of young women from a number of nations including Niger, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. 1000 young women from 25 countries attended this e-conferences as a unique opportunity to spread the power of sisterhood around the world by giving inspiring voices a platform.

This event provided an insight into the year ahead whilst also presenting an opportunity to hear from prominent Dior leaders, the Director-General of UNESCO, and other female trailblazers as they stand to empower women and advance women’s education.

The year ahead with Women@Dior

Over the next year, I am looking forward to collaborating with my mentor and learning about their experiences and perspectives to empower my future. Following the theoretical coursework component of the programme, we are able to put what we have learned into practice by developing a “Dream for Change Project” by creating a local and concrete project that supports the empowerment of young girls.

The most impactful projects are presented to Dior leaders and will be eligible for support from Dior and the LVMH Group. An amalgamation of the entire year’s learnings, I look forward to what my team puts forward to support young women.

A rare opportunity, I am excited to be part of this year’s cohort and look forward to building confidence, a wider network of strong women, and launching my career as a future leader of tomorrow.

Back in 2019, the Bank of England made a prediction. The future for financial services, it said, would be built to a very great extent around machine learning. And this stands to reason.

We are living in an era where artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated into every aspect of life. Across industries, the transformative potential of these technologies is becoming abundantly clear – from the significant savings in costs, time and human error to leveraging data for insights to drive decision-making and competitive edge, when it comes to AI, the sky it seems is the limit. For banking alone, a 2020 McKinsey report suggests that AI technologies could amount to a whopping $1 trillion of additional annual value globally.

What then is holding some financial services players back from fully exploiting the promise of machine? Why are so many firms still struggling to implement machine learning models at scale?

Partly there’s fear; fear of the new, of change, of the unknown. This era, dubbed The Fourth Industrial Revolution, is characterised by extraordinary technology-driven transformations; so-called cyber-physical systems that are reshaping the way we live and work. And an unstoppable digitisation of everything from onboarding to compliance and fraud detection, to loans and investments.

Beyond fear, there’s a lack of clarity about how to use AI – where to deploy it, and where not to; and how to build the right strategies to integrate and fully leverage it across the organisation.

Many firms today still grapple with inflexible core technology systems – outmoded or under-invested systems that fail to function as a single, centralised data backbone. Data assets are often fragmented across business and technology silos, while legacy operating models make collaboration between these teams difficult if not impossible.

Meanwhile the pace of change continues to quicken unabated. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the big trends in digital engagement and digitisation globally - so much so that for financial executives the choice has become very simple: understand AI or risk being left behind.

Here are a few things that you need to know if you want get ahead of the curve, compete successfully and thrive in the new normal.

1. AI should be the foundation for new value propositions and distinctive customer experiences.

Remember, AI technologies can help your firm:

• Lower costs through the efficiencies created by optimal resource allocation, automation of time-heavy processes and reduced error rates.
• Increase revenues by enabling the personalisation of services offered to customers.
• Boost innovation and identify new opportunities by processing huge amounts of data for critical information and game-changing insights.

2. AI helps you cut through the noise, and make better decisions

In financial services, the pain is real. Sifting noisy and complex data sets with endless potential scenarios is not only very hard for human beings, but it also comes with a huge risk of making mistakes – and expensive ones. Machine learning algorithms can perform these tasks at a fraction of the time. They can distinguish between significant patterns and anomalous ones in nano-seconds. And they can be used to help analysts distil hundreds of potential indicators for future investment returns into a few robust measures. This is a technology that can synthesise massive amounts of data and make fresh insights – so you can make well-informed decisions.

3. AI can help personalise your customer services

There is a growing appetite among customers for the personalisation of services and products that extends to financial services. A 2019 survey by Accenture found that one in two banking customers were open to things like personal conversations and targeted product marketing. AI-powered data sifting and social listening can provide a wealth of data and insights about customer preferences, needs, interests and pain points – insights that can be deployed to drive engagement, improve the customer experience and increase retention while reducing costly turnover rates.

4. AI can help you find new customers

Lead generation is both labour and time-intensive. But AI can take the pain out of the process by parsing multiple factors – individual characteristics, profitability, costs, potential for growth – to create an ideal customer profile. It can also be used to find the ideal customer in external data sources and identify the best tactics for approaching individuals. And it can do all this fast.

5. AI brings its own challenges too

AI is a whizz at seeing patterns and extracting them for decision-making. But when those patterns connect to historic data points that in turn tie to bias, the risk of customer dissatisfaction and bad publicity are all too real. Recent headlines have trumpeted around the world about poor mortgage lending to minorities and credit loans to women – all generated by “black box” AI applications. A solid rule of thumb is this: algorithms are only as good as the data they use.

The future for financial services is inexorably tied to the future of technology.

To fully exploit the promise of machine learning, executives need to be knowledgeable about AI, and that means understanding the (huge) benefits it represents, while being able to navigate the risks. Ignoring its promise means being left behind and rendered obsolete. Astute firms are making the investment in building a rock-solid foundation in AI and machine learning, exploring the future of innovation in financial services and developing practical techniques that can be implemented today.  

Programmes like the Imperial College Business School online AI & Machine Learning in Financial Services are here to educate leaders about these AI applications in their industry and are vitally important for leaders in understanding the realm of the possible – and the potential risks that exist along the way.

My name is Fengyi and I'm a Master’s student studying MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management. I studied accounting and finance as an undergraduate, and throughout my undergraduate studies, my mind was buried in the numbers, excel sheets and financial reports. Although I felt content with my degree, I felt that something was lacking in my life. 

I'm a curious person by nature, and I'm always looking for opportunities to do something different. During my second year as an undergrad, I had a chance to join an incubator programme in Liverpool to develop my idea for a business. I was ambitious, but also inexperienced. After the incubator programme, I realised that, although I excelled at accounting and finance, there were other areas of the business world that I lacked knowledge of. 

The resources provided in Liverpool, in general, were not as exhaustive as I had expected. As my undergraduate life was about to finish, I struggled to decide whether to continue my current degree or start my business. No doubt jobs in accounting and finance are stable, but I wanted to continue work on my business idea to help myself and others be more confident with who we are. Besides, while starting my own business, I can also utilise my knowledge of accounting and finance, so it seems to be a much better idea. 

I applied to Imperial College Business School as it is the most innovative university in Europe. I couldn’t wait to try out interesting ideas and new things at Imperial! 

Why study at Imperial?

After studying nearly a semester and a half at Imperial College Business School, I think I finally understand the benefits of studying at a top university. Imperial provides many resources such as the Harvard Business Review that other universities wouldn't have access to. Many of these articles are far more comprehensive and incisive than your average Google search.

This leads to the second benefit, which is insight. There are many things that we are familiar with but lack knowledge of. For example, we are all familiar with gaming platforms, but I doubt many people would know the business model behind it. Professors at Imperial are well-informed about the latest trends. In each topic and session, they always combine knowledge with the latest practice to help us understand how things work in real life.

In the module Design Thinking for Innovation, there is a lot of teamwork, which helps us get ready for collaboration in the workplace. We were assigned to syndicate teams at the beginning of the semester, and our studies mainly revolve around group assignments. I was nervous initially, but now I'm very comfortable contributing to group discussions and I appreciate having a team supporting each other.

Working in a team not only helps me build confidence, but also learn from other people. We all have different work styles, different backgrounds, different knowledge and a different thinking process. Understanding and learning from other people helps me to find better solutions and understand my shortcomings. Lastly, people are an essential aspect of studying at Imperial. The Business School is full of very smart and hardworking students, many of them doing multiple projects, including running their own businesses. They inspire me to work harder and smarter.

What's the exam process like?

The exam process at the end of the semester is very unusual due to the pandemic. We all have online exams on a platform called Wiseflow. The whole process is very straightforward as we received training beforehand, and we get to do a mock test on the platform.

But don't think of the online exam as something you can get away with easily. The exams are timed as usual, and we still need to memorise everything just like a standard exam. In some ways, it's more difficult because I'm more used to making notes on pen and paper, but the platform has almost all the exam answering techniques we need. There is a button that allows you to "exclude the wrong options", and you are able to make notes and doodles across multiple questions, etc.

We could also submit a photo of the handwritten answers if we wanted to. Also, there are many teachers and assistants available throughout the exams, and they always respond immediately if you have any problems.

My career goal in the future

After I graduate, I want to combine my interest in programming with entrepreneurship to help solve banking problems. One of the skills I learned from entrepreneurship is solving problems, which is not as simple as it sounds. There are many problems in the world and our lives, and it can be difficult or impossible to find a solution that benefits everyone.

My job is to make sure the solution benefits as many people as possible and makes a difference in the industry. Finding a solution needs to be creative and driven by the needs of customers and the market, and there will be many iterations until it's good enough for different shareholders.

I believe my background in finance will help me better understand the problems in the banking industry and find solutions. I also want to continue developing my business idea, and other ideas that may come up during my studies to help people live a better life.

My heart skips a beat. I have been accepted to my top programme of choice, MSc Management at Imperial College Business School. But how did I get there? Well it was quite the long journey.

The beginning

A few years ago, I finished my Bachelor’s degree. Having finished my studies in the UK and fallen in love with London, I was faced with a dilemma. Either start a Master’s degree straight away or work for a bit before doing a Master’s degree afterwards. I accepted a job with a technology company with the idea in mind of working there one to two years and then going back to full time study. 

The decision

A little more than a year later, I had just gotten promoted, but I still yearned to learn more and get a Master’s. I decided to look into different Master’s programmes in December to be on time to apply to any Master’s programme I might want. After looking into different Master’s programmes, MSc Management caught my eye, due to modules like Innovation Management and Marketing Decisions, and the unique opportunities the programme offers, such as exchanges in foreign countries and a great network.

To make sure I was making the right decision, I reached out to different people who have studied at Imperial College Business School, in particular the programme that I was interested in. All I got were stellar reviews, with people telling me how much they enjoyed their time at Imperial and the learnings they got there. 

I watched some videos of students who did the programme and made my final decision. MSc Management was my top choice, a programme that will help me reach new heights, whether in startups, multinational companies or even my own business one day.

The hard work begins

While working a full-time job, I needed to do the full process of applying to Imperial, starting with getting my transcripts translated then sending them back to my school. I also needed to write cover letters, explaining why I wanted to join the MSc Management programme and Imperial College London. Although intensive, the application process is straightforward and after completing my interview, all that was left for me was to wait. 

Three weeks after completing my interview for the programme, I got THE email; I’d been accepted to Imperial! I felt excited and relieved, knowing that the next year would be spent meeting tremendous people and learning new skills that will last me a lifetime!

Why not do it too?

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably thinking of applying, you’re starting to apply or you have already applied. If you’re in the same situation as I was, it might be difficult to write cover letters, do video interviews, contact your previous professors for reference letters and work full-time on the side, but with motivation, you can do it all and get the Master’s programme of your dreams! 

In my experience, it is best to set aside time to do your research before choosing a Master’s programme and a school — you’ll be investing a whole year here, so make sure it is what you want. 

Start this search early on so you then have time to apply for your chosen programme without any stress. Speak to current or former students, we’ll always be available to help you out! 

Also, practice before your interview — make sure you have read the programme thoroughly and you know why you are applying and what excites you about the programme. 

Most importantly, remember that through the late nights writing cover letters, you can and will do it! Good luck to you on your journey to Imperial.