Program Overview

Financial Economics BSc (Honours) 2025 entry

Overview

The BSc (Hons) in Financial Economics provides a structured, cumulative and rigorous foundation of economic concepts, principles, analysis, techniques and knowledge. You will develop your analytical and decision-making abilities through training in quantitative and model-based methods of analysis. Over the course of study, students engage with specialist topics including portfolio management, asset pricing and corporate finance.

Entry Requirements

Standard Entry Grades

• SQA Highers: AAAAB
• GCE A-Levels: AAA
• IB points: 38 (HL 6,6,6)

Minimum Entry Grades

• SQA Highers: AABB
• GCE A-Levels: ABB
• IB points: 36 (HL 6,5,5)

Gateway Entry Grades

Applicants who have narrowly missed the minimum entry grades, but meet the University's contextual criteria, may be interested in one of the University’s Gateway programmes.

General Entry Requirements

• SQA National 5 (B) in English and one SQA National 5 (B) from the following:
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Computing science
  • Geography
  • Applications of Mathematics
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Psychology
• GCSE (5) in English language or English literature, and one GCSE (5) from the following:
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Computing Science
  • Geography
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Psychology

Course Details

The BSc (Hons) in Financial Economics is a four-year course run by the University of St Andrews Business School.

First Two Years

In the first two years, you will acquire a solid foundation in general knowledge of economics. This includes an introduction to the principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics; an insight into quantitative techniques; and developing an understanding of economic relationships and the techniques necessary for their analysis.

Honours Level

At Honours level, you may select modules from a range of options on specific topics. These provide an analytical understanding of key aspects of finance, economics and government policy formation.

Modules

• First year:
  • Macroeconomics
  • Microeconomics
• Second year:
  • Intermediate Macroeconomics
  • Intermediate Microeconomics
  • Statistics for Economists
  • Mathematics for Economists
• Honours:
  • Econometrics
  • Financial Economics: Asset Pricing
  • Financial Economics: Corporate Finance
  • Financial Economics: Portfolio Management

Teaching

• Teaching format: lectures, laboratories, and small-group tutorials
• Assessment: graded work and examinations
• Support: feedback on every assessment within three weeks

Fees

• Scotland: £1,820
• England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man: £9,535
• EU and overseas: £31,670

Joint Honours Degrees

You can also take Financial Economics as part of a joint Honours degree in which you will take core modules of your chosen subjects.

Careers

Graduates with a degree in financial economics have some highly sought-after skills and pursue careers in a wide variety of fields. A degree in financial economics will greatly enhance your analytic and decision-making abilities. You will significantly improve your quantitative abilities and greatly enhance other transferable skills highly valued by employers.

Popular career destinations among recent graduates include:

• economic consulting
• management consulting
• accountancy
• business intelligence analysis
• broadcasting and journalism
• risk management
• research analysis
• financial services analysis
• stockbroking

What to Do Next

• Online information events
• Undergraduate visiting days

Discover Uni

Discover Uni provides official statistics about higher education courses taken from national surveys and data collected from universities and colleges about all their students. You can use this data to compare information for different degree programmes to help you make a decision about what and where to study.

82% of students were satisfied overall with their course.

Data for courses in Financial Economics at University of St Andrews

64% of students say teaching staff have supported their learning well.

Data for Financial Economics (Full time) at University of St Andrews, over two years

95% in work or doing further study 15 months after the course.

Data for courses in Economics at University of St Andrews