Will Dison

Bank of England

After a spell as an academic mathematician, I joined the Bank of England in 2010.  In order to further my career there, I wanted to deepen my economic skills and knowledge.  

I chose the UCL Economics MSc for three reasons.  First, the UCL economics department is an internationally recognised centre of excellence and the MSc is at an advanced level.  Second, UCL offers a wider choice of courses than many other MScs I considered.  Courses I took in monetary policy and asset pricing gave me the background I needed for my future role at the Bank.  And third, the UCL MSc places particular weight on the dissertation, which is worth a third of total credit and takes over three months.  This gave me the time to specialise on a particular topic (in my case the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing policies) that was of particular interest and relevance to me.  It was also an opportunity to put into practice the theory from the taught courses.  

After the MSc I returned to the Bank of England to a role in the Bank’s Monetary Analysis directorate, working on financial markets, derivatives and asset pricing.  The training I received on the UCL MSc has been invaluable to my subsequent work there.