Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Mathematical, Statistical and Actuarial Sciences

at Heriot-Watt University - Edinburgh Campus United Kingdom

Heriot-Watt Mechanical Engineering degrees are ranked 1st in Scotland and top 10 in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2020. An industrial panel are involved to ensure the course content reflects the changing needs of industry and that our graduates have the knowledge and practical skills required to successfully gain employment.

Student teaching benefits from our strong industrial links, in particular the involvement of the industrial panel in the assessment of 4th year design projects, providing a realistic client scenario.

Programme Structure:
The first two years of the degree provide a grounding in the core disciplines of mechanical engineering, which allows students to make an informed choice of the options in the following years. An individual project forms part of Year 4. Students can graduate at the end of year 4 with a BEng Mechanical Engineering, or progress to the MEng programme, if academic grades are suitable. The 5-year MEng degree is the standard route towards Chartered Engineering professional qualification.

The Masters in Business Psychology at Heriot-Watt University is the most established MSc of its kind in Europe, enjoying a well-earned reputation for producing graduates who can improve the performance and behaviour of individuals and teams.

Business psychology is a discipline often referred to as occupational psychology and organisational psychology.

The MSc Business Psychology will give you an in-depth understanding of the psychological mechanisms that drive positive behaviours and performances in the workplace.

Whether you're coming from an industry position or directly from an undergraduate degree, this long-established programme of study will equip you with an effective blend of knowledge drawn from the specialist fields of psychology, management and leadership.

The content on this one-year masters degree programme has been tailored to meet the needs of those working towards a number of job roles, such as business psychology practitioner, human resources manager, organisational development manager, coaching consultant, management consultant or leadership consultant.

You will develop commercial awareness and an understanding of global organisations which will allow you to recognise the impact of the economy, politics, globalisation and the changing labour market on the psychology of a workplace and performance of individuals and teams.

Key skills for improving performance:

• During the MSc Business Psychology you will explore different aspects of the psychological mechanisms behind workplace behaviour and gain the managerial skills that will allow you to enhance and improve performance of teams and individuals. You will build expertise in:
• Coaching
• Leadership
• Diversity
• Employment legislation
• Organisational change
• Organisational culture
• Marketing and consumer behaviour.

You will study the areas of psychology that directly apply to business settings, and explore some of the key psychological research methods that can be practised in the workplace.

By viewing the workplace through a psychological perspective, and by developing your analytical, critical thinking, and reflection skills, you will learn to recognise and improve seemingly intangible aspects of the workplace which, when appropriately managed, can directly improve business performance in terms of:

• Job satisfaction
• Wellbeing
• Leadership
• Organisational commitment
• Organisational culture
• Performance and productivity.

Specifically-designed group tasks and presentations will allow you to develop your interpersonal and communication skills, giving you the platform to implement your expertise and directly improve the performance of diverse groups of individuals and teams at any level within an organisation. 

Throughout this programme you will learn from a unique blend of research-led academic teaching and industry-focused practical exercises. For example, on the Psychology of Coaching course you will develop knowledge in the theoretical frameworks of this area of psychology whilst gaining practical insights into the tools and techniques of lecturers who are experienced coaching practitioners and consultants.

We are ranked 5th in the UK for Town and Country Planning in the Complete University Guide 2021.

The Geography, Society and Environment degree is designed for students who are interested in human geography and related topics in urban design, social policy, cities and modern studies. Overall, this degree explores the ways in which people shape and are shaped by the places and environments in which they live. How do cities change and how do the people involved shape those cities and neighbourhoods? How does the built environment shape our behaviour? What makes some places healthier or happier or more resilient?

You will develop field work skills in surveying, mapping and site assessment with field work and site visits as a key strand in your learning. You will develop important research skills through core modules in statistics, data analysis and research methods which you will apply to your final year research dissertation. Cross-disciplinary and problem-based working helps students acquire the skills needed to work in multi-disciplinary teams and solve real-world problems.

Highlights:

• You can participate in residential field trips in years 1, 2 and 3, visiting locations in Scotland, the UK and beyond; plus shorter one day trips and site visits. These trips provide important opportunities to deepen practical skills in field survey, site observation, data collection and analysis.
• You can experience links to practice and industry – hearing from visiting speakers and professionals working as chartered geographers, surveyors and planners.
• In year 3, all students are given the opportunity for mentoring by a practitioner, someone working in industry who can discuss career choices, graduate job opportunities and professional membership routes.

Edinburgh is a major centre for investment management with a long and proud history. The MSc in Investment Management provides key investment knowledge with a specific industry focus. A unique feature of the programme is the Current Topics in Investment Management course, where senior investment practitioners give weekly guest lectures, providing insight into the investment industry and allowing students to gain a real-life perspective on the knowledge and theories they are studying.

Discussion of academic theories and their limitations is combined with an emphasis on practical application. Staff teaching on the programme are at the forefront of research and practice in finance and investment management and most are also members of the Centre for Finance & Investment (CFI) which brings Heriot-Watt academics with an interest in finance and investment together with senior practitioners from the local financial community.

Bloomberg Trading Room:

• Heriot-Watt University opened its very own Bloomberg Trading Room in September 2018. Equipped with 12 state-of-the-art Bloomberg Terminals, this world-class facility provides opportunity to learn real-world financial skills. You will be able to gain a Bloomberg Certificate to show that you can use the industry-standard software which provides live financial data and trading tools to the world's leading banks and organisations.

Accreditation:

• We have links with several professional bodies, in particular the Chartered Financial Analyst Society of the UK, the Actuarial Profession and the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.

This is a 2-year MSc progamme, offering practical application as well as advanced teaching, design and research in mechanical engineering. It is specifically for graduates with an engineering degree looking to enhance their career opportunities. Students will gain the technical, scientific and managerial abilities essential for a career as a professional mechanical engineer. The programme enables students to obtain an MSc as well as gaining practial experience in an industrial setting.

The programmes delivered by Mechanical Engineering are accredited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

If you are looking for a career in the world of finance and love mathematical challenges, then Financial Mathematics is the degree for you. Just as civil engineering deals with the design, construction and maintenance of buildings and roads, financial mathematics is concerned with the design, construction and maintenance of financial products. It is well known that careers in financial mathematics offer some of the best salaries of all professions and graduates working in this area thrive on being offered many interesting challenges on a day-to-day basis.

Our Financial Mathematics programme develops the skills and knowledge required by the modern investment and asset management industry, where structured finance and relative value trading strateges dominate. The emphasis is on developing a range of practical skills relevant to the increasingly mathematical and ever-changing world of contemporary finance.

Financial Mathematics isn't just for aspiring bankers. The UK Government is the single biggest user of structured finance, through the Private Finance Initiative. Graduates are also attractive to the treasury function of international corporations and to the trading arm of commodities companies.

Students on the Financial Mathematics degree follow the same programme as Actuarial Science students for the first two years. The programmes diverge in third year and in the fourth year Financial Mathematics students will be able to study courses alongside Master's students on the Quantitative Finance and Mathematics programme. The aim is for Financial Mathematics graduates to achieve a skill set comparable to those graduating with a Master's degree.

Whether you are considering a career as a chartered accountant in professional practice, industry or the public sector, or you are looking to work in other professional, commercial and industrial areas, our MA Accountancy programme has been designed to ensure you have the knowledges and skills that employers most value.

Over the course of studying our MA Accountancy programme, students can expect to develop a broad understanding of the context in which modern accounting operates, as well as developing accounting expertise in several areas including, but not limited to:

• Recording and summarising business transactions
• Preparing and analysing financial statements
• Analysing and making decisions on business operations
• Conducting financial analysis
• Producing and reporting projections
• Conducting audit
• Analysing governance issues
• Gaining awareness of the importance of business ethics.

In addition to these key accounting skills, our MA Accountancy programme allows students to expand their overall skillset through a combination of individual and group work, written reports, presentations and examinations. Throughout this programme, we will develop skills such as:

• Analysis
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Negotiation
• Conflict resolution
• Presentation delivery.

On the whole, our MA Accountancy programme provides students with a solid foundation for their future career in accountancy, business or beyond.

Software engineers create and maintain software applications using best practice from computer science, project management, engineering, application domains and other fields. This programme is designed to teach students how to apply state-of-the-art techniques and methodologies to develop high quality software to professional standards at an advanced level.

Students will be able to specialise in particular areas, such as the development of dependable systems, parallel or big data applications, advanced interactive systems like games, or novel applications using biologically inspired models of computing.

In some cases the project can be carried out in collaboration with an outside industrial or academic organisation.

Graduates from the programme can expect to find employment with software houses, IT companies, R+D divisions of companies, financial services organisations, defence contractors or government IT agencies and as researchers or research students within universities.

The MSc in Reservoir Evaluation and Management (REM) teaches students how to be successful subsurface geoscientists and engineers, able to build models that can provide good predictions of hydrocarbon reservoir behaviour. The success of these models requires a good understanding of both the geology and engineering of the reservoir. The REM programme, with its combination of geoscience and engineering, provides students with the ability to identify those aspects of the reservoir which have the greatest impact on hydrocarbon recovery. Our graduates typically go on to careers in petroleum geology, geomodelling or reservoir engineering.

Most development decisions in oil companies are based on the predictions of computer models of the subsurface. We teach our students the most effective ways to combine the geology, geophysics and reservoir engineering disciplines in order to develop and run computer models which provide the most robust predictions. The programme has been designed so that graduates are technically well prepared for, and have a sound knowledge of, the reservoir geoscience and engineering aspects of the upstream petroleum industry. The unique combination of geoscience and engineering in the REM programme means that our team projects contain the complete workflow of a field development, from geology to engineering and economics.

Graduates of the REM MSc will be in a unique position of having a thorough understanding of the both the geosciences and engineering issues relevant to hydrocarbon reservoir behaviour. The programme is deliberately intensive, typically consisting of working a full 5 days per week of lectures and practical work, including labs or tutorial exercises designed to teach practical skills in addition to learning theory. The programme includes two field trips to observe geology in the field, both for those with and without prior geological experience.

The most challenging and fulfilling aspect of our programme is the project work, particularly the team project, where students are tasked to propose a development plan for real field. The project integrates all the learning in reservoir geosciences and engineering disciplines and reinforces learning through team work.

The programme shares 6 taught courses with MSc Petroleum Engineering and MSc Applied Petroleum Geoscience as illustrated in this diagram.

Business Management at the Edinburgh Business School was ranked third in Scotland and top 10 in the UK in the Guardian University League Tables 2018. It also achieved the seventh highest level of student satisfaction in the UK in the National Student Survey 2018.

This degree, MA (Hons) International Business Management, puts specialist business theory through a real-world filter. It develops the specialist knowledge and interpersonal skills needed to thrive in the positions, organisations and industries of the future.

The theory taught at Edinburgh Business School is informed by the industry experience and research expertise of our staff. They bring their subjects to life with a dynamic mix of lectures, tutorials, interactive workshops and case study-informed learning.

In Year 1 you will study a common suite of mandatory courses to provide you with a solid, universal understanding of the key principles and practices of modern business. Maintaining a consistent programme of study across all seven International Business Management pathways in Year 1 means it is easy for students to switch their specialism as they move into their second year.

Year 2 introduces functional areas of business and management such as marketing, operations management and human resource management. Years 3 and 4 offer greater choice to allow you to tailor your degree to your career aspirations.

In addition to specialist business knowledge, you will develop important transferable skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication and team working, as well as creativity, confidence and research abilities. These skills will help you succeed in your career and personal life.