BSc International Business and Finance (Including Foundation Year)

BSc International Business and Finance (including foundation year) is open to Home and EU students. It will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your academic skills.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study four academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory English language and academic skills module.You will spend Year Zero of your four year degree studying at our Colchester Campus. For your second, third and fourth year of study, you will be based at our Southend Campus.

You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with Essex Business School.

By studying international business and finance, you will be able to consider how these disciplines are affected by globalisation and how businesses, markets, people and information interconnect across borders.

You will explore topics high on the agenda of international businesses and financial managers, such as:

• the international business environment
• international business strategy
• international trade
• international human resource management
• the pricing of securities in financial markets
• corporate finance and financial decision making
• business economics
• quantitative methods
• financial modelling
• portfolio analysis

We use real-world case studies to apply theory to business practice and develop your capacity to analyse statistics and make sound business decisions. Ethical business underpins all of our teaching, so you will graduate with an understanding of your responsibility to your investors, your staff and the wider world.

Your first year ensures you develop a solid foundation in accounting and finance for business, the business life-cycle and how multi-nationals manage their core business functions, such as marketing and HR. You'll also benefit from additional training in numerical skills, to build your confidence in handling financial data sets.

In your final year, you have the opportunity to put your knowledge into practice by completing an in depth, independent research project or dissertation. This gives you the chance to further develop vital employability skills in areas of research, project management and critical thinking.

This course also gives you the option to follow a specialised pathway in Applied Quantitative Methods (AQM).

With employers looking for graduates with data analysis skills, The University of Essex is one of just three UK universities to have received Q-Step Affiliate status. By completing necessary AQM modules, your quantitative skills are evidenced on your transcript to give you the competitive edge in the jobs market. We can also provide work placement bursaries to develop your skills in evaluating numerical evidence, analysing data and designing research.

This course is taught at Essex Business School in Southend. We champion responsible management and ethical business practices whilst giving you the tools for a successful career in business.

• Study a range of business and finance subjects and develop the skills required for a variety of roles
• You're taught by industry renowned academics and practitioners in the fields of accounting and finance
• We are ranked in the Top 200 for Business and Economics in THE World University Rankings by Subject 2022.

Previous university/college study is required in addition to local high school qualifications for our Undergraduate Bachelor degree courses.

We accept a number of international qualifications, including the International Baccalaureate with the majority of our courses requiring a grade 30 or above or the SATR with the majority of our courses requiring a minimum of 1100 out of 1600 with 550 in each test.

A degree in international business and finance will ensure you have a clear grasp of international business practices and can open the door to global opportunities, therefore, we embed a series of core and specific skills into our undergraduate curriculum for BSc International Business and Finance to ensure that our graduates are suited to careers in business management, finance and leadership roles.

All of our taught modules embed elements of our skills map which emulate the skills which are required by employers of business graduates, these generally include:

• Academic and cognitive skills
• Research skills
• Technology skills
• Communication skills
• Data analysis skills
• Soft skills

We embed a structured approach to student development and skills support throughout the curriculum and through additional support from the Essex Business School Learning Team.

Our students have gone on to become business analysts, financial advisors, account managers and management trainees, with recent graduate destinations including:

• Consultant at TEKsystems - a data insights and business systems provider
• Associate Professional Business Analyst at DXC Technology - an end-to-end IT services company
• Delivery Consultant at RED - The Global SAP Solutions Provider - a specialist recruitment firm
• iX Business Consultant at IBM - the multifunctional information technology conglomerate
• CEO and Founders of WYSPR - a 'Friendvertising' social media start-up

Our management and finance graduates enjoy successful careers in their fields.

Additional to the skills development offered by Essex Business School, BSc International Business and Finance students can also take advantage of the University of Essex Careers Service which focuses in particular on supporting the development of undergraduate employability, including: careers fairs, career mentoring, skills development, careers advice and guidance, placement year support, job opportunities, start-up support and more.

UCAS

Applications to UCAS are open for 2023-24 entry. Applications are made online via the UCAS Apply and UCAS Hub, where you will be charged a small fee for processing your application. Here you will be able to fill out your details, upload your personal statement, choose the universities you would like to apply for, and track your application status.

It’s important that you complete your application fully to give us all the information we need to make a decisions as quickly as possible. A few key things that we will need are:

• Details of all qualifications, including those you may have not finished yet and any predicted grades
• Your personal statement (we have some tips for this)
• A suitable reference – if this is not provided or does not meet our requirements this may be a condition of any offer made and will be required before your place can be confirmed.

The UCAS code for Essex is ESSEX E70. Our individual campus codes for our Loughton and Southend campuses are ‘L’ and ‘S’ respectively. There is no campus code for Colchester – please leave this blank in your application.