Accounting and Finance (including Foundation Year)

Our BSc Accounting 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, preparing you for a further three years of undergraduate study, as well as a compulsory English language and academic skills module.

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.

Our BSc Accounting and Finance degree provides access to our virtual trading floor, where you make use of real-world Bloomberg Market Data Feed (B-PIPE), information and analytics to practice trading stocks and securities in the type of environment found in City finance firms.

You study a wide range of topics and develop your quantitative skills, giving you the flexibility to pursue a career in finance, accounting or business management after graduation. You’ll explore areas such as:

• the preparation of financial statements and budgets

• accounting standards and corporate governance

• financial theory

• portfolio management

• options and futures markets

• risk management

BSc Accounting and Finance includes an introductory first year to familiarise you with wider business topics, such as management, marketing and economics.

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 will give you the chance to further develop vital employability skills in areas of research, time management and critical thinking.

The University of Essex is one of just three UK universities to have received Q-Step Affiliate status, including for our BSc Accounting and Finance course, to support the way we develop the quantitative skills of our graduates.

This means we can provide work placement bursaries to develop your skills in evaluating numerical evidence, analysing data and designing research. We also offer the opportunity to follow a specialised degree path, where you graduate with enhanced quantitative skills. These are evidenced on your degree transcript, to help give you the competitive edge in the graduate job market.

BSc Accounting and Finance is taught at Essex Business School. Our finance group is one of the largest and most respected in the country and our students and staff join us from all over the world.

We not only teach you how financial information underpins leadership, strategy and planning, but how financial decisions can impact society and the economy. We develop your understanding of governance and ethics, so you can take actions for the good of organisations and the wider world.

Essex Business School is an Investment Management Certificate (IMC) Advantage Partner and this course is aligned to the IMC syllabus, the industry’s benchmark entry-level qualification.

Many of our courses offer a choice of optional modules to tailor your learning experience. More information about these can be found on the University of Essex website.