Yulia Atroshenko, ICEF Student and Keystone Co-Leader: Exams Can Be A Wonderful Experience at ICEF

© ICEF

Meet Yulia Atroshenko, a third-year undergraduate of ICEF. Here’s Yulia’s recipe for student success, why students sit exams dressed as Father Frost, Snow Maiden and even apes, and how ICEF alumni community can help with job search.

Yulia, you are now in your third year of study at ICEF. If you were to define one key principle of the effective learning here, what would it be?

Self-study. It is key to being a successful student at ICEF. Everyone should make it a habit from their first days here. It is absolutely essential that you, as a student of ICEF – a college that maintains high international standards and whose students enjoy excellent career prospects – should adopt a responsible attitude to homework.

It sounds simple but requires some thinking. High school is different. While preparing for the Unified State Exam, I cultivated the habit of self-learning by solving absolutely every problem in the book, including problems of advanced levels. This helped me see where I needed to study more. I would repeat the theory and get down to solving again and again until I succeeded. As a result, I scored 96 in Russian and English and 99 in Math.

But please don’t think self-study is about being on you own. Quite the opposite. Here at ICEF the teachers are always there to help and explain again if you know your gaps and are willing to make up for them.

But, as my experience shows, it is very unlikely that you will have the time to make up for your knowledge gaps while studying for your exams. The most effective strategy is sustained and cumulative review throughout the semester.

© ICEF

Many of the ICEF’s faculty boast not only internationally earned PhD degrees, but also years of experience in global and domestic companies. How does this fact benefit the students?

I enjoy learning hands-on courses where teachers show us where data analysis can be put to good use. One example is Statistical Analysis – I’m taking it as an elective – and offers an engaging experience of option pricing modeling.

Here, a topic is first covered in a theoretical course and then addressed as part of practical courses or programming. The curriculum has a design that builds on cross-disciplinary knowledge integration, facilitating a more complete and comprehensive picture.

Another thing I would like to note specially is our freedom to choose courses that suit our needs and interests. This, too, helps us become more self-disciplined, expanding our understanding of finance and economics as a basic job requirement. In my third year I took Data Science for Economists, a course by Boris Demeshev, and I think I will continue to learn data analysis to be better prepared for the job as a financial data scientist.

I also enjoy the Econometrics seminars by Nadezhda Kanygina, and earlier the courses I liked most included Statistics, taught by Yaroslav Lyulko and Alexander Zasorin. What I like best about Econometrics is how it uses simple language to teach data modeling, explain relationships among internal variables, and improve the model quality.

What is the toughest part of the exam session at ICEF? There are four internal exams to sit and there’s a fifth UoL examination.

The toughest part is the period when seminars and homework end and exam preparation begins. There’s almost never a break between them, so you may not have enough time to revise everything. That is why the sustained and cumulative review throughout the semester is so important.

Though, some exams can be a truly wonderful experience! One example is Accounting. It takes place in winter and gives extra points to students who come to the exam dressed in New Year’s costumes. There were Snow Maidens, Father Frosts, deer and a monkey in the exam hall, with Let It Snow used as the opening music.

© ICEF

Yulia, you are a leader of Keystone. Can you tell more about your organization and its tasks?

Keystone is a bridge connecting students with employers. And as such it introduces students to the players in the finance industry and the workplace they are going to enter.  

We are based at ICEF and get a lot of help from its administration. We currently have 20 members who all are students, the majority studying at ICEF. What we mostly do is posting job openings in social networks and arranging talks by people from different companies. One talk was organized jointly with Tinkoff (T-Bank) and Keystone Alumni, and there was a session where we did resume debriefing and trial interviewing by an experienced recruiter for the guys to know what it’s like to be interviewed for a job. Also, Keystone helped some students get internships in the Credit Bank of Moscow. And this year, like in previous ones, we held our biggest event: Career Forum and its job fair.

Nearly all job openings we communicate to students come from our partner companies and Keystone Alumni, i.e. the community of ICEF graduates.  

© ICEF

What is the most useful experience you gained as Keystone leader?

Keystone taught me many useful soft skills. Organizing the events like ours involves communicating with companies, team role distribution, and tackling contingencies.

This has been my last year as a co-leader of Keystone. We are now passing on our tasks and duties to new candidates, acting more like outside guides.

What advice or life hacks would you give to the future students of ICEF?

 - Attend seminars that are led by teachers who explain new information in a way that makes it clear and understandable for you.

 - Be sure to first study the topic on your own or read carefully your notes from lectures/seminars before getting down to homework.

 - Give yourself time to rest and try to stick to a healthy lifestyle, which means healthy sleep schedule and enough physical exercise.

 - Follow your own pace. Different people need different amounts of time to digest material or cope with homework.

Seek self-improvement. Compare yourself to past versions of you and you'll surely see progress.