Meet Amelia Patton

Tell us a bit about your background:

Originally, I am from Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. I have an undergraduate degree in Economics and International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, in St. Andrews, Scotland. I chose to attend graduate school to develop my technical skills as well as learn a new academic discipline: finance. Currently, I am a student in the Master of Finance program in the Rady School of Management.

What are you studying/researching? 

Given that I am in the Master of Finance program, which is 12-15 months, I do not have one particular area of research. Instead, I took a wide variety of classes that cover various topics within finance, such as Investment Analysis, Derivatives and Structured Finance, Advanced Financial Risk Management, and Behavioral Finance. At the end of my degree, I completed a Capstone project which focused on modeling the long-term value of customers as means to award credit.

Tell me a little bit about your campus involvement at UC San Diego. 

While at UC San Diego, I worked as a Teaching Assistant in Thurgood Marshall College’s DOC program. In that position I worked primarily with first year students teaching them writing. I also worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Rady School over summer session. In my free time, I really enjoy lifting at RIMAC and boxing!

Why UC San Diego?

I chose UC San Diego because of its heavy quantitative and technical focus within the Rady School of Management. My undergraduate degree gave me excellent theoretical knowledge, but I wanted to have harder skills. I was also interested in exploring finance, as it shared some theoretical bases with economics. The Master of Finance degree at UC San Diego allowed me to accomplish both of those goals.

Have you been awarded any fellowships or grants during graduate school? If so, which ones?

I have been awarded the Horatio Alger Ernest S Rady Fellowship and the Rady Incoming Fellowship.