HSE ICEF Students Are among the Winners of Econometrics Universiade

© Econometrics Universiade

The results of the final round of the 2022 Econometrics Universiade have been announced. As always, ICEF undergraduate students are among the leaders – Vladimir Averin won the overall competition, while Gleb Kudryashov was also among the prize-winners.

The Econometrics Universiade has been held since 2012, and every year ICEF students take an active part in it and get great results – they regularly win the whole contest overall as well as wining prizes in the team and individual competitions.

Students from the best universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and other cities of Russia and its neighboring countries take part in the Universiade, an annual competition aimed at 3rd- and 4th-year undergraduate students. Third-year students from the ICEF International Bachelor's Programme in Economics and Finance have a particularly impressive reputation in the contest. The winners of the Universiade have significant advantages when applying for master's programmes.

The Universiade is held over two rounds, and in recent years these have taken place online, allowing the organisers to bring more participants into the event. The second, final round, ended in April 2022, with Vladimir Averin, overall winner of the Universiade, as well as coming second in the individual competition. Gleb Kudryashov was also among the winners.

Along with the ICEF student, students from St. Petersburg State University and Moscow State University were in the top three. Students from the HSE programmes in  ‘Economics’, ‘Economics and Statistics’, and the ‘HSE/NES Programme in Economics’ at the Faculty of Economic Sciences and HSE branches also took part in the event.

Vladimir Averin, 3^rd-year undergraduate student, ICEF

I really like the subjects and fields that I am currently studying. If I weren’t an ICEF student, but, for example, majoring in humanities, I doubt that I would have made it even to the second year. I believe that this factor affects my discipline and desire to learn, which also undoubtedly affected the result.

I guess I started preparing for the Universiade in September 2021, when the first lectures on econometrics began. By the end of this year, I had gained some knowledge which helped me to compete with other students at events like the Universiade, and I also had the opportunity to study the tasks from previous Universiades, which I happily did.

I noticed that this year's tasks were different from the tasks of previous years. Previously, many of the tasks required advanced theoretical knowledge. However, this year the theory was more basic, but in order to solve the tasks, you needed to know and understand this theory in greater detail. I believe that this year's tasks were suitable for students with different econometric backgrounds.

The results of official competitions are a more or less unbiased assessment of preparation. If there are ICEF students among the winners and prize-winners at the Universiade and other student competitions, then at least ICEF allows you to compete with other students on an equal footing. ("At least" is the key phrase here). One huge advantage of ICEF is that its students can compete on equal terms in a fairly wide range of disciplines. Therefore, during your studies at ICEF, you can easily change or choose, if you have not chosen before, the area you want to develop in, something which I personally did.

I am particularly interested in data analysis and I want to build a career in this area, and I am sure that the fundamental aspects of econometrics theory will help me to succeed in this sphere.

Gleb Kudryashov, 3rd year undergraduate student, ICEF

Econometrics is very interesting because it allows you to study the real world with the help of science, unlike some other subjects that focus more on the theoretical aspects, and are often not directly applicable to real life data. To succeed in this subject, you need to spend a lot of time studying. This requires a lot of motivation, and, of course,  everyone has their own technique for this. I think if you have enough time and motivation to study well, you will be able to get to the top.

The tasks were not overly difficult, but it was necessary to approach the solution creatively. I think the most difficult part of the Universiade was needing to rapidly learn econometric and economic terms in Russian.

Obviously, I am very glad that I’m a prize-winner, because during interviews for internships I’ve often been asked if I’ve had any success in competitions. It seems to me that recruiters pay more attention to this kind of thing, because they consider such events to be a more objective indicator of your potential, than, for example, an internal rating.

In my opinion, our econometrics course at ICEF is much less quantitative than at other programmes. We do not have matrix methods that open the way to more complex methods, but instead we have a deep understanding of the basics that allow us to solve most tasks in the Olympiad, and more importantly, wider life questions. Our course answers the ‘why’ question much better than the ‘how’ question. This means it is more difficult for us to compete with other students in quantitative tasks, but for qualitative tasks, I think we have a significant advantage.