Alexander Stamatov's experience: From AUBG to LSE Summer School

In the summer of 2024, Alexander Stamatov was awarded the London School of Economics (LSE) Summer School Scholarship by the Aleksander Foundation. Read more about Alexander's LSE experience first-hand - exploring the academic rigor of the program, the invaluable networking opportunities, and the cultural immersion of London.

Scholar's introduction

"My name is Alexander Stamatov, an AUBG alumnus (class of 2024), where I majored in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and minored in Economics. Currently, I work as a financial analyst at a startup called GlycanAge. During the summer of 2024, I had the pleasure and opportunity to study at LSE’s Summer School, thanks to The Aleksander Foundation. The course I took was an accounting course called “Business Analysis & Valuation,” and it took place from July 8th until July 26th.

Academic perspective

I would say that the course was moderately intense and very intriguing. It focused on key concepts of accounting, economics, and finance in order to evaluate the information in financial reports. Every day, we had two lectures. The morning ones introduced new theories and concepts, while the afternoon lectures focused on practice and applying what we had learned in the morning. It was nice to see that even during the more theoretical lectures, the professor would constantly ask us practical and technical questions, starting with him saying, “Imagine you are in an interview at J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs, and they ask you…” For me, this was very interesting because we were constantly stimulated to think, and it was nice to see that, at least, these professors are training and preparing their students for the recruitment processes of top companies. Furthermore, the course was quite dynamic because the professors would change slides and discussion points depending on whether something big had happened that they had read in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal before the lecture.

Course application

For the afternoon lecture, we often had to have read a case study so that we were ready to answer the questions of the case. Other times, we would spend the whole lecture on financial modeling in Excel, which was my favorite part. What I enjoyed about the course was that it was an accounting course. At AUBG, I had taken only two accounting courses, which only introduced the fundamentals of the topic but did not dive deeper. Since then, accounting has always interested me, and I regret that I did not do a minor in accounting. Thanks to LSE’s course, I got to learn new concepts and techniques on a topic I never got the chance to delve deeper into.

Networking and Cultural immersion

Of course, the LSE Summer School experience does not only involve studying and lectures but also a lot of socializing. The program organizes many events where you can have fun and socialize with the other students, from field trips to Cambridge and Oxford, all the way to boat parties on the River Thames. Honestly, even if there weren’t organized events by the program, people there would organize social activities themselves. Every day, social media groups that the students created would get bombarded with offers to go out to an English pub or another social event after lectures. Most of the people were very easy to talk to and outgoing. I made some friends while I was there with people from my course and others, but furthermore, it was interesting to see how you compare to your peers in the field of finance because, at the end of the day, these are the people with whom you will be working with and competing for a job.

Experiencing London as a city for nearly a month is an experience on its own. I did not have the chance to visit different places that often, but just experiencing the vibrant life of the city while you are going to lunch or taking the bus and looking at all the buildings and people was incredible. Still, I went out to pubs and events with students from the program and colleagues of mine from work.  

Many thanks to The Aleksander Foundation for enabling me to have such an experience. I learned many new things during the course at LSE’s Summer School, I got to meet new people with whom I became friends, and I got to experience London in a completely new way."