University of California, Berkeley - Master of Financial Engineering

I have seen lots of very positive reviews pop up lately which seem a bit suspicious so I am leaving one because of that.

This is a program with a lot of potential but there are many flaws that it seems they have not bothered fixing despite students complaining for a long time. I find that the previous reviews don't mention problems students actually have with the program and don't give appropriate info for incoming students to make a decision that is best for their career.

Pros:
- Professors are world class researchers and very prominent in their fields
- helpful and responsive alumni network
- rigorous and in depth courses that focus on very relevant material to what is actually done in industry


Cons:
- World class research doesn't translate into world class teaching, some professors are not great lecturers, they are only made even more ineffective by long lectures. All lectures are at least 2 hours long, some classes have lectures up to 4 or even 6 hours long.

- The curriculum is very rigorous but only 1 year long. This translates into a very large amount of work for students. There has been quite little outings and socializing in our batch since the start of the program because everyone is busy even during weekends. The only down time you get is after finals which is usually filled with interviews and OAs. Slowing down the pace, even a little, would greatly benefit the students.

- You are graded on a curve, there is a lot to this so there are 3 parts.

Part 1: The maximum allowed GPA in any class is a 3.5, so half of the class will have below a 3.5 (at best). This creates a competitive environment between students. This has ugly side effects mainly exams that are made harder than they should be to spread the curve, often the difficulty comes by adding content only briefly covered in class greatly benefiting students who have a better background. TLDR your grade doesn't reflect what the professor taught you but what you know relative to your peers.

Part 2: Everyone gets full marks on homework (you still have to do everything correctly, its not free points), which is very time consuming, this means that doing the homework is bare minimum for any class. That also means that the homework weight is irrelevant since the spread comes from exams. If your homework is 60% and everyone gets an A, then effectively the final exam is 100% of your grade. TLDR: Poor test takers are brutally punished by this program.

Part 3: Cheating. The vast majority of the class is honest and doesn't cheat.
Having spoken to alumni who over graduated over 10 years ago, the cheating is still a problem (I was extremely surprised when they complained about the exact same issue we have now). The issue is there is a very well established flow of Chinese students for a fixed set of universities. They have exams and solutions passed on from previous years, and the exams change little year over year. So they effectively have the answer key to the exam which is 100% of your grade, and you are graded on a curve. Similarly, some students have past years' homework solutions meaning they spend much less time on work and have time to interview, and prepare better. In a way I can't blame them for cheating, but the fact the program has not fixed this in over a decade is upsetting to both me and alumni. We have already had this happen on a few exams this year, even with evidence no punishments were given to anyone.

- Many students feel somewhat mislead on the internship availability. We were told not to worry about finding internships in the beginning and many didn't apply for summer opportunities because of that (since we are forced to study full time alongside the internship in the summer). However, it turns out that we should have been quite worried. This year there have been virtually no postings for fall internships on sites, there are very few opportunities and we are completely reliant on the program to bring us the ones there are. There were actually very many opportunities, but it was offset by the second point. To compound the problems, firms chased after the top students who rejected many offers, in turn this causes those firms to take no interns at all and leave, screwing over other students. The program should have been much more strict with this behavior. Why are students who get top summer internships still allowed to stay in the fall pool and out compete other students?

Conclusion:
Overall, I somewhat regret attending this program to be honest. So far it has been very stressful and expensive. I am learning a lot, that is true, I feel like I have a good grasp of the concepts I am being taught and the classes are very interesting, but getting high marks is very difficult. I feel that my deflated GPA has hurt my chances at finding a job more than a masters degree on my resume will help.

The bad market and fall internship cycle have made searching for internships very difficult.

This program is basically a recruiting opportunity with classes, I wish it was better communicated that you must be completely ready to recruit for quant roles prior to enrolling the program. You will not have time to prepare once the program starts.

I am from the 2024 graduating batch and hence, my opinion will be biased by the way that year was:

Good:
1. Good and diverse peer group - engineers, statisticians etc. 1 had a PhD as well - for many it was their 2nd masters
2. Faculty knowledge - faculty is great, Lettau, Walden, Wallace are GOATs in their fields
3. Great Californian weather
4. Courses are very hands on - if you do all the assignments yourself, you're leaving this program as a very well equipped quant
5. Linda is the queen - she will help you in every way possible - it is very unfortunate that she is no longer leading the program

Bad:
1. Very unprofessional placement team: the director left in the middle of the program, when more than half the batch was unplaced. he did not even wait till a replacement was hired and as a result the placement season was very bad. I thought these actions were very unprofessional. They just got a new director - 7 months after- and she was the old directors deputy. If you're not in her good books, she is not very helpful and can prove to be counter-helpful too
2. 1 year is simply too compressed - each term is 8 weeks and it is simply not feasible to learn graduate level coursework in a good manner in such a short period
3. Grade deflation - the median/mean GPA at Haas MFE is 3.4 which is substantially lower as compared to other MFE prpograms. This is a problem while interviewing with firms that focus on GPA

I graduated from this program in 2024 and I have to say that I was very disappointed with the career services. The program director left the MFE program in the middle of placements (sometime in November iirc) and there was no replacement hired. Afaik there is no replacement yet. This was very unprofessional and made a tough job environment even tougher. Apart from 2-3 professors, others dont put effort in teaching. Subject matter taught in the courses is very superficial which is expected since each course is not even taught for 2 months