University of California, Los Angeles - Master of Financial Engineering

Just graduated last December, working in asset management now. UCLA MFE is definitely a good program. The courses covers everything you should know for quantitative finance. Definitely comprehensive knowledge and top-class professors! The only downside might be the homework, which make my life during job search a bit more stressful (because need to take care of both side). Career service is nice, I always learn sth from my conversation with Amber. Resume book sending out to employers is very helpful, I actually got my internship through resume book. Alums are helpful and nice, most of them are willing to connect and share their experiences! Our opportunities is not limited to west coast, there are a bunch of people from my class working in NY or Chicago as well.

As a nerd focusing on techniques and taking courses, UCLA's MFE brings me a different experience, reshaping my mind. Students in this program usually come from very different backgrounds. And we are required to finish almost all the coursework as a study group. In the process, I realized my advantages and learned how to work with people from different backgrounds. Such practice is helpful since it simulates the real working environment in financial institutions.

The career office provides guidelines for job searches and many networking events. They hold workshops regularly to give suggestions based on students' personal experiences in job searching. They also build a brand in the financial industry, which enables me to find my internship and current job. Although they don't appear in the referral directly, I can feel the connection during the interviews.

To be honest, without much finance background, it's hard for me to maintain GPA in a fast-paced program, search for internships/full-time jobs, and participate in many networking events at the same time. In the short 15 months, I made many mistakes and wanted to give up switching to the financial industry. However, gradually, I am more confident to face the difficulty. I owned it to my friends in the class and the good suggestions from them, alumni, and the career office. Compared with before, I already became a person with the confidence to solve all kinds of problems at work. In the end, I want to say, even though the whole process is somewhat suffering, you can gain what you want.

Some background: I just graduated in December, I had no finance background before the MFE program, and I’m a social person.

UCLA’s MFE program was my first choice when I was filling out applications and I’m convinced it’s still the best spot for quantitative people who also understand that having fun outside of class is important. My classmates were so much fun and are super smart. We had parties every week and became great friends. I doubt you’ll see the same level camaraderie at Berkeley, and I’ll bet anything you won’t see it at Baruch.

The program takes you from 0 to 100, giving you everything you need to enter the finance industry with a solid job. I just signed my full time offer letter and will be making 3x what I was making 18 months ago. The MFE staff/team is very responsive and they put in a lot of effort. Most of them have been there only a couple of years and have made great changes to the program (e.g. moving away from R to exclusively Python, getting more interaction with other programs in the business school, etc.).

You’re not going to leave this program an expert in any one field, nor should you expect to. Instead, you will leave with foundational knowledge in many fields that quants are typically interested in (ABS, equities, options, risk mgmt, ABS, data science, etc.). If you can handle a tough workload, learn fast, and work well with others, it doesn’t get much better than this. And when you’re done with class, you walk onto one of the most beautiful college campuses in the world with a bright, sunny day.

Good luck!

Attending the UCLA MFE program was one of the best decisions I’ve made.

In terms of academics, you'll be learning from highly regarded professors: Rossi, Longstaff, Chernov, Lochstoer (just to name a few), who are top-notch in industry and research.

In terms of structure: the 10-week quarters go by very quickly. Classes start with the basics, but pick up fast. I recommend getting good at R as you'll be doing a lot of your HW with it.

Career services: you'll receive regular emails for internships/jobs and you'll meet with the MFE career services staff to go over interview topics/questions you may have. Leanna, Olga, and Amber are a delight to work with!

Overall, it’s a great program. The coursework can get heavy at times. But the professors and staff are invested in their students’ success and want to see them succeed. And the weather in LA isn’t too bad either!

A great program, especially for someone without a rich quantitative background. I had a traditional finance background (wealth management) and gained many quantitative skills throughout the program (although it was a challenging program given my lack of quantitative skills). Had a challenging time finding a summer internship due to my lack of quantitative experience. However, I was able to land a quantitative job upon graduation. Most alumni I reached out to through LinkedIn were very friendly and helpful and some of them even offered to refer me to their company.

2014 Graduate.
Easily the most valuable year+ of my life.
Professors and coursework align on learning skills that can be applied directly to the industry. Support staff is incredible, with a strong focus on ensuring you will have multiple job offers by the end of the program. Peers in the program are talented and driven. I still stay in close contact with several people from my cohort. Highly recommended!

A great program that teaches you theoretical knowledge and gives you applied opportunities. Amazing industry partners for the AFP project. A truly dedicated career office that is focused on providing tech skills, interviews, and resume workshops.

Curriculum:
This program would teach you all the fundamentals you need to succeed in the quant finance field with world-class faculties. I personally liked the courses for their nice balance between finance, coding, and mathematics. The first two quarters build up your fundamentals in finance and more, and the third quarter takes you deeper into different fields such as asset management, data science, pricing and valuation, risk and management, etc, where you may discover your skills and passion. The courses mostly use Python, with some using R, but there is no class that specifically teaches you how to code, which is something I strongly suggest adding. You will have to figure it out yourself and go deeper if you want to ace those coding interviews. There is also an applied finance project that gives you a sneak peek of what problems the industries are trying to solve. Depending on the company, you might be solving the most difficult or weirdest problems, but it would be fruitful and fun if you step up and see the project through.

Career:
The career service team is great and proactive. They help with behavioral/ technical interviews, resume/ CL, webinars to help you understand the industry, salary negotiation, etc. They also have connections to many companies that sometimes directly hire from the program (I got my internship this way). They also still keep in touch with me even though I already graduated.

Overall I really recommend this program. It helped me transition from a pure finance background to landing a quant research role. The program gives you everything you need and more, the rest is up to you. I also want to add that most students here are pretty laid back and you will probably meet the smartest and most accomplished students here.

Awesome experience.

Education:
Excellent faculties with great knowledge. Teaching is mainly application based, So it is good for people with little less math background.
Concepts are explained in both ways mathematical and Economical.

Career:
Career service is excellent. Strong Alumni network. You can choose from many different career paths.

Great place. The classes are very practical and applicable-for me, I found the Derivatives Market and Computational Finance class most useful; the only caveat is the Quant Asset Management, as the professor does not teach the class in an easy-to-understand way. In terms of workloads, the Spring Quarter is going to be the heaviest, but that’s how you learn the practical staff. There are also a lot of helpful job searching resources-for instance, the workshops on quant interview and R/Python. In addition, the alumni network is also valuable-I find both my internship and full-time job thanks to its help!

All Faculties are world-class, Anderson is also prestigious and owns great resources and industry connections. The course is well-structured and provides practical projects align with the materials. Also, the program are heavily focus on students, any voice from student will be seriously considered and provide supports. You can see the program is trying to be better in every aspect. All in all, it's a great program and provides competitive edges for students to further their careers.

I am an alumni from the 2017 batch.

Faculty:
As it has been mentioned before, the faculty is top notch. Profs Longstaff, Ivo Welch, Lars Lochstoer, Peter Rossi are world class professors.

Structure:
It's a very packed degree, with a lot of things to digest in very little time + a summer internship. In my opinion, it's easier to absorb all the knowledge with previous experience either in finance, math or coding. Probably 2 out of the 3 would be enough to have a strong experience in the program.

Support system:
There is a good infrastructure around you. Industry professionals are invited to speak every week or so, you get mock interview sessions, resume preparation sessions, quantitative interview preparation sessions, networking events and so on. I've stayed in touch with the MFE Office and always received all the support I've needed.

For some of the students (me included), learning to connect and network takes some time, and it's hard to do this while staying afloat in your coursework. It's a very demanding 15 months but it's an experience I would definitely recommend!

Faculty:

The professors and faculty are world class. From Peter Rossi, to Francis Longstaff, to Ivo Welch, I've never had the privilege of learning from a more accomplished and well-respected group of people. The level of care they put into each of their lectures was abundantly clear and was leagues above what I experienced at my undergraduate university. They were easy to chat with, always accommodated time after class for additional questions, and, in my opinion, the main reason someone should attend UCLA's MFE program.


Coursework:

The coursework was expansive and quite rigorous. However, there is simply too much information to try and squeeze into a 15 month program. As a result of this squeeze, you feel like you're trying to drink from a fire hose. The flip side of this is that you get excellent exposure to a bunch of different subject areas in quantitative finance and, if you didn't truly have enough time to learn it the first time, you have the tools/materials/means to review it later.


Career Services:

A lot of the posts here are being hard on the MFE's career services, in my opinion. While it took me a nerve-wracking amount of time to obtain my summer internship (got my offer in late March), this wasn't because of a lack of opportunity. I must have had six or seven opportunities before winter break and I simply didn't perform in my interviews. While these were very competitive positions (Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, etc), it's not the career services' fault that I fell short. I suppose I could say that I wasn't properly prepared to interview but that falls more on myself than the MFE program. A counselor can only take you so far before you have to take responsibility for your own career.


MFE Office / Administration:

I can't thank the lovely ladies in the MFE office enough. Leanna and Elisa were always there to listen to my grievances, help me with petty (and major) problems, and guide me through the program. The amount of students, current and prospective, they have to manage is astounding and they each deserve a raise for all the work they put in.


- Class of 2019 -

Having completed an year in the program, I believe that I am now in a position to give an objective feedback. I will address each of the quarters in the program separately.

My background:
Undergraduate form one of the top engineering institutions in India, and with cumulative work experiences of three years in a BB and asset management.

Quarter 1: This quarter has "four building blocks" of our program: Financial Accounting, Econometrics, Stochastic Calculus, Investments.
Financial Accounting: This focuses on the fundamentals of reading (just reading) the financial statements of companies. The course did not, at any moment ,focus on the relevance of each of the concepts in valuation. I finished this course with the hope that the "Financial Decision making"(Corporate finance named fancily) would cover these. More on this later.

Investments: This course is taught by Prof. Chernov and the concepts covered key concepts involving valuation of financial market products, and the theory of asset allocation. The subject was taught well and the assignments were well designed to facilitate learning.

Stochastic Calculus: The course is taught by Prof Panageas, who teaches so well that a person with no background in advanced calculus or probability can get it. The assignments in this course were well designed to reinforce concepts dealt with in class. This course is however introductory only.

Econometrics: Professor Rossi is an excellent teacher and is an expert in this subject. However, I personally felt that this curriculum was similar to that of a STAT 101 course and more content can be included in the curriculum. Devoting 6 lectures (18 hours) to linear regression is definitely overkill.

Quarter 2:

Empirical Methods in Finance: This course builds upon our fundamental Econometrics course, and a large chunk of it was modelling of time series. This course was a good refresher for me, and professor Lars did an excellent job teaching it.

Derivatives: The course is extremely basic and is not a MFE level course at all. The curriculum is best suited for MBAs, and not suitable for someone who looks to trade/price these securities. Out of the 10 lectures, NONE of them was new to me, or to anyone who has attended the first quarter.

Fixed Income markets: This course is taught by professor Longstaff and is the best course of the lot. The course builds a good understanding the fixed income products and their pricing. Professor Longstaff has tremendous experience and does an excellent job in giving the right intuition. The homeworks are realistic and extremely well structured.

Corporate finance: This course was taught with a lot of animation and the classes were indeed a good break. The course however, like accounting, was poorly structured to meet the needs of an MFE.

Quarter 3:

Financial Risk Management: This course was taught very well by Prof. Haddad and the homework assignments were interesting and exciting too.

Quantitative Asset Management: This is the worst course in the curriculum and a complete misnomer. The course, like derivatives just repeats content and the homework assignments were even more pointless (at least that wasn't the case in derivatives). The outcome of this course is just frustration and not a solid understanding of portfolio management.

Data Analytics/Machine learning: Taught by professor Lars. Although the course is taught well, and there is zero redundancy, it speaks little on application of machine learning techniques to solve real problems and is just unfortunately just involves using basic R packages to "small data".

Computational Methods in Finance: Focuses on implementation of Monte carlo and other numerical techniques to derivative pricing. It is just a repeat, that develops little understanding of the techniques. The homework assignments were redundant and just served to induce boredom.

Other important aspects:

Co-students: A large chunk of students in the class have absolutely no quantiative background, to the extent that they haven't even heard of "Matrices", get intimidated by seeing the "integral" symbol, do not understand conditional probability even after completing two quarters, and have poor programming skills. Most of them are straight out of undergrad. Although the program offers a paltry introductory math course, I believe this course doesn't serve to improve their understanding.

The review below that strongly advocates for using "Accounting" and "Fama Macbeth regressions" to build trading strategies only serves to demonstrate that people are just unaware of the difference between: expectation and average & attribution and trading. I admire your confidence in betting and LOLing people.

Homeworks: While the majority of assignments are good, some are simply redundant and repetitive. In my opinion, these homeworks should be scrapped. Also, there must be a strong restriction placed on using libraries in homeworks (which defeats the purpose).

Exams: They are just too easy and I actually experience that my undergraduate exams were way harder. The program should acknowledge that correct grading, and a necessary spread in scores are important to enhance the credibility of your grades.

Career services: You are pretty much on your own.

I’m proud to be the UCLA Anderson MFE alumni.
I would not trade my MFE experience @ UCLA for anything else, and let me tell you why:
(1)well structured classes. From basics to extremely complex concepts - everything will be covered. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to test your knowledge working on various problem-sets. It’s laughable to read complaints about Fama-MacBeth and Accounting below. I’d bet those folks just never built a single trading strategy.
(2)team work. Significant part of home assignments are done in small groups. This allows exchange thoughts with peers, improve understanding of material (incl. Fama-MacBeth;) ), and strengthen soft skills that most quants are missing.
(3)ability to provide constructive feedback and be heard. If something is not right, just let administration know. They are there for you to help and make things right. Never hesitate to schedule a meeting with the program’s Executive Director or Career Advisor to discuss suggestions, go through your resume, practice answering interview questions or get advice on job/internship search process.

I’m thankful for help and endless support of members of faculty and administration.
It’s a true honor for me to be part of strong and successful UCLA Anderson MFE family!

Irina (Class of 2017)

I am a UCLA Anderson Alumni from the MFE program class of 2016. Overall the program was stellar. Excellent professors and great guidance for our careers. We had industry professionals come give talks on a weekly basis. The staff was great as well. Elisa Dunn — the Executive Director of the MFE Program — was extremely helpful in assisting me to learn about various industries, develop my career and get a feel for the quant industry as a whole. Leanna Cortez — the Associate Director of the MFE Program — was also excellent in guiding the program and coursework. All the staff were professional and there to help. The professors were phenomenal. A lot of them have invented the knowledge they were teaching and were super clear and concise. In terms of landing a job, some people think that the career services should hand them a job. But that's not how it works. They were there to give the students opportunities and it was always up to the student to take advantage of those opportunities. I do agree with other posts with respect to Python over R and I think this is one of the parts in the MFE program that they definitely need to change. When I graduated companies only wanted Python and not R. It really helped to understand the theory and having gained the ability to program helped too. There is no way I could have gotten to where I am today without having this experience on my resume and learning the skills that were taught during the program. Highly recommend this program to advance your career and get into the company of your dreams.
Jason C. Mercurio

As a recent graduate of the UCLA MFE program, I came across the previous review and thought the need to chime into the discussion.

The executive director and career service can help you only as much as you want to help yourself. You have to work hard to be ready for interviews to get the job. Of course it doesn't help if the executive director doesn't put her head into the game, that shouldn't be the reason you like or don't like the program.

UCLA Anderson is a prestigious school, the professors here are the best in this country. I truly appreciate the time here in Anderson and I have learnt a lot from the professors, especially professor Lars who guided our Final Year Project.

For those who have learnt quantitative finance/math/stats, you would probably feel this program is too easy, but I have definitely picked up new knowledge and skill set. I would highly recommend the program to those who want a change of career into finance.

There are a lot of things you need to learn outside the curriculum to be able to get a job, thats just the reality unfortunately. So you shouldn't expect to be able to find a job very easily upon entering the program, especially when the career service is not helping much.

Long story short, great place to learn, but you are very much on your own when you are on job hunting, which I would say that it is not a completely bad experience, because you can probably find better job opportunity than the career service can find it for you.

Just my 2 cents

I graduated from the UCLA Anderson MFE Program in December of 2018, and enrolled in Fall of 2017 directly following my undergraduate studies. It was a challenging program for me, because I did not have an extensive programming background and my mathematical abilities were not the strongest. However, I had other strengths in my application that the admissions committee considered, and by their faith and trust in me I was admitted.

Not surprisingly, the program was a challenge for me. After the first quarter, I was automatically placed on academic probation as I did not meet the GPA requirements in order to stay enrolled in the program. Once this happened, the Executive Director, Elisa Dunn, immediately reached out to me in order to help me work through this challenge. We spoke together extensively and we devised a plan that I would execute in order to improve my grades. With the help of Elisa and through hard work and determination, I was able to improve my grades and get off academic probation.

Later in the academic year, I encountered a different challenge. This time, the issue was related to the UCLA administration (unrelated to the MFE program) and this threatened to jeopardize my ability to stay enrolled in the program and graduate. I reached out to Elisa again for help, because I had few other people who could help me in my complicated situation. Again, Elisa worked tirelessly to help me resolve this situation and did everything in her power to advocate on my behalf to the university. With her backing, I successfully overcame this obstacle too.

In addition to Elisa, the rest of the staff, including the head of admissions, Leanna Cortez, and the director of career services, Sheila Benko, are incredibly helpful in supporting and advocating for their students. They are truly on your side and want more than anything to see you succeed. Your performance, good or bad, reflects profoundly on them. As a result, there is a true alignment of interests in the program. I was taken aback by the depth and breadth of the lengths to which the entire Anderson MFE staff will go to help you.

Aside from the incredible staff, I want to make particular note of my incredible experience with the Anderson alumni. What is special about the Anderson experience is that you are exposed to a business school legacy that goes back over 80 years. As a result of this legacy, I was able to meet with Anderson alumni (MBA and MFE) in various cities around the world, including New York, San Francisco, and Sydney (yes, Australia!). I found that upon emailing alumni using the Anderson alumni database, almost all were willing to meet with me at a moments notice and eager to help. It is this common bond among all Anderson alumni that is perhaps my most favorite aspect of the school.

It goes without saying that the faculty, courses, and students at UCLA Anderson are world class. That is why I have focused my review on the people in the administration and alumni community who truly made an impact on me.

I will try to make this review as comprehensive, accurate, and objective as possible, so that anyone considering UCLA's MFE program will have a clear idea of what to expect.

About me: pursued MFE right after undergrad, main strength in programming before entering program, graduated December 2019.

Overall description of program:
Courses are very condensed. A combination of math (stochastic calculus & statistics / probability), programming, and finance (equity & fixed income, derivatives, numerical methods, accounting & corporate finance) with some courses structured to be similar to PhD courses where you go through academic papers (but definitely not nearly as rigorous as PhD courses). Overall, a quantitative program, but not as programming-intensive as computational finance programs such as CMU and Georgia Tech I believe. Definitely much, much more quant than general MS in Finance degrees.

Pros:
- Faculty is world-class. Peter Rossi, Ivo Welch, Francis Longstaff, they are all very well known within academia. Levon Goukasian is amazing in lectures. UCLA's finance department has an incredible history.
- Courses are well-designed. I find myself continuously referring back to course powerpoint slides, as well as recommended readings, whether during my internship or preparing for full-time interviews.
- Students are diverse, smart, and hardworking. I really enjoyed getting to know everyone. Also, many of my peers already had full-time work experience in finance, so I learned from them as well.
- I’ve been able to meet MFE alumni who were very willing to help, and very nice. However, I may be biased, as the ones I am able to meet are obviously ones who are willing to help, so keep that in mind.
- Los Angeles is a great place to be, enough said.

Cons:
- MFE office is very disappointing. Executive director does not care about the program at all. I’m inclined to believe she cared before, but not anymore. It is hard to get in touch with her or ask for her help. Also, when the MFE office makes mistakes, she does not have accountability. She sent us a very unprofessional email regarding our behavior during a trip, even though she was not on her best behavior either. I can go on and on about her, but I don’t want to make it personal. The main takeaway is that there is a lack of strong and effective leadership in the MFE office, and sometimes we feel like it is them against us, when we really should be on the same team.
- Career services is lackluster at best. Not all the blame is on the career office, executive director should be more helpful too. There is a dedicated career services group, and we get weekly lists of job / internship positions to apply for. However, career services have made mistakes here and there. A clear contrast is the career services group for the MSBA program at UCLA Anderson, were their career services group is much more aggressive and effective. I don’t think MFE’s career services is bad, they try to help you and are there for you, but I expected much better, especially given the fact UCLA’s MFE program has been established for a decade, whilst the MSBA program only existed until recently.
- Most of the faculty are from academia, with no or limited industry experience. It would be great to have lecturers who might not be PhDs or full professors, but very established practitioners.
- Most courses are taught in R, with one taught in MATLAB. I hope they can shift to Python, not because it is better (that is arguable for different applications), but because most workplaces are asking for Python fluency.

Final Verdict
If we are only talking about the educational experience and rewards, I believe UCLA’s MFE program is competitive with the best MFE programs out there. Our professors are seriously impressive, the coursework is comprehensive and rigorous, and the students are competent. If not for the mediocre MFE office, I would give this program a much higher rating.

After almost a year of studies, I finally feel ready to submit a review. Currently, I feel incredibly grateful to my undergrad professors, who taught me everything which was needed to get a summer internship. Meanwhile, throughout the school year at UCLA Anderson, the amount of new material was close to none. And don't get me wrong, I came straight from the economics undergrad, not from another master's or even a full-time job. This program is a perfect place for a person who has never heard about the regression and has never learned a single programming language. I will try to explain everything in greater detail below.

Math/Statistics/Econometrics - I don't even know what to start with. Everything is taught at an elementary level. The entire time-series course was dedicated to ARMA(1,1) modeling and especially to the Fama-MacBeth regression. Almost no statistical tests, no theory explanation - nothing. The same can be said about the econometrics class, which felt like stats 101. On the other hand, the stochastic calculus class has a well-rounded curriculum, and Professor Panageas is a fantastic lecturer. And that's all: three "true math" classes on the Financial Engineering program.

Programming - *sigh*. I will start by citing my classmate: "Our program never penalizes people for inefficient implementation, which they should. I've literally seen people writing four nested "for" loops." Everything is implemented in R, and only Professor Goukasian tries to motivate people to use C++. To be honest, programming is simply not taught. Some people are still using Excel for regressions and optimization because the program does not care.

Finance part - it is not as relevant for the MFE, but I feel obliged to mention it. The program's mandatory accounting class (!!!) was taught so badly that people without the prior accounting experience almost did not get it. Fama-MacBeth model has been in so many courses, that it has become an inside joke, but still has never been adequately explained. In the Derivatives class, Professor Eisfeldt did not know the material in her own slides. For example, she barely answered any questions and was not able to explain the math formulas. It turns out that there can be a derivative of the constant, which is non-zero. Many of the classes also repeat each other a lot, which reduces the amount of new material even more. On the other hand, professor Longstaff is an amazing lecturer, and the fixed income class was one of the best at the program.

Faculty - I don't want to say any more bad things. Professors Longstaff, Goukasian, and Panageas are well-qualified and passionate about their subjects. That's what I expected from the MFE, and it is a pleasure to attend their lectures. I believe that if the curriculum had been better, the teaching would have been better, too. Currently, it feels that most of the people simply don't care.

Career Services - I've never seen decent career services. They exist here, and they do something, not like the alumni network. Very often, if you write to alumni, they would simply ignore you. Moreover, as you have probably already understood, it is an MFE degree from the business school, the MS Finance with more numbers. Therefore, be ready to work in asset management or data science if you're lucky. No quant research, no trading, no big-name firms. One more thing to mention, the school claims a productive mix of MFE and MBA - DO NOT TRUST THIS INFO. Yes, in all caps. You are excluded from the community, you do not get any perks, you can't join the clubs, and you are technically not even allowed into the student lounge.

I was extremely excited to be admitted here a year ago, and now I am thinking about a Ph.D. because I would have learned more from spending the huge tuition in the bar.

To sum up, if you have another offer or you do not need a visa - think twice before going here. Twice as two stars, which I give to the program.

I also want to finish with the two quotes I've heard recently:

The only good thing is that "Weed is legal, but that shouldn't be a concern." -- classmate

"You should have not expected anything more from the Master's program. It just serves as a paid accreditation mechanism for the job market later" -- my undergrad professor