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
