University of California, Los Angeles - Master of Financial Engineering

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.

I am a 2014 grad from UCLA's MFE program. Like a lot of people who have provided their reviews prior to me, I will also share the things that I liked and did not like so much about this program.
Pros: Personally, the faculty of any program is its backbone. UCLA's finance faculty is one of the best in the world. Every interaction with these hallowed professors is awe inspiring, besides being extremely enlightening. Well structured assignments and project work based on class lectures then prepare the students to deal with the challenges in the real world. This program is very research oriented, so reading academic papers and working on projects based on these is at its core. Learning from great professors, who have built seminal models in various domains of finance and are very well cited in the academia, is surely a huge plus for this program.
The other good things are the great support you get from the career services and the admin teams, the interactions with a talented peer group, and the access to industry leaders through several fora organized by the school.

Cons: I wish the program were longer in duration so that one can go deeper into one's area of interest. Being just a 13 month course, it is super intense and can crush anybody without a strong sense of commitment to one's goals. So if you are looking for a program where you wish to do a great deal in a certain field then a PhD program would be better suited for you.

To sum up, every program has its core; for some it is programming, derivative pricing, etc., for the UCLA MFE program it's finance. To do well in this program and later, you don't need to have a background in finance (although it helps), for you will be made to swim in this ocean. The only question is, do you have the stamina.

I liked the program very much and agree with the recent comments.

A key differentiator of this program is for international students. After the program, students can work on OPT for 12 months and extend it for another 17 months. That's 29 months of work without sponsorship and that's like any other MFE program BUT because graduation takes place in December, students will be able to apply THREE times for the H1b cap gap. For (almost) all other programs it will only be TWO times. And with the enormous ever-increasing number of H1b applications, the odds improve in your favor and are very much needed!

I'm an MFE graduate class of 2014. First of all, I would recommend taking the older reviews with a grain of salt -- the program improves every year and the faculty and staff is very receptive of student feedback.

Course Material: Things taught are very up to date. My favorite class is Jason Hsu's Quantitative Asset Management and Hanno Lustig's Empirical Methods (lots of time series stuff). Both are difficult classes, but it's worth learning as much as possible because contrary to what some reviews said, you can't possibly learn this stuff elsewhere just by googling or watch a YouTube video. I was struggling with a class and tried to hire a Cal Tech Math / Stats Ph.D. to tutor me some material and even he cannot fully explain it in the context of finance. Having a solid understanding of time series / cross sectional regression is very important even if you decide not to stay finance. I am still applying lots of stuff I learned from these classes today for my job. I can also tell you that there are at least two strategies I learned from the program that I am still using for my own portfolio today with much success. There are just so much to learn in this program and it’s up to you to pick which subject you want to master. The career-related seminars and industry panels are all designed to help you understand your career options.
Recommendation: The materials are difficult and require you to get out of your comfort zone and really spend time to learn it. What I mean by this is this program is NOT kindergarten -- you cannot expect to listen to each lecture and be able to ace every homework. You'll need to speak to your class mates, the TA, and the professor if you don't understand something. If you have poor social skills, well, it's time for you to develop it! If you are shy about asking questions, you will not be successful because there's no way you can expect to magically understand everything and work out everything on your own. The old saying goes “no good being the jack of everything but master of none”. So find the career path you want to take and master the material related to the career path of your choice.

Programming: Computational methods really teaches you how to code. Again, like I said, you need to work with your classmates and seek help from the TAs. However, I do feel this class is a bit unfair. The homework solutions are NOT published so you will never know what went wrong. I feel the student who lacks programming background are at a disadvantage here because they would not be able to learn as much as those who already have solid programming skills. The stuff is NOT easy and often the TAs couldn't even figure it out.
Recommendation: You need to be comfortable programming in AT LEAST one language. Whether it’s R, SAS, Matlab, C++ or Python doesn't matter. However, giving my current working experience plus the internship I did, I can tell you that free software always wins. Yes, the company I worked for does use SAS and Matlab, but unless you are of great value to them, they will not spend another $10K a year for you on software. So chances are you have to prove yourself worthy first by writing good algorithms in Python or R. There's a package called Octave in Python that is much like Matlab -- learn that if you have spare time.

Career Service: It's ok. If you need advice you will likely receive great suggestions. It's not like an MBA and it possibly will not be any time soon because on Campus recruiting is just too costly for the companies for a program this size. However, like the faculties said, no one is stopping you from going to the MBA career event. It's true that links are sent to the students and we have to apply on our own, but don't forget that the resume book gets sent to a lot of companies and the school continues to expand its network. I find that very helpful. Occasionally companies will ask for resumes through faculties and this is the MOST helpful since it is likely you will be directly presented to the hiring manager. I can tell you I have several co-workers here from other schools with a similar tuition but received no support at all.

Other thoughts and comments: The students are a bit young and sometimes immature, but not everyone is like that. Often you'll hear the younger crowd complaining about things not handed to them on a silver plate; yet it's them who ditches all the non-graded career activities and cheating on their homework and sometimes exams. The program needs to seriously beef up its standards by severely punishing cheating or code sharing with a zero tolerance. I feel some students found cheating or code sharing did not receive proper disciplinary action.
Advice to applicants: Pass the CFA level 1! I can’t emphasize this enough – if you aren't even willing to do this, then I recommend you reconsider getting into Finance. The material in CFA level 1 will give you a significant head start.

Excellent program for those who are serious about either making a transition into finance or are looking to enhance their quantitative finance knowledge. Being housed in the business school and having an ideal mix of industry practitioners and academicians in the faculty helps not to diverge too much from practicality of the quant finance discipline.
One of the very few programs that can help develop an outlook beyond I-banks and into the asset management and hedge fund industry due to its West Coast presence. This is a particularly applicable now as the sell-side is more and more constrained by regulations and people looking to buy-side to come up with innovative solutions.
The program is rigorous, challenging and provides a good balance of the breadth and depth in finance. Lastly, UCLA Anderson has a very strong reputation in the industry and is definitely one that is worth having in one's resume.

Very good program though a bit young.

What do you think is unique about this program?
World-class faculty. Most courses are hands-on. You learned many techniques that could be actually applied in your future job.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The program is a one-year program, and is very intense. You need to work very hard. But on the other hand, you can get your MFE degree in just one year.

Career service: Career office does a very good job to provide opportunities, workshops, guidance and networking to help students find internships and full time jobs. Getting interviews are not problems. Btw, most job opportunities are in California. If you want to work in California in future, this is a great choice.

Most classes are great, while the bad ones are really bad. Good program to lead you to the door, but you have to finish the score by yourself. Career service need improvement to worth the B-school price tag.

What do you think is unique about this program?
UCLA Anderson has great faculty in finance, we have classes from UCLA Anderson faculties as well as non Anderson or even non UCLA members.

Most classes taught by Anderson Faculty is generally of high quality, some of them have industry experience and very accessible and willing to speak frankly. Class taught by former CS stat arb trader may be one of a kind in MFE program and that is the one I enjoyed most, along with Jason Hsu's Quant Asset Management class.

Holger Kraft's credit class is tough but one can learn a lot from that rigidity (I wish he also told us the class Stochastic Calculus early in the first quarter in replace of current teacher who give a very short-changed SC class that is not enough get us through the job interveiws. If we were told by him, the placement could be much better IMO.)

Accounting and Corp class in the frist quarter have limited value in finding quant positions IMO but they are very good class taught by great Anderson Faculties. It is better to be elective rather than required for MFE student. Plus MFE student could also have class with MBA or even PhD students with no additional cost and there are some really interesting ones.

Faculty from math department seems to be less genuine in the interest to teach finance student. Teaching assistant hired from math grad program lacks interest of helping "money oriented" student, but TAs from Finance and Econ do great job.

The risk management course is absolutely the worst (Previous reviewer mentioned the teacher even does not bother to give grades in time, course and homework were at best poorly designed. ) But the faculty is not from UCLA,(by no means fits Anderson quality), and I do not expect her teaching for future classes given the unpopularity she had this year.

More works can be done in the quality control in terms of the class offered.

The program has good connection with buy side recruiters on the west coast, and CA is a better place to live IMO.

What are the weakest points about this program?
Career service lady made fair amount of effort to advertise the student body, but the effect is quite limited. We had chances to get in touch with IBs like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, but majority of the student body are not well prepared at the time of exposure.

The placement result into such positions could be better, if the interview workshops took place in time.

Some information about recruiting process is misrepresented by the career lady which lead to general decline in the confidence of her knowledge and ability. (The career lady had zero experience in financial firms recruiting.)

C++ programing has next to zero training in this program. (Good if you do not like programming, but lack of such important selling skill of quant makes student harder to place in the market)

Career services
We have some connections to east coast BB banks, but placement number are limited, partly because of the timing and preparation at the time BB recruits. Many intern positions in rating agencies and local buy side firms. Some international students utilized their own connection to find intern/full time jobs.

UCLA MBA has a good channel of connections to the industry, however such channel is not well utilized by this MFE program, reducing the value of a "Business School Housing" MFE program.

Career lady seems approaching in a more general college level career service manner, not effective enough for specific MFE student. Not good enough for a B-school price tag.

This program is getting better in its visibility to recruiters, but placement number should speak for itself.

Student body
Chinese and Indian majority, US minority.
Male majority, female minority.

(well, BB quant recruits has that similar demographics too, pretty common for quant finance career.)

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
PhD, worked in logistics and management consulting for 2 years, GRE (2250), GMAT (710)
I studied full-time in the program from 01/2009-12/2009.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
I only applied to UCLA MFE as I was based in LA

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Quantnet, Global Derivatives, Vault, lots of online research on MFE programs in general as this was a new program and not much information was available

Tell us about the application process at this program
Application packet submission (including GMAT scores, essays, transcripts etc) followed by telephone interview

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
They didn't offer one when we started - however, I know that there was one in the pipeline for the next incoming class

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
Credit Markets, Computational Methods, Fixed Income Markets, Quantitative Asset Management. My personal interest was in credit markets as well as asset management. These courses were well-organized with lots of information, assignments and practical examples

Tell us about the quality of teaching
We were lucky enough to have some of the finest minds in finance such as Francis Longstaff and Eduardo Schwartz as teachers. They have not only produced great research but are fine teachers as well - well-organized, lucid and give a very nice bird's eye view of the field. Another teacher deserving special mention is Kay Giesecke, who came down from Stanford to teach Credit Markets - he was able to take some very complex subject matter and make it very accessible for us.
A couple of teachers weren't so well-organized - hopefully these could be attributed to teething troubles for them in the first year of the program.

Materials used in the program
Most of it was standard to MFE curricula everywhere - Shreve for Calculus, Fabozzi for Fixed Income etc. We got excellent notes from Schwartz, Longstaff, Giesecke and Lustig for their classes which were invaluable.

Programming component of the program
Mostly Matlab, although most of us had some C++ familiarity. No dedicated programming course (seems a waste of time and money in an MFE no? ). We spent a lot of time programming - all our assignments required significant amounts of progamming

Projects
Lots of derivatives pricing, interest rate modelling, CDS models and pricing. Both individual and group. We didn't have industry mentoring, however we did have industry practitioner seminars and our internships

Career service
We have a dedicated career services professional exclusively for the MFE program. We had on campus interviews and interviews scheduled through the career office. However, given that the program was brand new and given that our career services person had previously not worked in finance recruiting, our career services were certainly not as good as they could have been

What do you like about the program?
I liked that it was based in a business school - our faculty teach MBA curricula and consult in the industry - so they have a very good combination of theoretical knowledge and real world wisdom. I really liked our class - we were a small class and hence it felt very close knit. Everyone was always sharing their knowledge and skills with others.

What DON’T you like about the program?
I don't like the price tag - we paid business school prices for the program, we would have paid a lot less if the program was based in any other department. Also, given that we were the introductory year, a lot of the rough edges hadn't been smoothed out - the lack of a prep course for instance.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Organize a prep course - programming, statistics, and advanced calculus. Organize more industry networking opportunities. Less emphasis on programming and modelling and more emphasis on the big picture in finance (this is a personal peeve of mine - there's way too much emphasis on the engineering and not enough on finance in MFE programs)

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Working for a distressed debt hedge fund

Other comments
My advice would be think beyond merely being able to code fixed income models efficiently and think of the ways in which they work. Think beyond being a glorified programmer and develop an interest in finance as a field (way too many refugees from the physics job crisis in quant finance - people who don't really care about finance and obsess over coding and modelling)

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
A master of electrical engineering with 7 years of working experience in various disciplines of engineering (research, design, implementation, testing).
I studied full-time in the program from 01/2009-12/2009.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No.

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
I was on the "on hold" list of UCB and I gave up pursuing UCB once I received admission from UCLA.

Tell us about the application process at this program
It was an inaugural program, the online application was short and easy, and collected only the basic info. I saw the second year application it was considerably more formal. The phone interview came about 3 weeks after completing the application, and the final decision was about 1 week after the phone interview. The phone interview was 30-minute of soft-questions (why UCLA, why MFE, why then, etc)

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
The only thing available for us at the time was a Matlab refresher during the first week of the program. I did not attend so I cannot comment on it. The program faculties constantly polled the class for ideas of refresher classes for future students, unfortunately being in the first class I did benefit from them.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
The courses selection is modeled on the UCB curriculum, but minus the electives. The professors work with one another to make sure there are little overlaps and as much info was presented as possible. Most core infomration and difficult classes were front-loaded in the first two quarters before our internship, and the last quarter was relatively more managable. I wish I had a little more flexibility in the last quarter for electives, after acquiring the core info and completing an internship. I liked the ungraded seminar class, experts in the industry were invited to give a talk on a quantitative finance topic once a week. I did not enjoy every speaker, but it was informative to hear the other perspective from non-academic practitioners.

Tell us about the quality of teaching
I liked most of the professors in terms of teaching, and most of them were very accessible after class. I appreciated that the school for hiring reputable experts from other universities for some classes (Giesecke from Stanford, Jorion from UCI), even though there are other capable teachers at UCLA. The TA's were certainly very helpful for our learnings. There were quite a few PhD students from the finance or economics departments with quant finance master, and they were very capable and willing in helping us.

Materials used in the program
Most materials were professors' personal notes. None of the classes closely followed a particular textbook.
References suggested: Asset Pricing by Cochrane
The Econometrics of Financial Markets by Campbell
Stochastic Calculus for Finance by Shreve
Options, Futures and other Derivatives by Hull
The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities by Fabozzi
Fixed Income Securities Tools for Today's Markets by Tuckman
Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management by Chincarini
Value at Risk by Jorion
Financial Risk Manager Handbook by Jorion

Programming component of the program
Other than the accounting, corporate finance and intro to investment classes, heavy programming was required for all school work. The program did not teach programing, and did not have any requirement on the language chosen, as long as we could get the work done. The most common tools we selected were Matlab, Excel and SAS.

Projects
About 80% of all school works were done in groups. Most projects required understanding the objective, setting up and executing (usually require programming), and producing a light report.
Examples of individual projects:
Pricing various options computationally Examples of group projects: Empirical and statistical analysis to confirm findings of some famous papers/studies
Constructing and backtesting equity portfolio with various kinds of properties
Calibrating term structure models and pricing fixed income derivatives
Building intensity-base and structural models and assess default probabilities and CDS value at risk

Career service
A career office designated for the MFE students. Various kinds of workshops are provided (resumes, cover letters, networking, interview workshop, personal coaching, etc). The career office also reached out to potential employers on behave of students and worked in line with students personal goals. A couple professors with industry connections also helped bring in opportunities.

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
60% of the class are international students. No doubt people grew up from the same countries tend to be closer, but there isn't an obvious barriers between ethnic groups. Overall the whole class engaged with one another very well without conflict.
The program assigned study groups some what randomly at the beginning of the year, people of all races were mixed together. I was not aware of any problem among the groups, and we chose to stick with the original groups til the end of the year.

What do you like about the program?
I enjoyed the small class size, diversified student backgrounds, and the fact that a lot of our work were done in groups. Overall it was a great environment to not only learn from school but also from each other.
I liked the cares and willingness shown by the administrative and career service directors to work personally with individual students. They were prompt in helping us and answering questions during the application process and throughout the year.
I also appreciated their continuous communications with the student organization to get our feedback and their effort in improving the program.

What DON’T you like about the program?
There were times it showed that the school was not fully ready for this new program. E.g. some career service workshops came in the last quarter but we could have benefit more if they were presented earlier, professors were not very clear on what speed and difficulty they should be teaching at, and one class was taugh by multiple instructors and it lacked continuity.
Another thing I would like to see improvement is the flexibility of the curriculum. The curriculum was fixed and there was no elective to choose from.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
I would work harder to promote the program and the MFE. I want to see more effort and result in promoting it to the industry. Financial engineering is not new, maybe some HR representatives understand what is MFE about, or UCLA MFE just didn't have a reputation.
It seemed to me that we were never being considered for positions that were traditionally held by MBA, even though we might be qualified. It bothered me a bit.
My personal experience with Deutsche Bank (I have friends working there who spoke to the HR) -- I was rejected for their analyst internship because I over-qualified, and I was rejected for their associate internship because I wasn't a MBA nor PhD. So where do we stand?

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I am current still seeking opportunities. I prefer to work in portfolio analytics and management or trading strategies R&D.

Other comments
A lot of the details of how the program is run are very likely to be adjusted a lot in the first few years. Experiences from the first year students may not be very applicable for future reference. Changes I'm observing (but was not told directly): Refresher classes are coming 2nd year students have more working experience, the reason could be a different pool of applicants or a different selection criteria Career service office is now better prepared and beginning to have some relationship with certain recruiters