Master in Finance? What job prospects will it offer?

dut99002 · 09-21-2007, 05:51 PM

I graduated with a BS in Communication and have only 1.75 years of work experience. I'm not ready for an MBA (in a few aspects), but have become very interested in finance (or perhaps consulting) and want to make a career change.

What are the jobs prospects for the following schools, in other words, how attractive do they look to recruiters (all of them are strong academically I feel)?

-London School of Economics: Master in Finance
-Univeristy of Illinois: same
-Vanderbilt: same
-Boston College: same

Will I be hard pressed to find a solid finance-related position with no prior finance internships/experience? I-banking for instance. Thanks!

tunu846 · 09-26-2007, 12:48 AM

hi there,
if u are applying for Finance, why don't u apply to London Business School (LBS). It's the best finance and business school in England. According to many world business school ranking, it's ranked at top 5 in the world! Check it out, they have a Master's in Finance.

nauru · 09-26-2007, 06:32 AM

Masters in finance is most useful for people who want to go into asset management, as for other divisions of banking it isn't really necessary. If that's what you want to do, then by all means go for it. LSE is by far the best name on your list; the trick there is getting into the program. Of course LBS would be ideal, as it's a peer of HBS and Wharton. But with so little work experience, getting in will be difficult.

zules01 · 10-03-2007, 05:07 AM

What would be the most recognized master in finance in the US though? I'm also interested in that program (shorter than the MBA and requires less work experience.)

sakky · 10-05-2007, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Of course LBS would be ideal, as it's a peer of HBS and Wharton.

Somehow, I rather doubt that HBS and Wharton consider LBS to be a peer. For School X to be a true peer of School Y would indicate that a substantial fraction of students turn down Y for X. I rather doubt that a significant percentage of students are turning down HBS or Wharton to go to LBS.

CesareBorgia · 10-09-2007, 08:50 PM

zules01,

By and far, the best Masters in Financial Engineering is at Berkeley Haas. I read quant forums regularly, and Berkeley Haas's program is always cited in the field.

For reasons as to why you won't get in, look at the student profiles: they read like the C.V. of NASA researchers.

zules01 · 10-11-2007, 12:01 PM

That's pretty harsh... and oh so painfully true.

dut99002 · 10-11-2007, 02:05 PM

"By and far, the best Masters in Financial Engineering is at Berkeley Haas. I read quant forums regularly, and Berkeley Haas's program is always cited in the field."

I have zero finance/accounting/mathematics academic experience, so I'm looking for a program that is basically designed for career changers with non-finance backgrounds.

I'm positive that London School of Economics is the top of those I've found thus far, but I'm wondering about U of Ill, Vandy and Boston College. I think that all three schools are respectable to say the least, but would appreciate any opinions on the three. Especially with regard to how strong it would look to the more prestigious firms (e.g., banking, consulting, etc.).

My guess is that some of the students are able to leave these programs for such jobs, but it's not the norm.

wdlan88 · 10-18-2007, 11:08 AM

Is a Masters in Finance necessary for a career in the Corporate Finance arena? Or, would it be better to use your undergrad degree to go obtain work experience and then pursue your MBA?

sakky · 10-20-2007, 03:35 PM

Quote:

By and far, the best Masters in Financial Engineering is at Berkeley Haas.

Certainly, Haas's program is very good.

However, I would say that similar programs at schools like Princeton and Chicago are quite comparable. True, they don't call them a "Master's of Financial Engineering". For example, Princeton's program is known as "Master in Finance", Chicago's is a "Master's of Science in Financial Mathematics". But it's just a name. It means nothing. At the end of the day, the goals of the programs are the the same: to train you for quantititative jobs in finance.

Hence, looked at that way, I don't know that I would say that Berkeley is "by and far" the best such program. They, as well as several others, are all very good programs.

rtkysg · 10-27-2007, 05:57 AM

Quote:

However, I would say that similar programs at schools like Princeton and Chicago are quite comparable. True, they don't call them a "Master's of Financial Engineering". For example, Princeton's program is known as "Master in Finance", Chicago's is a "Master's of Science in Financial Mathematics". But it's just a name. It means nothing. At the end of the day, the goals of the programs are the the same: to train you for quantititative jobs in finance.

Err.. Not exactly. Although those programs might offer similar courses, the career placement service they provide are surprisingly different from one another. Typically those schools whose MFE program is affiliated with their business school offer better placement after graduation. On the other hand, some MFE programs like the one in Stanford, though they provide you with first class quantitative finance, will not provide amazing career service its Business school typically use.

Phoenix Wright · 10-27-2007, 07:03 AM

Despite their exorbitant fees, the LSE is probably your best bet. Especially for those in finance and econ degrees, they do their best to get you a really good job and have tons of fairs where you can be recruited directly. Of course, coming with the territory, the student population is a little cut-throat at times. Plus, you get to live in Europe for a year, how cool is that?

nauru · 10-27-2007, 07:57 AM

LSE definitely is very career oriented, as all the top banks are on campus regularly, and there are dozens of invitation-only networking events at banks' headquarters, for LSE students specifically. There is also an excellent careers service on campus.

I've yet to see whether the people studying the MSc in Finance and Economics derive any significant advantage in the job market just because they studied finance; at every single bank event for LSE students at bank HQs (including GS, MS, ML, LB, UBS, DB and many others) the recruiters stress the fact that what you study doesn't really matter, as long as you are very smart (as evidenced by the university you attend, and in some cases logical reasoning tests) and very good with numbers (as evidenced by your scores on numerical reasoning tests).

I have met a guy with an MSc in Mathematical Finance from LSE who wound up in operations, and I've met a guy with only an undergraduate degree in history who was recruited into trading. It seems neither studying finance nor attending LSE, nor being very smart guarantees you anything in the job market these days.

sakky · 11-01-2007, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Err.. Not exactly. Although those programs might offer similar courses, the career placement service they provide are surprisingly different from one another. Typically those schools whose MFE program is affiliated with their business school offer better placement after graduation.

When I said 'quite comparable', I meant quite comparable to that of Haas.

As a case in point, take a gander at the placement of Princeton's program. I would say that there is little difference between it and the placement of Haas's MFE program. Meaning that if I secretly switched the 2 placement lists, I doubt that you'd be able to discern the difference.

http://www.princeton.edu/~bcf/mfaqapply.htm
http://mfe.haas.berkeley.edu/employ_2007.html

rtkysg · 11-07-2007, 08:29 AM

Quote:

When I said 'quite comparable', I meant quite comparable to that of Haas.

This point was obvious.

Quote:

As a case in point, take a gander at the placement of Princeton's program. I would say that there is little difference between it and the placement of Haas's MFE program. Meaning that if I secretly switched the 2 placement lists, I doubt that you'd be able to discern the difference.

In terms of the type of jobs their graduates could get you're quite right. I, however, want to point out that as many of those programs are housed within different departments (e.g. Maths or Industrial Engineering or Business), and as such their approaches [and the facility they provide] for the quantitative finance program are quite different.