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University of California, Los Angeles - Master of Financial Engineering
UCLA MFE is a 15-month, full-time program under UCLA Anderson School of Management
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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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
- hardcore
- 3.00 star(s)
Good program but still needs a lot of work
What do you think is unique about this program?
Anderson finance faculty is simply great. I agree with all past reviewers...classes are of high quality (except a few).
What are the weakest points about this program?
Poor visibility of the program to the recruiter, zero interaction with MBA Finance students, almost no elective course offered.
Career services
Very poor. students are mostly on their own to find a job or internship. Career services director is of no use.Also the facts about employment posted on the webpage not true, all very windowdressed.
Student body
80% -chinese, rest is a mix of Indian/domestic.
What do you think is unique about this program?
Anderson finance faculty is simply great. I agree with all past reviewers...classes are of high quality (except a few).
What are the weakest points about this program?
Poor visibility of the program to the recruiter, zero interaction with MBA Finance students, almost no elective course offered.
Career services
Very poor. students are mostly on their own to find a job or internship. Career services director is of no use.Also the facts about employment posted on the webpage not true, all very windowdressed.
Student body
80% -chinese, rest is a mix of Indian/domestic.