University of California, Berkeley - Master of Financial Engineering

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Is it true that recommendation of the interviewer plays an inordinately significant part in the Berkeley MFE admissions? I wonder if I am being asked for a second interview because my initial interviewer gave me a bad recommendation.
 
bronson said:
Is it true that recommendation of the interviewer plays an inordinately significant part in the Berkeley MFE admissions? I wonder if I am being asked for a second interview because my initial interviewer gave me a bad recommendation.
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I think it does. But it is another layer to filter applicants ....Make sure your second one goes very good. You can still make it.
I was put on-hold and asked to take 2 pre-program courses after my horrible interview...

Focus as much on Probability, BS model and Statistics (and Time Series) depending on what you have on your resume and transcripts.

Good Luck !!!!
 
mcgruber said:
Berkeley MFE interview process is very chaotic at times. They ask these current students to conduct interviews and this approach is problematic in my opinion. Many of these students are knowledgable but can't speak properly in person, let alone be clear on the phone.

The Berkeley MFE admission will do a big favor in selecting just a few current students/alumni to conduct the interviews who have excellent communication skills and who are able to ask questions correctly, before they put fate of the applicants in the hands of these awful interviewers.

Note to Berkeley MFE: There is very little correlation between someone having good grades and him/her being a good communicator.

Disclaimer: I am not an American/Europe born person. And I have had horrible experience with Berkeley MFE interview process first hand.
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You bring a very good point about the process. While you can color it as "having a thorough, rigorous filtering process by students and alumni of the program", the downside is that you don't have the same group of people to do this year in and year out and many of these people do not have experience interviewing other people.
And if you add language problem and a weak phone signal to the mix, there is a possibility that every candidate would perform much more poorly than had they done in person.
UCB MFE used to have a "record yourself speaking in front of a webcam" requirement in their admission process which they eliminated later. It's a program based off the Haas business school and I'm surprised applicants still complain about the admission process after all these years. It should have been a well-oiled machine by now.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. It helps everyone learn more about UCB MFE program.
 
Andy Nguyen said:
You bring a very good point about the process. While you can color it as "having a thorough, rigorous filtering process by students and alumni of the program", the downside is that you don't have the same group of people to do this year in and year out and many of these people do not have experience interviewing other people.
And if you add language problem and a weak phone signal to the mix, there is a possibility that every candidate would perform much more poorly than had they done in person.
UCB MFE used to have a "record yourself speaking in front of a webcam" requirement in their admission process which they eliminated later. It's a program based off the Haas business school and I'm surprised applicants still complain about the admission process after all these years. It should have been a well-oiled machine by now.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. It helps everyone learn more about UCB MFE program
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Linda Kreitzman flys around the US (and some international locations) conducting MFE information sessions. I don't think it will be too much of a hassle for her to bring together few alumni in locations like New York, LA, Chicago, London, Paris etc. to have in-person interviews for the applicants. Even if it is, Berkeley MFE owes it to the applicants to make the process fair and balanced by removing the very luck-prone factor of phone interviews by current students, many with borderline incomprehensible accents. And I am sure most applicants would not mind spending little extra money to come for an in-person interview. For other international applicants especially from Asia, Berkeley MFE can use Skype, Google Video Chat etc. for interviews.

If Berkeley MFE places so much emphasis on interviews, in-person interview sessions conducted by more than 1 person will not only provide more information to the interview panel to judge the applicant comprehensively and more chances to the applicant to perform better (and recover from a bad start), but also help remove some biases/prejudices a single interviewer might have against the applicant based on his/her gender, race, religion and national origin.

Involving alumni is especially important since even after just a year of experience in the industry, they most probably have better communication skills and are in a better position to judge an applicant's chances of success in and post program, compared to current students.
 
Agree. I can hardly understand what my interviewer said, even after studying and working in US for couple of years
 
I did interview in early March with alumni (technical). Not getting any response since then. Anyone got updates?
 
Both were technical. One was the last week of February and the other one was last week.
 
OK. Thanks for sharing. Then we should be fine. I heard usually they would conduct a final behavior interview for those qualified people but didn't hear anyone get it this year. Probably they change their policy a bit.
 

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