COMPARE University of California, Berkeley MFE vs Carnegie Mellon University MSCF

[moretodo]

Take UCB and then have vtomar interview you like he's interviewing us this year just after graduating from the program! Amazing feat!

 

[Apoorv]

I am a current student at Berkeley and do not agree with the views posted on this thread. It's been just 2 months into the program and a lot of students have had the opportunity to interview with firms and many already have offers. I do not see any significant change in the roles being offered this year and are easily comparable to stats of the previous batch (posted on their site).
FE_Starter: My views on the cons you've mentioned about UCB is that they are hyped a lot more than they are actually relevant.
1. The spring start and finish can be perceived as an advantage as you will intern in Fall facing significantly less competition.
2. Location advantage is relevant only if you network well, a point missed by many imo. At UCB, the placement cell does the networking for you and places a significant number of students in NY.

 

[moretodo]

Approximately 14 students have offers that have been accepted. That is significantly lower than the previous year compared across the same instant in the progression of the program this year relative to the previous year/batch. Also, what views do you not agree with ?

 

[vaibhav]

Both the program are nice and you will be good going to either places. I am a current MFE student at UCB and I feel that UCB is at par with other universities in terms of academics, but it is way above any other universities when placement is concerned. Almost every brand come here and moreover if you strongly feel that you should be interviewed for a given post for which you were not shortlisted then you can talk with the director of the course stating why you think that you are the perfect candidate and she tries her best in getting an interview call for you. Their are a lot of small things like this which make this an unique program. All the best.
Also moretodo I am pretty sure that more than 14 students have offers. Few people have multiple offers. Program has started just two months back and what more do you expect..seriously?

 

[moretodo]

Having offers is not what is relevant. Number of students who have accepted offers is what matters only. And that is around 14. It was significantly more than 14 last year. Seriously, I expected around 20. It will reach around 18 in a week's time though.

With regards to the best firms coming on campus, I personally will be a bit circumspect of that claim. Maybe by the end of the internship placement period, that might well be true but it isn't up till now. We've had MS and Blackrock and Credit Suisse HK. That's it up till now!

The whole talk to the Director and ask her to get you an interview for a role that you are really keen on if you were initially sidelined hasn't yet worked or resulted in an offer for anyone as yet or anyone in the last year as far as I know - so I'm personally not sure how much of value would one put on it.

Again, Vaibhav, Apoorv and vtomar are really smart people and had/have great profiles coming into the program. The former two have been getting a lot of interview calls. Go to the Current students page and check their profiles out. The true mettle of a program is its ability to place competent candidates with not so glossy and attractive profiles into great roles courtesy a good education and a good launchpad.

And after comparing the opportunities UCB MFE has provided me with compared to my good friend at CMU MSCF with a similar/slightly inferior profile leads me to believe that CMU MSCF is significantly better.

 

[vtomar]

i thought u were just an impersonator till date but you have proved me wrong. you might also be suffering from split personality where you end up creating an imaginary friend in your head who ends up sharing an account with you making it easy to justify so many contradictory statements you have given on this forum across multiple threads.

Moreover, you must be really bad at inferring results from the statistical analysis that u do. probably that's why you're having such a hard time finding a job whichever school you are enrolled in. Do you actually re-read your own arguments?! 'Supposedly' 14 offers that become 18 in a week's time and your expectation being 20! Ever used something as simple as standard deviation in any of your analysis? You might end up throwing most of your time series analysis results just because your out of sample alpha wasn't exactly same as your in-sample results. How do you plan to ever generate positive PnL whichever firm hires you?

And u mentioned about me interviewing right after I graduate, doesn't that speak volumes of the calibre of the students enrolled in UCB MFE, both past and present? It also speaks about the strong alumni network and tells u that more often than not you might be interviewed by one of the UCB alums.

Please stop making sweeping statements for entire past and current batches. I owe where I am to the director and the staff. And not just me, my batchmates do as well. You seem to know more about my career path progression and where I could have gone even without the program. Let me be the judge of that.

Had you spent the amount of time and effort preparing for your interview (reading the green book, red book, course materials) u spent talking garbage, you might have gone places. Quite a few recommendations for you: Invest your time and energy on being positive and constructive criticism. More often than not, the fault lies within us. If you aren't able to succeed it's you who is doing something wrong. The easier thing to do for non-achievers is pass on the blame to everyone else except yourself.

 

[moretodo]

Your statistical analysis of my argument is completely wrong and an indication of your lack of knowledge of econometrics.

I clearly stated 20 BY THE END OF THE FIRST TERM.

Its been close to 2 weeks since the first term ended and the number has yet to reach even 18. Standard deviation effects on the expected no. need to be evaluated at the same instant in time.

So when you compute standard errors in time series, do you estimate it with regards to your model estimate at the same time as the realized value or with the value 2 weeks ago ?

Also, internship offers tend to be bulky that is you see offers coming in chunks so the accepted offers variable would increment in jumps.

Have you carefully read what I've written in the previous posts ? How would a non MFE student know that your interviewing candidates for a researcher role involving KDB+ and R at your firm and in person interviews are scheduled shortly with exactly 4 candidates in contention.

I don't want to argue with you. It saddens me that I will be an alum to a program that has impolite unprofessional alums such as you.

I've provided my views and opinions. If someone is naive to interpret your rudeness and impoliteness to be a supportive argument in favor of the UCB MFE program, they deserve to be misguided and taken advantage of for the rest of their lives.

I can back them up by providing a comparison of the opportunities that have been provided at UCB compared to CMU for this year if someone is interested either via a PM or on a public thread.

 

[Jooowang]

I got ad from Berkeley, and just interviewed with Rick (they will release results 20th this month).

Specifically, I want to get some inputs on which is better for fresh finance undergrad. I am still in college and coming from a pure finance background. I really hated endless pitching and really love technical stuffs-- that's why I decided to switch. I had little exposure to quant finance before and now I am pretty open to choices in the future.

 

[Joycelin]

Both programs have their pros and cons.
it really depends on you..
I've looked at their curriculum, it seems that CMU's is a little more technical. And it's on the east coast, closer to NYC. location is pretty important given that both are 1-year program which means you would need to start job hunting months after the program started.

on the other hand, UCB has more derivative pricing courses under risk neutral assumptions.
And the program starts in March so it means you'll need to go through more troubles cuz you probably need to find a job to kill this 10 month gap. Then you would have full time work exp so after grad school you would have a better starting point compared with other fresh grads.

 

[Charles Hammer]

Which one did you choose?

 

[MichaelLi]

CMU no question.

 

[Jooowang]

CMU no question.

Why?

 

[liuyanji]

which one did you choose Joo?

 

[jiafei]

If u decide to go to UCB u can add my Wechat. I also got admitted by UCB for 2019.

 

[zhang wenjing]

If u decide to go to UCB u can add my Wechat. I also got admitted by UCB for 2019.

Hi Jiafei, may I know when you have your second round interview? I have not heard any updates after my first one. Thanks!

 

[Jaicy]

If u decide to go to UCB u can add my Wechat. I also got admitted by UCB for 2019.

Hi, May I know when you had your first round interview? Thanks.

 

[Jaicy]

Hi Jiafei, may I know when you have your second round interview? I have not heard any updates after my first one. Thanks!

Hi, when did you do your first round interview? Mine was on early March, but no updates yet since then.

 

[Aryan]

Hi everyone, I am a fresh graduate and I got an admit from UCB MFE(2020) as well as CMU MSCF. I wanted to know that for a fresh graduate which will be a better option?
I am currently inclining towards UCB but my qualm is that it starts in March which is a bit odd and I also found out that students in UCB mostly have some experience.

 

[Risky Business]

I would also weight that CMU is 1.5 years vs UCB's 1 year. Given that costs are similar, why not have more of a university experience?

 

[Michsund]

Hi everyone, I am a fresh graduate and I got an admit from UCB MFE(2020) as well as CMU MSCF. I wanted to know that for a fresh graduate which will be a better option?
I am currently inclining towards UCB but my qualm is that it starts in March which is a bit odd and I also found out that students in UCB mostly have some experience.

I feel the spring start gives UCB an advantage in that no one is competing against them at the time. Both are good depends on you