| 2014-10-23 | Master of Finance at MIT Time flies. My former student Zhang Mengru Angela graduated in 2013, got into Master of Finance at MIT, graduated in 2014, and is now working in the States. In 2013 summer, per my request, she wrote about "Her decision to pursue Master of Finance after her undergradaute study at HKU". A couple weeks ago, I requested an update from her. Here is her update. With her permission, it is posted here for the benefit of students who are planning to pursue Master of Finance at MIT or similar programmes.
Many thanks, Mengru.
----------- Monday, October 20th, 2014 -------------
Time flies and I have already finished my master's degree in finance at MIT.
It was a very busy year, and I have learned a lot through the program. The program started in July. Over the summer, everyone in the program took Finance Theory, Financial Accounting as well as Math Tools in Finance. These courses help us get ready for the real intense journey in the fall and spring. We also had quite several career education sessions during the summer months which covered topics like resume and cover letter, networking, interviews, etc.
In the fall and spring semesters, we get a lot of flexibility in course selection, and based on my career interest, I selected courses in the asset management field.
Homework projects at MIT Sloan are usually based on real data or real case. By this I mean that we are seldom asked to solve problems specifically written up for homework, rather, we are given real historical data (sometimes even with missing data points or errors!) to do analysis. This prepares us well for our plans after graduation whether we go to the industry or continue for a PhD, as we acquired the ability to rigorously deal with real-world dataset like a researcher.
In addition, there are various "Action Learning" opportunities which are joint research projects of MIT Sloan and a renowned external sponsor. Again, these projects are usually problems that the sponsors are facing right now, and the opportunity to work on such projects gives me valuable exposure to what is really going on in the industry. I did a joint project with the MIT endowment in the fall semester and Cambridge Associates in winter. For the MIT endowment project, I worked in a team to help the investment staff develop strategies in hedge fund fee negotiation. For Cambridge Associates, I helped their quantitative research team create a long-term volatility metric that fairly represents the risk profile of a multi-asset-class portfolio.
As you might tell, life at MIT was intense and I gained a lot of knowledge about both academic research and industry development during the 11 months there. I would definitely recommend this program to those who would like to learn more quantitative finance and work in the industry in the future.
------------ Additional Q & A ------------
Q: What do yoru classmates (and yoiu) do after their graduation?
A Regarding career paths, it is quite diverse. About 1/5 of the class went to banking, 1/5 to asset management, and the others are in consulting, risk management, etc...
I am working at a boutique investment management firm focused on option strategy right now, in Connecticut.
Q: What is the size your class?
A: We had 127 students, and I think the next class is of similar size.
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