The Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program launched its graduating class on March 19 with a commencement address by 2009 Nobel Laureate Professor Oliver Williamson. The 63 graduates of the class of 2010 participated in the commencement ceremony in the Andersen Auditorium.
Job placements are well underway for the graduates, according to MFE Executive Director Linda Kreitzman, who says the program is seeing particularly strong interest from investment banks. “The past year has been challenging,” says Kreitzman, “but the extra effort we place on preparing students for the job market has paid off. We’re seeing a lot of momentum in job placement.”
One student going into investment banking is Alexey Orlovsky, MFE 10, who joins Barclays Capital in Tokyo as an assistant vice president in the Quantitative Analytics Group. “I will be in charge of building models for interest rate products,” says Orlovsky. “Through the program I not only learned financial engineering, but also understood where my skills would best be applied.”
Three days after graduation, on March 22, the MFE program welcomed its tenth class. The 68 students, who represent the largest MFE class yet, came to campus for four days of orientation before beginning classes on March 29.
Members of the class hail from 15 countries, including Nigeria, Hungary, and Korea. The students boast an average score above the 91st percentile in the quantitative sections of the GRE and GMAT.
Five students already hold PhDs, while 27 hold master’s degrees. The class of 2011 brings experience from such firms as UBS, BlackRock, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs. Other students have worked with the Thai Stock Exchange and the Italian Stock Exchange, while one student comes from the Motion Analysis Laboratory at the Harvard Medical School.
“I am always excited to welcome a new class,” says Kreitzman. “I look forward to discovering who the new students are and how we can best get them ready for the challenges this program offers.”