Students in the Master's of Financial Engineering (MFE) class of 2011 are putting the theory they’ve learned in the classroom to work at some of the world’s top financial firms.
Sixty-five students have been placed in the winter internship program, which runs from mid-October to mid-January. One was still interviewing at press time.
The process of pairing students with companies is a painstaking effort. “The approach we've been adopting is to work with the students one on one to optimize their best opportunity," says Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the one-year MFE program. "At the same time we let all of the firms handpick directly those they feel best fit their needs.”
This year, of the 23 students with internships in New York, seven will be at Goldman Sachs; the rest will be at JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, The Global Emerging Market Group, and other firms. Nine interns are in Asia, including five at JP Morgan Asia, and another student is at Corpbanca in Chile. The interns are earning, on average, $7,839 per month.
Obinna Eke, MFE 11, has taken on the duties of an associate structurer at BNP Paribas in New York City. After working in the equity derivatives group at Goldman Sachs in London, he came to Haas with the intention of moving from equity to fixed income. This internship may help him do that by giving him the hands-on experience he needs.
“All the theory and math you’ve learned is useless if you can’t put it into practice, and this internship lets you do it,” Eke says.
Another MFE student, Russell Gao, MFE 11, is working as an associate intern on the global insurance strategy team at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in New York. His team designs portfolio strategies so that insurance companies around the world can manage their assets and risk.
His goal for the internship is “to learn the asset allocation process, the systematic way they design portfolios for clients,” he says. “I want to be to able connect what I learned in my MFE classes to the real life problems that are facing companies around the world.”