Ninety-nine percent of the 67 students in the Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program have been placed in internships this year in such locations as New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
For 10 to 12 weeks, until mid-January, the students are tackling quantitative finance projects with such companies as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, BlackRock, BNP Paribas, and Credit Suisse.
"I definitely already learned a lot from my team members and from my managers," says Blair Zhang, MFE 12, who is working in Hong Kong in an internship with Credit Suisse's equity derivatives sales and structuring team. Her responsibilities have included coming up with new product designs and helping to build a model to simulate the performance of new products.
"My internship requires me to have a good understanding of their products both from an intuitive and also a very quantitative perspective," Zhang says. "The MFE Program has prepared me for both."
Some MFE students received more than one internship offer this year. That was the case for Si Chen and Sophia Chami, both MFE 12, who are currently interning as strategy and modeling associates at Morgan Stanley. They said they have been amazed by "the program’s ability to attract the best students and place them in extraordinary opportunities.”
However, Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the MFE Program, is not surprised. “The financial firms know we have put in place a rigorous admissions process and have the unique ability to recruit top talent," she says. "Our results during these tough economic times are testament to the strength and uniqueness of our students and the program."
For more information on the MFE program, visit mfe.berkeley.edu.