University of Illinois Urbana Champaign - Master of Financial Engineering

I am one of the Class of 2025.

This is an overall a good program. The courses are all good, covering from risk, quant research, to derivatives pricing(structure notes). If you are interested in quant development, you can also find a place here.

The director is really pushing us to find a job, and providing real opportunities. For now, the students who have found us summer internships, got either referral by director or recommended to alumni. Also, I talked about the program size with our director, and he insisted that he would control the program size in a reasonable number, making sure that every student is taking good care of.

I have to mention that, during the second semester we have a practicum project, which allows us to do a thesis sponsored by some famous companies, which is definitely an outstanding experience that you can talk about when you interview.

I would recommend the High Frequency Trading Tech course.It builds me an experience to land a quant dev intern.
Also the HackerIllinois is the activity I highly recommend.
Do more project or real trading practice is the thing i have learned.

I would highly recommend this program for student who cares about career, courses and program size.

Many courses are designed only for MSFE students, and cover wide range of topics, such as risk, derivatives, programming. Practicum can also help gain much precious experience from industry.

The overall program is fine. However, I would have to agree with the review below about elective courses. According to my best knowledge, a lot of MFE programs nowadays offer different tracks for students with different interest in the industry. UIUC is a decent school (especially when we are talking about computer science) with many great courses offered, making it quite a shame that MSFE students could not customize their own tracks and take courses in their own interest in the first two semesters. I believe it would be really beneficial if future batches of students can get more electives.

When did you start and finish the program
Started Fall 2010 / will complete Dec 2011

Can you tell us a bit about your background
- Math / CS major
- System Engineer experience
- Risk Management consulting experience

Why did you choose this program over others if you were admitted into several program?
This is the only FE program I applied since I belived in their Engineering Department having completed undergraduate also in UIUC. Faculty members are great and Champaign is great place to live especially with family.

How did you learn about this program?
Before its launching director and other faculties were actively marketing this program over industry and within UIUC community.

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
Basic Finance related course / Stat courses / Computing courses
Tell us about the courses selection in this program *
[1st semester] Econ / Finance / Time series analysis / Computing
[2nd semester] Numerical Method / Derivatives / Stochastic Calc / Optimization
[3rd semester] Independent research / electives.... (7-8 choices)

Quality of teaching
Of course, not all faculties are holding strong finance related knowledge - some are very very competitive in teaching others are not. However, in overall the quality is satisfying in terms of engineering academic curriculums and related teaching skills.

Programming component of the program
C++ / Real industry API implementation experience through Trading workshop

Projects
Optimization Class / Stochastic Calculus classes hold project assignments.
Derivative classes introduce many many real world cases such as HBS cases and others from different sources.

Career service
Career Services department is Okay.
The best part is that professors and directors running around really diligently to contact employers and get students at much interview opportunities as possible. For example, even though as an international student I had 8 interview opportunities and got 2 offers for internship.

What do you like about the program?
In overall I'm satisfied so far. However since it's in first year there are also lots of things to improve such as getting a bit better faculties with more financial industry experience and practical knowledge.

What DON'T you like about the program? What kind of changes would you make if you were in charge?
A bit too expensive and somewhat can be bored if you're very outgoing person looking for decent amount of party. Also, student demographic is not diversified. Heavy portion of student is from one single country.

What are your current job status? What are you looking for? What would you prefer to work in?
Got an internship. Will look for fulltime during next semester.

Other comments. What would you advise prospective students interested in this program?
One word: UIUC MSFE provides (at least tries to provide) if you're involved and actively ask what you want. If not there will be nothing you can get out of this as other programs in other schools.