MIT MFin MIT MFin

[FinEsse]

Lmao I kept it to factual and you have no response.

Buddy, I was doing you a favor by not replying, but since you asked for it;

Firstly, fix your grammar before trying to call me out on semantics. Not only is your syntax egregiously bad, you still don't know the difference between their and there.

Second, you mentioned that "only JPM has hired there for two years in a row". As said before, multiple top firms have hired out of MFin for *three* years in a row, not just JPM. So not only is your statement not factual, but your reply is laughable.

As you may or may not know, hired =/= recruiting, but again why bother talking semantics with you?

Lastly, this isn't a ToysRus forum. Aren't you 25+ years old or something? "Lmao you have no response" suggests otherwise

 

[Michsund]

Buddy, I was doing you a favor by not replying, but since you asked for it;

Firstly, fix your grammar before trying to call me out on semantics. Not only is your syntax egregiously bad, you still don't know the difference between their and there.

Second, you mentioned that "only JPM has hired there for two years in a row". As said before, multiple top firms have hired out of MFin for *three* years in a row, not just JPM. So not only is your statement not factual, but your reply is laughable.

As you may or may not know, hired =/= recruiting, but again why bother talking semantics with you?

Lastly, this isn't a ToysRus forum. Aren't you 25+ years old or something? "Lmao you have no response" suggests otherwise

First of all attacking my grammar won’t help you change the fact that I’m right. Secondly I didn’t say that, your misquoting me. I said many of the firms quoted only hires there one and that JPM was one of the only ones that you were right about. Your changing my words because you don’t have a real argument. And finally what the hell is a Toysrus forum like wth. I’m only 20 by the way and yeah I got nothing better to do then to prove you wrong. I’m trying to help students who are gonna invest around 100k to make decisions based on facts rather then brainwashed people obsessed with a schools name.

 

[devconnolly]

The argument as to whether companies are coming to recruit MFins on campus I guess is subjective, but the latest employment report (that has been quoted here before) gives the following:

89% international, class of 114.
55% received offers in the US.
65% went into Finance.
57.4% of people sourced jobs through the school (OCR etc)
Last year big name hirers: JPM, Citadel, Macquarie, Blackrock, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Citi, MS (2+), State Street, UBS.

So yeah maybe there is a lot of competition, but with over half of students finding jobs through the school - they are hardly being ignored. Will likely have to graft a bit to get into Citadel and other big hedge funds, but I think you will have to do that anywhere. No need to turn the conversation into an argument also.

 

[devconnolly]

Also, highest is 150k for US citizens, 130k for international - wouldn't be sure but with only 15-20 US citizens, i'd be fairly sure that of the 11 that are sponsored and returning to a company with a promotion, I would say most are US, which likely inflates salary? But again, just speculation.

 

[Onegin]

@devconnolly - it's an early career program, so I'd nudge down the sponsorship numbers a bit. @Michsund - i think the early career target of MIT MFin explains more of the lower average salary than the placement reach.

On the whole, it's fair to say MIT MFin has more of a corp finance component than the other programs. Maybe that makes it more generalist, which in the long run I see as a very good thing but could be a handicap in the short run; most quant interviews are heavily technical, and technical skills are typically more important to early career / junior roles than ability to analyze different fields. fwiw, my impressions aren't far from those of @Michsund - more MIT MFin students go into consulting than other programs, and personally I've seen MIT students hire into be the most technical person in a non-technical group. Obviously there's a distribution here. At the end of the day, it's a solid program at a great school and you'll get out of it what you put in.

Just maybe go in with your eyes as wide open as possible. I know a lot of students in my (unnamed, unranked, but academically very good) MBA program were pissed about the career services and lack of job placement. I spoke w/ alumni of the program before I attended, so I knew these were problems, which saved me from both surprise and disappointment. We can all benefit from help in our job search, but the responsibility remains our own. Of course, I wasn't looking for visa sponsorship and I can't imagine how difficult that must be.

@devconnolly - are you doing the longer version or the shorter version?

 

[devconnolly]

Those 11 that are sponsored came directly from the employment report.

For me, I didn't really think I had the background suited for an MFE (pure quant), so this was the perfect balance for me. I'm not really worried about my decision, as it is not working out all that expensive, and coming from Ireland where there is no real finance industry outside of retail banking and fund administration, there are opportunities galore.

Yep I agree completely - can never really go in expecting to be handed everything. It seems a lot of people here obsess over employment reports and which companies are looking where, but ultimately if you work hard enough at it, you can get almost anywhere from a large number of programs, just may be a bit easier coming from specific ones.

I'm doing the 18-month. The extra term and the summer internship will benefit me quite a lot I think, specifically to have two cracks at the recruitment process in the US. Bit more time to enjoy Boston as well

 

[Jose Cespedes]

It's mostly exceptional cases for places like citadel, Point 72, and Bridgewater.... If you look at there employment report for international students the lowest salary is 25k and highest is 105k, which is very low. For residents, it's better but they make up only a small portion of the school. That's also considering 21 out of 85 are not even looking for jobs, and of those 11 are postponing their search. On top of that, only about 50% of MFIN students got offers in the US. Also for the companies, many of you mentioned you can see that only JPM has hired there for two years in a row and none else. Only another good company that recruits from there is BlackRock and the top consulting firms. My point is that its the job of a faculty to recruit you and give you there talking points. The reason so much people are into this program is the reason so many people love NYU Tandon, people don't do their research. I wish everyone the best and hope they make educated decisions where they can balance the actual risk and rewards of each program.

Perhaps you should have investigated a little more before making claims pointing towards information and portraying a high degree of confidence in the points you raise. Some of the criticism is very valid but I believe you have to take things into more context. I am sure you don't mean bad by the way.

For instance, I am currently an international student at the MFin and I am sponsored by my employer (a Central Bank) therefore I am going back to my home country where the wage levels are just incomparable to US wages in dollar terms. I know of 6 other sponsored students (4 central bankers and 2 other gov institutions) just in my same graduating class that have the exact same deal. A handful of others are not sponsored but they will go back to the public sector in their country. I highly doubt that many international central bankers would be interested in enrolling in a purely financial engineering program, so my suspicion is you don't get much of this in other programs. We will undoubtedly pull the placement stats as our wages (specially in the public sector) would naturally be very low. But you just look at the low figure in the international students placement.... great. This happens every year. Would you say that students like us shouldn't be given opportunities to enter these type of programs? Or the fact that I will be earning significantly less should demerit the program?

Should average work of experience of MFin students (median age would be 22, straight out of undergrad, average age is about 23) demerit the program? Also should a good portion of the students choosing to pursue consulting or non-quant related roles demerit the capabilities of the program to place the student body that decides to go for the quantitative jobs? I believe for as many flaws as the program may have, the fact that it is a blend of industry choices does not make for much intuition for a direct comparison with the placements of programs which dedicate exclusively to quant finance. Specially when the students are so early into their careers and there are more discrepancies in the quant industry versus the rest of the other finance industries at that particular time of your career life.

 

[Paul Swan]

@Jose Cespedes thank you man!
Yeah, I’m also an MFin, wanna talk about some points that were dropped here. Some BS points

The fact that companies aren’t coming to MIT to hire MFins is absolutely wrong. We have several networking/recruiting events organized exclusively for MFins. The biggest one is probably networking night in Fall. Majority of companies at this event are buy-side funds (last year names included Citadel, Blackrock, Capula etc.). I personally was able to land my first offer with this event.

Also, there was a lot of talking that MFin is not so much for quant career. I decided to pursue quant career during the program. Yes, maybe there are no people who will put you in a circle and solve brainteasers with you, but the opportunities for math-heavy education is amazing. There are several advanced classes on Machine Learning, Data Analysis and Fin. Engineering at Sloan, but again you also have an opportunity to take any classes at the main campus you want. Many of my classmates landed jobs in the US buy-side, including large asset managers and hedge funds, some will work in strats or trading in banks.

My personal feeling is that MFin is a good place to actually enter career on buy-side, as funds seem to be prevailing recruiters of our students.

 

[shanama]

MFin students do an amazing job working hard on their job searches...but its important to remember that just because an MFin got a job at Bridgewater, does not mean that Bridgewater recruited at MIT Sloan - you see the difference right?

Yes, MFin sets up a nice networking event in the fall - but let's call it what it is - a meet-and-greet with well over 100 students and ~15 firms attending...so typically there is a dozen MFins standing around someone from a firm, listening carefully to what they say, trying to make a good impression. Is that Recruiting?

Meanwhile, employers who are Recruiting MBAs at Sloan give dedicated presentations to MBAs, bringing several staff members, then set up interview schedules just for Sloan MBA students, either at Sloan or locally. That is what I would call Recruiting - and this does not happen for MFins at Sloan.

Smart MFins always find a way to get hired at the best firms - but it is important for folk to realize what the school will and won't do for them - I think pretty much all students had to do a lot more recruiting work than they expected.

 

[danov]

well put shanama

 

[Paul Swan]

@shanama while I agree with overall statement that students put a lot of effort themselves into job search and there is no one who will just give out job offers, I want to clarify some factual details, so readers have better image of what’s going on.

Last year there were 26 firms (not 15) attending MFIn Networking Night - exclusive event for MFins. These firms included J.P. Morgan, Citadel, BlackRock etc. Each firm was usually represented by more than one person (1-4 I would say), so there was a lot of opportunity for 1-to-1 conversations. You could often find some tables empty and come and have meaningful conversation.

I think this event contributed to me getting offers from two of the firms that attended.

Of course, not everyone got offer/interview after this event, and there is no secret mechanism that ensures that everyone gets their offers, but I really hope that people do their factcheck before posting.

 

[tudorjones]

@shanama while I agree with overall statement that students put a lot of effort themselves into job search and there is no one who will just give out job offers, I want to clarify some factual details, so readers have better image of what’s going on.

Last year there were 26 firms (not 15) attending MFIn Networking Night - exclusive event for MFins. These firms included J.P. Morgan, Citadel, BlackRock etc. Each firm was usually represented by more than one person (1-4 I would say), so there was a lot of opportunity for 1-to-1 conversations. You could often find some tables empty and come and have meaningful conversation.

I think this event contributed to me getting offers from two of the firms that attended.

Of course, not everyone got offer/interview after this event, and there is no secret mechanism that ensures that everyone gets their offers, but I really hope that people do their factcheck before posting.

thank you for your insights Paul! for the MFIN networking night, how many other investment banks typically show, outside of JPM? Any particular groups? thanks again

 

[mabelleaf]

Wow Paul - congratulations! But I wonder is this a typical outcome? With ~125 students attending, if everyone got 2 offers from that night, that would be 250 jobs, ie each firm made 10 offers???

I think this is probably a little optimistic to think that firms at the event are making that many offers to the MFin students...no?

 

[bettyqueen]

There's ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that firms at the MFIN Networking night are making ~10 offers to MFINs - this is WAY TOO HIGH - my sense is that more than half the firms don't make any offers at all to MFINs...

 

[Paul Swan]

@mabelleaf @bettyqueen
Well, the truth is often somewhere in between. I am pretty confident that almost all firms gave at least one offer, often more than that (either full-time or internship) to MFins. As I told before there are no guarantees that you will get it and you always need to make an effort yourself, that is why I said that the event made the contribution to my success in getting internship, but was not a sole cause of it.
Finally, I am pretty sure that all firms come to the event with an interest in MFins (otherwise why bother). On the other hand, not all MFins are interested in all of these firms. I think that people usually focus on building relationship with 4-5 of firms attending that reduces potential matching.

 

[devconnolly]

Can add another touch here - historically, between 60-70% of the firms at the night hire an MFin. I'm also relatively confident those firms pay to attend this event, so as @Paul Swan said above, they are definitely interested. I just went through my first version of the night, so not as sharp as Paul is for sure, but it was very beneficial.

You pick your targets, make a small connection at the event, and then follow up afterwards and thats where the real magic happens.

 

[jasminelee]

this is great intel guys - thank you....so it sounds like estimate of job offers generated from this night has gone from 250 down to maybe 20-25? Dev, you're right, just googled and there's a $200 fee - that's a lot cheaper than paying an outside recruiter though...

 

[cindylee]

But it's tough to look at MIT MFin recruiting activity vs the Sloan MBAs - it's crazy how much effort is put into getting MBA recruiters to interview on campus, compared to how little attention MFins get in comparison.