Do you really believe those salary numbers for 2010 (
http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement.html)? If you do, may God help you.
We don't or at least most of us know that it is severely inflated. I am a current MFE student at UCB and we do not believe it. Or at least 4 people from my group in 1st Quarter and 4 people from current quarter do not believe it.
How can this be true when there are so many people with base salary in 80k? I remember talking to some people from the graduating class and they said 80 – 90k is what people regularly get as base but yearend bonus is what makes a guy rich. They had a pretty good offers.
I guess you also counted guys with internship offer (not real job) and their expected salary if they get full time offer as well. On top of that you added 10 - 20% premium on those inflated salaries and bonuses as well. Yes there are a number of guys who got just an internship offer after completing 1 year of MFE at UCB! I remember very well the day I landed in Berkeley and heard about placement statistics from the graduating batch. Believe it or not, many of us felt like we should just go back to our original jobs. But we are on a student visa!
Well UCB if you cared about ethics and consequences of violating UCB ethics so much, you would yourself not put out these numbers. Ohh I forgot you are the guys who enforce UCB ethics! I still remember the orientation day when you thundered each consequence of being unethical at UCB.
I am sure my classmates and alumni are going to come out and say how much of an idiot I am. Some will say she is fake and that she is just trying to prevent others from getting into UCB. But, at least people who have been through UCB MFE know it better even though you might try to sound different.
MFE at UCB is really great, you get a degree from one of the best business schools and you get good grades as well. After all about half of the class (more than 30) received A+ in the Stochastic Class or at least that is what the teacher said in the class (I will give A+ to half of the class). Which school in US gives out A+ to more than half of the class?
As far as teachers go, you have some great mascots like Rubinstein. He proclaims proudly in the class how he has not touched finance for 5 years and so can’t debate on anything current in finance. He might as well teach a course called “Finance as it was 5 years ago” or “Dinosaur in Finance”.
Long ago a career office in another really good school commented “I do not know how UCB people have so much gumption to cook those numbers”. But I guess you just do it and hope no one is going to speak up.
I am sure the UCB MFE office is going to come out with vengeance but it would not change the way we feel about those numbers. We all know it is a lie.
