Understand MS in Finance US

[gautierLyon]

Hello everyone,

There is a question I have in mind for a long time and I haven't been able to find an answer to it. Apart from MIT and Princeton, there is no top school which provides a finance master. What I mean is that, the masters offered by Columbia, NYU, Chicago, CMU or UC Berkeley are financial engineering masters or mathematics for finance or computational finance masters. All these masters are made to prepare students for a career in quantitative finance.

I am then asking myself the question, what kind of studies people studying in America do to become an ivestment banker analyst and work in M&A?

Best

 

[princeofbelair]

MBA is mainly for IB, consulting, M&A and PE

 

[celiaaa]

Do people generally do MBA after doing MFE and working in the industry for a couple of years? Or MFE and MBA are kinda mutually exclusive?

 

[jeffsnguyen]

IBD Analyst - any undergrad degree at targeted schools
IBD Associate (senior analyst) - MBA at targeted schools

Any specialized MFIN or MSF like MIT MFIN will recruit in the same pool as their undergrad. There are close to zero exception. The entire industry has a very well-defined recruiting pipeline: summer internship -> FT.

IBD Analyst /Associate exits to Private Equity, etc.

MBA is a business degree, very limited quantitative element and you will learn other fields such as Marketing, Operations and Organizational Behavior. There is zero reason to do it unless you want to change career.

 

[Ken Abbott]

Do people generally do MBA after doing MFE and working in the industry for a couple of years? Or MFE and MBA are kinda mutually exclusive?

Generally one or the other. I've never met anyone with a quant finance degree AND and MBA.

 

[celiaaa]

Generally one or the other. I've never met anyone with a quant finance degree AND and MBA.

Thanks for the insights! Does that mean if I want to change my career later in my career (like from quant to IB or MA), it'll be really hard?

 

[gautierLyon]

Thanks for the insights! Does that mean if I want to change my career later in my career (like from quant to IB or MA), it'll be really hard?

I am in the same questioning as you are and what I understood is yes. There is no link between quant and IB. What I mean is that when leaving quant position for private equity you will need to start from the bottom of the bottom in IB like you just graduated.

 

[Ken Abbott]

Thanks for the insights! Does that mean if I want to change my career later in my career (like from quant to IB or MA), it'll be really hard?

It has become increasingly difficult to switch between major career paths at large financial institutions. Thirty years ago this was not the case, but now people tend to stay in sales and trading, wealth management, retail, etc.