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I'm interested in pursuing one myself and would like to know at the moment what the trend seems to be. The trading positions must be under lock and key, but what seems to be the stable field to get into?
What do MFE grads typically work in?
- Thread starter eternal_man
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You have to understand that this is too broad of a question to answer straight up. If you have a strong network, "the world is your empire". If you do not and are a lousy (or even just decent) interviewee, you won't get those heavily contested jobs but will find that you have an easier time landing mid-back office jobs than say, MBAs.
All in all, an MFE degree is just a shiny star on your chest. If you (or your school's placement) cannot get in you in the interview seat, your star will rust. If you get in the chair, the rest is up to you.
All in all, an MFE degree is just a shiny star on your chest. If you (or your school's placement) cannot get in you in the interview seat, your star will rust. If you get in the chair, the rest is up to you.
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I think you're not going to get any concrete data. MFE programs like to keep their data to themselves. The responses you're going to get here are going to be very anecdotal in nature, and the reality is that the responders are going to have very different views based on the cliques they hang out in. Students that don't get jobs tend to think that nobody in their program is getting jobs (somehow I'm reminded of some virulent complaints recently on quantnet about the U of Toronto program), while students that get jobs in finance tend to think many students are getting jobs in finance.
If I interpret your question in the strictest way, I'd guess that most students end up working some finance/accounting related jobs back in Asia. But I doubt this answer is very helpful for you. This is like a statistic that most college graduates don't work in a job related to their majors (I made that one up, but it could be true). That would be misleading because many college students pick useless majors to begin with, e.g. if you major in ancient Greek literature, how many jobs are going to be relevant unless you go on to get a PhD? Similarly, there are a fair number of international students that: 1) don't have any soft skills or 2) don't have the required technical background for their program, or 3) want to go back home to work, so my answer is misleading if you want to know the answer to the question you are probably really asking.
Just a couple more comments. On students in 1), I'm not using a very high standard (just to cover myself, I'm talking about examples from more than one program
). There are actually students that answer the questions, "Why finance?" or "Why do you want to work with us?" with "To make money." I've seen people go up to a group, interrupting conversation, and just fixate on one person, not even introducing themselves or looking at the others in the group, just so they can ask for help getting an interview at the IB that particular person got an internship at.
On 2), standards and expectations differ widely from country to country. Some students apparently did very well as an undergrad in their country but do poorly when they get to the US. They are very good at memorizing but very bad at knowing the underlying concepts, not because they are incapable of doing so necessarily, but simply the thought to try was foreign to them. You can imagine how well that goes over in interviews.
If I interpret your question in the strictest way, I'd guess that most students end up working some finance/accounting related jobs back in Asia. But I doubt this answer is very helpful for you. This is like a statistic that most college graduates don't work in a job related to their majors (I made that one up, but it could be true). That would be misleading because many college students pick useless majors to begin with, e.g. if you major in ancient Greek literature, how many jobs are going to be relevant unless you go on to get a PhD? Similarly, there are a fair number of international students that: 1) don't have any soft skills or 2) don't have the required technical background for their program, or 3) want to go back home to work, so my answer is misleading if you want to know the answer to the question you are probably really asking.
Just a couple more comments. On students in 1), I'm not using a very high standard (just to cover myself, I'm talking about examples from more than one program
). There are actually students that answer the questions, "Why finance?" or "Why do you want to work with us?" with "To make money." I've seen people go up to a group, interrupting conversation, and just fixate on one person, not even introducing themselves or looking at the others in the group, just so they can ask for help getting an interview at the IB that particular person got an internship at. On 2), standards and expectations differ widely from country to country. Some students apparently did very well as an undergrad in their country but do poorly when they get to the US. They are very good at memorizing but very bad at knowing the underlying concepts, not because they are incapable of doing so necessarily, but simply the thought to try was foreign to them. You can imagine how well that goes over in interviews.
