"What salary do you require?"

[Andy Nguyen]

This is one of the often-asked question when you talk to a recruiter, or with your interviewer?

How do you answer so that you don't undersell yourself or appear to be asking unrealistic sum?

 

[Joy Pathak]

What I do is I give out the average salary number of Baruch MFE graduates for the past year.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

That's a good one as you use the appropriate frame of reference.

What about people without that reference (people with several years of experience, from other MFE programs, etc)?

Sounds like a salary survey of Quantnet members with an MFE degree is in order.

 

[euroazn]

Somebody here uses wallstreetoasis

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Somebody here uses wallstreetoasis

=D>
That makes two of us. Or three if you count Anthony, and more.
But the question still stands. Salary reference for financial engineer is hard to know even if you use Glassdoor or such.

 

[Alexei]

My life as a quant book has one strategy...

 

[daleholborow]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43167213

Some interesting numbers on starting salaries...

 

[Moumou]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43167213

Some interesting numbers on starting salaries...

"Four years ago, he says, quants (financial engineers with degrees) were looking at annual base salaries in the range of $85,000 to $90,000. But now Wall Street firms are paying graduate student interns that much, and quants are looking at starting base salaries more in the range of $200,000, he says."
"We assume that those seven who went to Goldman Sachs bumped the average up quite a bit."


Does the author live in the future?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

CNBC is just reprinting an BI's article whose author took it from a UCB MFE press release.

The author did quote Quantnet's popular article "The coming glut of financial engineer" but there is no excuse for taking one "well-published" piece of data and extrapolate the average of salary for all MFE students.
If anything, the average should be much much smaller since majority of MFE graduate has no experience and will be compensated as such.

"quants are looking at starting base salaries more in the range of $200,000, he says."
In his dream, I'd say. 200K is more than double the average starting base salaries of numbers published by most MFE programs.

 

[euroazn]

Andy, are you implying that a sample size of one is not statistically significant!? What kind of quant witchcraft is this!?!

 

[rishab dhar]

I doubt that we can use UCB average as a standard for other programs, as the class at UCB is much more experienced than that at probably any other program. Those without work-ex already hold a Masters in engg or a PhD. Now for anyone without any work-ex to earn something like $150k-$200k one would probably hold a PhD in Math/Engg along with MFE from Berkeley.