UCLA Anderson building

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Reviewed 5/10/12
Rating 5/5

What do you think is unique about this program?
The faculty at UCLA Anderson is truly great. Most of the courses are very hands-on, you learned a lot of techniques and skills in solving real-world problems. Many professors come with an industry background, so it’s interesting to hear them talk about how what we learned in the class could be applied to real world. I especially enjoyed the Fixed Income class given by Professor Francis Longstaff. His class got me interested in the world of fixed income, and the class material proves to be pretty practical and useful when it comes to my current job in short term interest rate trading. The Quantitative Asset Management class given by Professor Jason Hsu provides the most up to date material in the asset management industry, including the research method they employed and the latest trend in the industry, as the professor himself works as CIO at an asset management firm. The Computation Finance class is a good combination of learning the derivatives pricing theory and the techniques of pricing those options and mortgage backed securities, which is the critical part to financial engineering. All in all, I was really satisfied with the organization of classes and the quality of the faculty.

The fact that UCLA MFE program is housed under Anderson school is one of the reasons why I chose this program against others, because being in business school gives you more resources in terms of job search, networking with alum and learning finance from a more business world point of view. The guest speaker sessions arranged by school, conversation on finance, and the NY Wall Street orientation street are all very good resources in helping you understand more about the finance industry, and that’s something you can only find at a business school.

Career services
In terms of career service, we have a dedicated career director at UCLA MFE. The program works really hard in helping placing every student for summer internship and full time. Given that the program is still pretty young, not many bulge-bracket investment banks would come all the way to LA to set up an on campus recruit for our MFE students, but we have very good connection with local buy-side firms in LA, and the network and reputation is starting to build up. But no matter how strong the school’s brand name is, in the end, job search still comes down to whether you have a solid enough resume to catch hiring manager’s attention. As far as I know, we had many classmates who got interviewed by investment banks and big asset management shops, so getting interviews is not a concern. The harder part falls on whether you are well prepared for interviews, and that’s something that can only be done by you.

What do you think is unique about this program?
Anderson finance faculty is simply great. I agree with all past reviewers…classes are of high quality (except a few).

What are the weakest points about this program?
Poor visibility of the program to the recruiter, zero interaction with MBA Finance students, almost no elective course offered.

Career services
Very poor. students are mostly on their own to find a job or internship. Career services director is of no use.Also the facts about employment posted on the webpage not true, all very windowdressed.

Student body
80% -chinese, rest is a mix of Indian/domestic.

What do you think is unique about this program?
Faculty is great and very focused. Secondly, owing to part of management school, the program provides a overall grooming quite well. It is more like Finance MBA with a great deal of quantitative focus- in my view.

What are the weakest points about this program?
Too many courses in shorter time but this going to be changed from 2013 as the new program will be probably 14/15 months long.

Career services
It is quite good and after talking to seniors and comparing with our opportunities- I feel that placement service has become a lot better and and there is lot more visibility for this program on both- east coast and west coast.

Student body
Through career services predominantly. Moreover various events/trips are organized by career services, which help in building networks. Moreover, since this program is in business school- there is no dearth of networking. This is quite useful.

This review was submitted on 1 Oct 2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 01/2009-12/2009.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
PhD, worked in logistics and management consulting for 2 years, GRE (2250), GMAT (710)

Did you get admitted to other programs?
I only applied to UCLA MFE as I was based in LA

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
N/A

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Quantnet, Global Derivatives, Vault, lots of online research on MFE programs in general as this was a new program and not much information was available

Tell us about the application process at this program
Application packet submission (including GMAT scores, essays, transcripts etc) followed by telephone interview

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
9

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
They didn’t offer one when we started – however, I know that there was one in the pipeline for the next incoming class

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
9

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
Credit Markets, Computational Methods, Fixed Income Markets, Quantitative Asset Management. My personal interest was in credit markets as well as asset management. These courses were well-organized with lots of information, assignments and practical examples

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
4

Tell us about the quality of teaching
We were lucky enough to have some of the finest minds in finance such as Francis Longstaff and Eduardo Schwartz as teachers. They have not only produced great research but are fine teachers as well – well-organized, lucid and give a very nice bird’s eye view of the field. Another teacher deserving special mention is Kay Giesecke, who came down from Stanford to teach Credit Markets – he was able to take some very complex subject matter and make it very accessible for us.

A couple of teachers weren’t so well-organized – hopefully these could be attributed to teething troubles for them in the first year of the program.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Most of it was standard to MFE curricula everywhere – Shreve for Calculus, Fabozzi for Fixed Income etc. We got excellent notes from Schwartz, Longstaff, Giesecke and Lustig for their classes which were invaluable.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
10

Programming component of the program
Mostly Matlab, although most of us had some C++ familiarity. No dedicated programming course (seems a waste of time and money in an MFE no? ). We spent a lot of time programming – all our assignments required significant amounts of progamming

Projects
Lots of derivatives pricing, interest rate modelling, CDS models and pricing. Both individual and group. We didn’t have industry mentoring, however we did have industry practitioner seminars and our internships

Career service
We have a dedicated career services professional exclusively for the MFE program. We had on campus interviews and interviews scheduled through the career office. However, given that the program was brand new and given that our career services person had previously not worked in finance recruiting, our career services were certainly not as good as they could have been

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
5

What do you like about the program?
I liked that it was based in a business school – our faculty teach MBA curricula and consult in the industry – so they have a very good combination of theoretical knowledge and real world wisdom. I really liked our class – we were a small class and hence it felt very close knit. Everyone was always sharing their knowledge and skills with others.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
7

What DON’T you like about the program?
I don’t like the price tag – we paid business school prices for the program, we would have paid a lot less if the program was based in any other department. Also, given that we were the introductory year, a lot of the rough edges hadn’t been smoothed out – the lack of a prep course for instance.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Organize a prep course – programming, statistics, and advanced calculus. Organize more industry networking opportunities. Less emphasis on programming and modelling and more emphasis on the big picture in finance (this is a personal peeve of mine – there’s way too much emphasis on the engineering and not enough on finance in MFE programs)

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
9

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Working for a distressed debt hedge fund

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
9

Other comments
My advice would be think beyond merely being able to code fixed income models efficiently and think of the ways in which they work. Think beyond being a glorified programmer and develop an interest in finance as a field (way too many refugees from the physics job crisis in quant finance – people who don’t really care about finance and obsess over coding and modelling)

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This review was submitted on 1/9/2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 01/2009-12/2009.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
A master of electrical engineering with 7 years of working experience in various disciplines of engineering (research, design, implementation, testing).

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No.

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
I was on the “on hold” list of UCB and I gave up pursuing UCB once I received admission from UCLA.

Tell us about the application process at this program
It was an inaugural program, the online application was short and easy, and collected only the basic info. I saw the second year application it was considerably more formal. The phone interview came about 3 weeks after completing the application, and the final decision was about 1 week after the phone interview. The phone interview was 30-minute of soft-questions (why UCLA, why MFE, why then, etc)

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
10

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
The only thing available for us at the time was a Matlab refresher during the first week of the program. I did not attend so I cannot comment on it. The program faculties constantly polled the class for ideas of refresher classes for future students, unfortunately being in the first class I did benefit from them.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
5

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
The courses selection is modeled on the UCB curriculum, but minus the electives. The professors work with one another to make sure there are little overlaps and as much info was presented as possible. Most core infomration and difficult classes were front-loaded in the first two quarters before our internship, and the last quarter was relatively more managable. I wish I had a little more flexibility in the last quarter for electives, after acquiring the core info and completing an internship. I liked the ungraded seminar class, experts in the industry were invited to give a talk on a quantitative finance topic once a week. I did not enjoy every speaker, but it was informative to hear the other perspective from non-academic practitioners.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
1

Tell us about the quality of teaching
I liked most of the professors in terms of teaching, and most of them were very accessible after class. I appreciated that the school for hiring reputable experts from other universities for some classes (Giesecke from Stanford, Jorion from UCI), even though there are other capable teachers at UCLA. The TA’s were certainly very helpful for our learnings. There were quite a few PhD students from the finance or economics departments with quant finance master, and they were very capable and willing in helping us.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Most materials were professors’ personal notes. None of the classes closely followed a particular textbook.

References suggested: Asset Pricing by Cochrane

The Econometrics of Financial Markets by Campbell

Stochastic Calculus for Finance by Shreve

Options, Futures and other Derivatives by Hull

The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities by Fabozzi

Fixed Income Securities Tools for Today’s Markets by Tuckman

Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management by Chincarini

Value at Risk by Jorion

Financial Risk Manager Handbook by Jorion

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
9

Programming component of the program
Other than the accounting, corporate finance and intro to investment classes, heavy programming was required for all school work. The program did not teach programing, and did not have any requirement on the language chosen, as long as we could get the work done. The most common tools we selected were Matlab, Excel and SAS.

Projects
About 80% of all school works were done in groups. Most projects required understanding the objective, setting up and executing (usually require programming), and producing a light report.

Examples of individual projects:

Pricing various options computationally Examples of group projects: Empirical and statistical analysis to confirm findings of some famous papers/studies

Constructing and backtesting equity portfolio with various kinds of properties

Calibrating term structure models and pricing fixed income derivatives

Building intensity-base and structural models and assess default probabilities and CDS value at risk

Career service
A career office designated for the MFE students. Various kinds of workshops are provided (resumes, cover letters, networking, interview workshop, personal coaching, etc). The career office also reached out to potential employers on behave of students and worked in line with students personal goals. A couple professors with industry connections also helped bring in opportunities.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
8

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
60% of the class are international students. No doubt people grew up from the same countries tend to be closer, but there isn’t an obvious barriers between ethnic groups. Overall the whole class engaged with one another very well without conflict.

The program assigned study groups some what randomly at the beginning of the year, people of all races were mixed together. I was not aware of any problem among the groups, and we chose to stick with the original groups til the end of the year.

What do you like about the program?
I enjoyed the small class size, diversified student backgrounds, and the fact that a lot of our work were done in groups. Overall it was a great environment to not only learn from school but also from each other.

I liked the cares and willingness shown by the administrative and career service directors to work personally with individual students. They were prompt in helping us and answering questions during the application process and throughout the year.

I also appreciated their continuous communications with the student organization to get our feedback and their effort in improving the program.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
5

What DON’T you like about the program?
There were times it showed that the school was not fully ready for this new program. E.g. some career service workshops came in the last quarter but we could have benefit more if they were presented earlier, professors were not very clear on what speed and difficulty they should be teaching at, and one class was taugh by multiple instructors and it lacked continuity.

Another thing I would like to see improvement is the flexibility of the curriculum. The curriculum was fixed and there was no elective to choose from.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
I would work harder to promote the program and the MFE. I want to see more effort and result in promoting it to the industry. Financial engineering is not new, maybe some HR representatives understand what is MFE about, or UCLA MFE just didn’t have a reputation.

It seemed to me that we were never being considered for positions that were traditionally held by MBA, even though we might be qualified. It bothered me a bit.

My personal experience with Deutsche Bank (I have friends working there who spoke to the HR) — I was rejected for their analyst internship because I over-qualified, and I was rejected for their associate internship because I wasn’t a MBA nor PhD. So where do we stand?

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
8

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I am current still seeking opportunities. I prefer to work in portfolio analytics and management or trading strategies R&D.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
9

Other comments
A lot of the details of how the program is run are very likely to be adjusted a lot in the first few years. Experiences from the first year students may not be very applicable for future reference. Changes I’m observing (but was not told directly): Refresher classes are coming 2nd year students have more working experience, the reason could be a different pool of applicants or a different selection criteria Career service office is now better prepared and beginning to have some relationship with certain recruiters

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A program where you can either get out as a hero or a zero
Reviewed 5/11/12
Rating 4/5

What do you think is unique about this program?
The program all together is decent, it doesn’t focus on Financial Engineering, the track system makes it that you obtain a masters in corporate Finance or actuarial sciences instead of a pure FE degree. So you get to readjust yourself based on what part of the financial industry you want to work for. it Has an enormous amount of classes, and so choice won’t be a problem.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The choices offered in this program can either make you a hero or a zero, I personally recommend to take Maymin’s classes as well as High frequency trading, if you pick your classes and your professors well you will get the most value out of this program. However if you go for easy classes you might get your degree without learning much.
1.5 credit system isn’t appropriate for most classes, Derivative Algorithms and Stochastic Processes should be 3 credits at least.Remove Econ as a required class, nobody needs it. Finally instead of tracks just have masters in FE, actuarial science or MS in Finance.

Career services
NYU careerLink is where I got most internship interview calls it’s a large university so companies reach out for NYU students. Poly’s career service is almost inexistant for FE students.

Student body
A lot of communautarism in this program, some times I get into the class and half of it is chinese taking the right side and indians the back left and then the rest of the world. Chinese hang out with Chinese only, and make it hard for a strong student relationship, specially when they speak broken english and prefer to speak their own language instead.
So why the hopeful 4/5, well because of the merger with NYU, things improve and you can feel it. I heard stochastic will be a required class, Quant finance is made harder and most importantly the next batch of applicants will know huge selectivity. The department is trying to make the program more technical to be at par with Courant, so give it 2,3 years either poly FRE department will be merged into Courant or vice versa.

What do you think is unique about this program?
It’s location, access to an incubator and select faculty.

What are the weakest points about this program?
Very poor focus and exposure to Investment Banking. No jobs for students choosing to mould their course work towards Capital Markets. Very bad at providing relevant jobs.

Career services
Very bad. All jobs posted were channeled towards computer science.

Student body
Majority were Indian and Chinese. Very few of american nationality

What do you think is unique about this program?
The biggest advantage of this program is that you learn from practitioners. Professors who are or have worked in the industry tend to have a much different view of finance than someone who is a pure academician. Most courses are not heavy on the math and instead they incline towards helping you gain the underlying intuition. My star picks from this course would be classes taken with Prof. Philip Maymin, Prof. Peter Cai, Prof. Andery Itkin, and Prof. Nasim Taleb.

What are the weakest points about this program?
I felt throughout the program that there should be more focus on certain concepts of math and programming. There were many 7courses which needed a full 3 credits to do justice to them, 7 lectures is just not enough. Programming should be incorporated more strongly, especially for implementation of the concepts that you learn.

Career services
The Career services offered by NYU are quite good. A structured On-Campus recruiting along with a very active career website gives you umpteen resources to find yourself a job.

Most jobs are into Risk Management, Valuations, Financial consultancies, financial software firms. Though is highly depends on your skill set. Sales and Trading is also an option.

Student body
The students in this program are helpful and smart. Most of them being new to finance have a keen enthusiasm to learn and explore this domain.

There is a Trading club which is a good forum to get yourself started. In the past two years our team has entered the CME Commodity Trading challenge Championship Round by qualifying in the top 16 of 160 teams globally.

The MFE program provides a great opportunity for learning the skills required to add value on day one to any trading floor on the street.
Reviewed 4/8/2012
Rating 5/5

What do you think is unique about this program?
While the program teaches both theoretical and applied financial engineering, there is a strong preference to focus on the latter. I found this is unique and proves to be exceptionally beneficial when entering the workforce since you will be able to hit the ground running on day one.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The program is still undergoing a transition to become NYU’s school of engineering. This transition is not quite finished, but should be done soon.

Career services
You will have access to the standard NYU career services.They use both the career services offered by the program and by networking. They typically end up on trading floors on either the buyside or sellside. Some go into a career of risk management, some go into trading and some go into quant modelling.

Student body
The students are smart and competitive

What do you think is unique about this program?
The program in its current state is not exactly a Financial Engineering degree, more like a bunch of courses ranging from corporate finance, to technology, to true financial engineering courses. There are students who are happy taking simple courses and breezing though, while there are some taking harder courses depending on their interests, it’s really up to the student. At the same time, the merger with NYU has provided an opportunity to to gain exposure to the vast resources of NYU, including Courant (for the people who want more quant) and Stern (for the more business oriented students). Like most other universities in the area, New York as a location is definitely a plus point.

What are the weakest points about this program?
It offers a huge number of courses to choose from, so a lot of the times students end up learning a little of everything, which is not very helpful. The concept of 1.5 credits according to me does not work, 7 weeks to understand Stochastic Calculus is definitely not enough (need minimum 3 credits, I would say it’s more like 6).

Career services
Career services for FE specifically, is almost non-existent, being part of an engineering school a lot of the companies are geared to hire hardcore engineering students, I was in this state while looking for internships and was on my own. But, the merger with NYU has opened up a huge portal through their Career services, going forward it should only get better. I was in this position while looking for full-time opportunities and definitely got a lot more interviews.

Student body
There was no student body when I joined. But, started picking up, I think it’s from batch to batch. Since there are so many courses being offered students don’t really to get to know everyone, because of which the alumni network also suffers.

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Solid knowledge of Mathematical Finance Theory
Reviewed 5/9/12
Rating 4/5

What do you think is unique about this program?

• It has a rigorous course work. There are courses about mathematical finance theory (arbitrage, martingales, changes of measures, etc), courses on specific markets (fixed income, credit derivatives and equity trading), and practical courses on implementation of these concepts (montecarlo, computational finance, quantitative trading strategies).
• Group is small (up to 20 students) so you get to know all the people in your program and have a pretty easy access to the instructors.
• It is affordable. Good price-quality ratio.
• Chicago location is also great.

What are the weakest points about this program?

• The program is relatively new so it is not widely recognized.
• There are not many students with previous working experience. This means not much discussion about practical problems in class.
• The program doesn’t have strong connections with the industry yet.

Career services
IIT has a very big masters program in Finance. Although the Master in Mathematical Finance is a separate program the Career Services are the same. There are many students looking for internships compared to the number of openings they post on their website.

Student body
Few domestic students.
Few students with previous working experience.
Most international students are Asian, few from other regions.

What do you think is unique about this program?
Small program, excellent professors and students, located in Chicago

What are the weakest points about this program?
Theoretical classes are not that useful

Career services
The alumuni network is growing. School career service is fairly good. Graduates worked mostly in financial institutions, trading floors and different types of programmers.

Student body
80% international

What do you think is unique about this program?
Professors from Applied Math Department have solid knowledge in Mathematical Finance and do excellent jobs in giving high quality lectures. Adjunct faculties who work in the industry offer great help for students to understand financial engineering as in real world. Their projects and homeworks require students to work exactlly the same like real quants. There are also some good professors from Stuart School of Business. So the program is very well structured and the courses are theoretically and practically combined. Also as far as I know, the directors of this program are working hard on admitting high standard students.

What are the weakest points about this program?
I hope the general quality of finance professors could be raised. If the business school could hire more good faculties as the Math Department does, then the program could only be more competitive.

Career services
Generally speaking, job applications through career management center’s website have bigger chances to earn interviews. The school is trying hard to help students network with alumnis and practitioners in the industry. Also, professors will recommend good students in the program to internships and jobs once in a while. However, companies seem to prefer applicants from schools that have better reputations like UChicago, although I believe IIT MMF offers a better structured program.

Student body
Most students are from China. Based on my observation at IAFE NYU career fair, it is the same for almost every similar program in the US though.

This review was submitted on 23 Oct 2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 8/2008 to 7/2010

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
GPA 3.5, GMAT 730, Bachelor of Financial Engineering

Did you get admitted to other programs?
yes, some other schools

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
The location cannot be compared to Chicago. And IIT grants me 50% tuition waiver.

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Alumni and internet

Tell us about the application process at this program
I did the transfer from MSF program. So Professor Cialenco conducted an interview with me to make sure I have qualified analytical and mathematical background

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff? (10 is best)
10

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
No

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
I really love Mathematical Finance, Fixed Income, Computational Finance. They really teach me a lot about real-life models, algorithms and programming skills.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
9

Tell us about the quality of teaching
They do combine the academic with the real-life market things very well to teach the students. Professor Bielecki earns a big name in academia of risk management. He teaches me in math finance and Stochastic Processing. He is pretty humorous and knowledgeable. Even though it needs a lot of efforts to work for an A in his class, it is really worth it and helps you learn a lot. Also, I really like the adjunct faculties. They all work in industry. Professor Lyashenko works as head of Quantitative Research at QRM. Professor Boonstra works as Director of Quantitative Research at UBS. Professor Heilprin works as Vice President at Juno Investments LLC. They are always willing to help you with their experience and knowledge, and offer you another perspective from real-life side.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
10

Materials used in the program
They use some famous books. Teachers’ notes are very helpful

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
9

Programming component of the program
Python, Matlab, C++

Projects
They offer diverse projects. Some are theoretical and Some are connected to industry a lot.

Career service
CMC works with job postings. And some professors have connections with industry. They ask for potential candidates from students.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
6

What do you like about the program?
I would say that the most valuable thing in the program is the faculty. The faculties here are not only good at teaching but also have charming personality, which influences you a lot.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
8

What DON’T you like about the program?
None

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
8

Suggestions for the program to make it better
do more efforts to help international students find jobs

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Analyst in Citigroup

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

Other comments
Make good use of resources and work hard!

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This review was submitted on 15 Oct 2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 2007 to 2009

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Bachelors & Masters combined ( 5 years) in Mathematics (minor in CS) with no prior work experience.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
I dropped PhD admits in CS/Applied Maths elsewhere to pursue Finance field and came to IIT.
During my first sem at IIT, I did apply to other Financial Engineering programs as I didnt apply before and had admits from UChicago, Rutgers and Columbia (Math Dept.)

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Cost of the program. Credit crunch had begun in 2007 itself. At that time, I didn’t want to take the risk of
changing university and go for any of the expensive programs that I got admit to.

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
When I applied , I used Global Derivatives website to learn about this field of financial engineering.

Tell us about the application process at this program
It is the same as other universities. There are no interviews. Additionally, the program offers scholarship in the tuition fees based on your background. I got 50% off in my tuition fees.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff? (10 is best)
10

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
No Refresher Courses.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
1

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
IIT Chicago offers two programs – one is Masters in Finance (MSF) offered by Business School and other is Masters in Mathematical Finance (MMF) offered combinedly by Mathematics Department and Business School. There is lot of flexibility for students in both the programs. Students in Math Finance can take courses from Business school as their electives and students from Finance course can take Math Finance courses.

I particularly liked Stochastic Processes, Fixed Income Modeling and Computational Finance (Numerical Methods) courses the most.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
10

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Quality of Teaching varies from professor to professor. There are about 4 professors including practitioners who are very good. After this, I think its more of responsibility of student to make best use of faculty.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
7

Materials used in the program
Shreve- Part I and II for Mathematical Finance Courses. For the rest of courses, notes were good enough.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
7

Programming component of the program
Programming component of the program still lacks the emphasis for C++ over other programs like Baruch. Many courses use Excel/VBA, Matlab for implementation. There are separate dedicated C++ courses available though.

Projects
Every course has its own one final project. The value of projects can be enhanced for job search by doing them in C++ either on your own or by bringing change in the course itself.
Mathematical Finance courses which were more theoretical had research projects to be done in groups.

Career service
The career service part is not good at the school and here is where it goes wrong despite being well-structured and having a good faculty. Networking with faculty and seniors is helpful but there was not much help available from the career center in regards to job postings etc.
I was in this course from 2007-2009, time of credit crunch. I came to know from my friends in UChicago that their career service was not doing good either.
But even otherwise, in normal times, I heard many complaints about the career service from my seniors. I am not aware of the current status but hope it has improved now.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
5

What do you like about the program?
I would like to compare this program to other available programs in Chicago. I personally found it to be better structured, length is 1.5 years which is required to properly understand the hard subjects in the program.
Specially, if you are a full-time student and really interested in learning quantitative finance, it makes more sense to spend 1.5 years as opposed to rushing through all subjects in 1 year.
Secong thing I liked was return on my investment. The program is not very expensive plus you get waivers based on your background.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
9

What DON’T you like about the program?
Little emphasis on C++ in the course structure and the career services.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Since IIT Chicago has 2 programs- MSF and MMF, MMF gets overshawdowed from MSF.
Most of the students who apply to IIT actually opt MSF. It is not very well known outside, that the school also offers MMF program which is different from MSF.
The director and the other professors involved in MMF program have good admission standards for this program.
MMF program needs to be more known outside.
The second suggestion is to change implementation in courses to C++.
The third suggestion is to improve the career services in general.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
8

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Working in Quant Risk Management in a role similar to that of Financial Engineer.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
7

Other comments
If you are targeting jobs in Chicago, then I would rate the program as 8 or 9. But if you are targeting Wall Street, then 6 or 7.

To submit a review, click here

Rutgers University campus in Newark, NJ

Lots of theory, limited application
Reviewed 5/3/12
Rating 3/5

What do you think is unique about this program?
Closeness to Mahattan is a unique characteristic due to the large number of finacial firms, and the ample opportunities to attend industry conferences, education seminars, and networking events.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The lack of practical application to real world finacial careers. While there is plenty of emphasis on purely academic work, it would nice to put some of it to work in a classroom setting. It would also be good to get some VBA experience as that can enhance any career. I also felt that too many professors have trouble conveying difficult topics.

Career services
This has been revamped since I was a student. New coordinator seems dedicated to helping students. The general business school career department is solely geared toward MBA students and can’t provide much useful assistance. That being said, Dr. Wu does a nice job of exposing local companies to the program which leads to job opportunities.

Student body
Small number of American born studends with high levels of Asian students.

What do you think is unique about this program?

1. Interesting.
2. Unique
3. Very mathematical and concept oriented.

What are the weakest points about this program?
Does not give students the opportunity to select some courses and be flexible.

Career services
Still in the beginning stage. Not very helpful.

Student body
Diverse and helpful.

This review was submitted on 11 Oct 2010 by a student who studied part-time in the program from 9/2009 to 5/2011

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
3 years of industry experience followed by a Ph.D. in economics

Did you get admitted to other programs?
Yes

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Was already a Rutgers student in the Economics dept. Value of program is better than other programs

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Online research, compared coursework of other programs

Tell us about the application process at this program
Applied online, submitted GRE scores and grades online

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff? (1 worst, 10 best)
10

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
Yes, very brief introduction to finance course (free)

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
8

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
There are a total of 16 courses (equivalent of Ph.D. program). There is a big lack of advanced statistics courses and stochastic calculus courses. This is remedied by speaking with the director and substituting courses to make up for this lack. The courses available in the Newark Campus are unfortunately very elementary (Microeconomics, Probability, Stochastic Processes, etc). I took these in the New Brunswick (top 25 math/stat programs) and the quality of the courses is much more advanced.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
9

Tell us about the quality of teaching
New Brunswick’s courses are much more rigorous than Newark’s courses. However, most professors are excellent and care about their students.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Very good texts are used (if you take the NB courses), including Shreve, Hull, O’Kane, among others. For NB’s microeconomics course, Rudin is used to build the advanced models.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
9

Programming component of the program
1 course in c++ and 1 course in java, coupled with heavy use of Matlab

Projects
Wrote a paper which described liquidity premiums in fixed income markets using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations (this is in an elective statistics course, in New Brunswick)

Career service
Rutgers Business School’s Office of Career Management was absolutely useless. I used the equivalent service in New Brunswick (Rutgers CareerKnight), providing me with interviews at major invesment banks, consulting firms, and government agencies for quantitative interviews. I received a summer internship in fixed income quantitative analytics (using CareerKnight to interview). My score below will be for CareerKnight and not RBS OCM

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
10

What do you like about the program?
Great overall financial engineering education. It is what you make of it. You can speak to the director and substitute classes (case by case basis). This will make your education much better.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
10

What DON’T you like about the program?
Obvious gaps in the program structure coupled with absense of flexibility.
The quality of the Newark courses is abysmal (particularly microeconomics and probability). This is remedied by taking the same courses in New Brunswick. This program has a huge need for advanced statistics (particularly time series analysis). It would also need another semester of stochastic calculus. The programming aspect is a bit too simplistic.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Add a time series analysis course (Econometrics 2, NB campus, Prof Swanson), add another semester of stochastic calculus. Get rid of the java course and add a rigorous quant dev class (Computational Finance, NB Campus, Prof Feehan). Teach microeconomics more rigorously (real analysis, topology, advanced risk models) (or take in NB campus). Get rid of probability and add a rigorous measure theory course.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
8

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Offer in fixed income quantitative analytics (begin July 2011)

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

Other comments
This is a great program, if you take most courses in New Brunswick and use CareerKnight in NB instead of RBS OCM

To submit a review, click here

This review was submitted on 4 Oct 2010 by a student who studied part-time in the program from 9/2006 to 12/2010

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
A master’s in mathematics and a PhD in a field not related to finance. GPA 4.0, GMAT 710

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No, I chose not to apply that year

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
I needed a program that would allow to take only one or two courses at a time in a flexible order and stay close to home (family circumstances)

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
University website provided good overview of the program.

Tell us about the application process at this program
I applied offline and got positive response almost immediately

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff? (1 worst, 10 best)
9

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
There was a free-of-charge week’s long orientation course going over introduction to finance prior to the start of the program.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
3

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
The list of courses required to receive this degree is very rigid. If I remember correctly off the top of my head, there are only 2 elective courses to be selected. The core list is generally well thought-through, with one major blatant exception: the program provides no courses in time series and advanced statistics. Given that taking those courses as electives requires traveling to a different campus at odd time of the day, this effectively means that those courses are not available to part-time working students even if they realize that they lack those.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
3

Tell us about the quality of teaching
The courses are generally skewed toward theory, but I would not say it is a disadvantage. There is some limited number of courses taught by current and former practitioners as well (risk management, numerical analysis, financial institutions). Teching quality falls within a huge range, from excellent in-depth theoretical courses (probability and stochastic processes, systems simulation) to somewhat less laudable.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Hull – Options Futures and other derivatives;
Shreve – Stochastic Calculus for Finance;
Cochrane – Asset pricing;
Etheridge – A course in Financial Calculus;
Baklawski – Introduction to Probability with R;

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
8

Programming component of the program
MatLab is used throughout many courses; C++ and Java are covered in dedicated courses (2 semesters)

Projects
Numerical analysis and Financial Risk Management Theory course (however, none are taught in this format any longer, at least to the extent of my knowledge), individual projects
Courses in both C++ and Java involve a series of programming projects, individual projects
Financial modeling II projects on pricing (again, no longer taught in the same format as the professor left Rutgers), team projects
Projects in R – probability course, individual projects.

Career service
I didn’t approach career services, so the rating below is done on feedback from my fellow students

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
7

What do you like about the program?
For those students who are motivated and know what they need from a financial engineering program and research all their options, Rutgers is an excellent choice: quality of teaching is very good, and many courses, even if they don’t cover the subject sufficiently, generally provide a good start for further self-education in the area.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
6

What DON’T you like about the program?
Obvious gaps in the program structure coupled with absense of flexibility.
Also, I regret to see the program sliding from being aimed at graduate degree holders who are switching fields after several years of work experience (this is where it was when I joined 4 years ago) to traditional graduate program for fresh-out-of-college students.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Cannot stress the absense of time series and advanced statistics courses enough. Also, making the program more flexible would be a tremendous advantage.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
9

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I am employed full-time at a risk methodology department at a major bank. I am not looking for any other position right now, and chances are that I won’t be looking for one any time soon if at all.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
9

Other comments
This program provides a very good jump-start to becoming a quant, but one definitively needs to spend a lot of time studying on his/her own. If you decide to join this program part-time, research all courses and options well in advance and tailormake your schedule to make sure you don’t “get stuck” between the semester schedules (some classes are only offered once a year, and given some pre-requisites are involved, one may easily end up delaying some course for more than a year). Think wise about picking the electives and try to make use of resources available in New Brunswick campus – although it may be problematic for those who work in the city.

To submit a review, click here

This review was submitted on 28 Sept 2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 9/2009 to 5/2011

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
B.A. from University of Virginia in Economics
Minor in Mathematics

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No. Didn’t apply

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Location & Practicality. Preferred to remain in-state to further my studies related to economics and mathematics while obtaining programming and industry relevant experience.

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Rutgers webpage provides a valid source of information regarding the program

Tell us about the application process at this program
Applied offline and received an acceptance almost immediately.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff? (1 worst, 10 best)
9

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
Students are required to participate in summer orientation where Introduction to Finance is taught. Otherwise no refresher courses are necessary.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
5

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
The initial semester is a waste and used as a refresher with courses in microeconomics, probability, C++, and Finance. With an extraordinary amount of international students, I assume this is to create common level of understanding for the remainder of the program, but this is essentially a waste allowing the university to “steal” a semester tuition and help create Rutgers’ comparatively lengthy 2 year program. Courses in stochastic calculus, operations research, and numerical analysis provide the basis for a mathematical foundation, yet the program fails to deliver on time-series analysis and extensive econometrics. The program does provide sufficient exposure to Matlab, VBA, C++, and R. With only 3 electives available and an administration that disapproves of class substitutions the curriculum is very inflexible.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
1

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Extremely Variant. Professors vary from American to International and with experience to those who are solely academics. Professors with industry experience within the U.S. provide the most practical, well taught classes.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Hull – Options Futures and other derivatives
Shreve – Stochastic Calculus for Finance
Cochrane – Asset pricing
Etheridge – A course in Financial Calculus
Huang and Litzenberger – Foundation for Financial Economics

Along with numerous Finance and programming texts

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
6

Programming component of the program
Matlab, VBA, R, C++, JAVA

Projects
Entire courses in both C++ and JAVA (why JAVA?) creates numerous programming projects
Matlab projects using Fama-French model and CAPM are very useful.
Limited projects in VBA and R with no introduction to SQL or STATA.
Obtain sufficient knowledge of Excel.

Career service
The career services department mostly neglects quant finance majors with the majority of opportunities and corporate presentations tailored to MBAs. International students will find job opportunities far more scarce, and with the majority of the program’s students being international, especially Asian, they will find it far more competitive. However, opportunities are available for internships and full-time positions, but students must look for openings individually.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
4

What do you like about the program?
If a student is willing to do the above and beyond, and push for scheduling tailored to their needs, the professors and materials are present to learn both the theoretical and practical aspects of financial engineering.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
3

What DON’T you like about the program?
Program administration. Program is resistant to allowing students to pursue the education they came to achieve by allowing nearly zero flexibility and forcing students to learning overly theoretical material, ala microeconomics.

Also, whether this is the fault of faculty or student body, there is a mentality present to obtain grades anyway possible, regardless of ethics, that can detract from your ability to learn, which is far more important.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
More scheduling flexibility, especially for full-time students who continuously encounter scheduling conflicts every semester.
Scrap the first semester, shorten the program, and focus on the skills and knowledge that needs to be obtained by any financial engineering program.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
7

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Switching to part-time come spring. Looking for full-time work as soon as semester completes in the fields of either fixed income analysis or risk management.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

Other comments
The program does provide a sufficient transition from undergraduate studies to preparation for becoming a full-time quant.

If you participate in this program, research possible courses and plan your schedule immediately. Locate classes at NJIT and in New Brunswick that may further the knowledge you seek to obtain, and this program can easily be completed in 1.5 years if you are able to avoid scheduling conflicts.

To submit a review, click here

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, test, rollout, and maintain trading algorithms and new strategies in listed options.
• Work with the senior programmers and traders to design efficient and scalable solutions.
• Trade firm capital
• Work with market data and network infrastructure teams as well as quantitative analysis team.
• Develop and maintain proprietary databases, reports and monitors.
• Enhance current trading tools.
• Perform related duties as assigned.

Requirements:

• Requires Master’s Degree or equivalent in Mathematics, Financial Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Econometrics, Physics, Computer Science or related advanced degree in a related quantitative field.
• Minimum 2 years direct experience working on exchange traded derivatives and/or automated option trading strategies.
• Strong understanding of system architecture and design. Preferred languages/packages include C++/C#, Java, S+/R, SQL
• Fundamental understanding of numerical modeling and the underlying math.
• Understanding of financial models, statistical analysis, and/or simulation.
• Desire and aptitude to learn software and system applications used in the business.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work in a high pressure, dynamic trading environment.
• ONLY CANDIDATES WITH RELEVANT EXPERIENCE NEED APPLY.

Hill Center, Rutgers University

Good for learning applied math with exposure to finance.
Reviewed 4/17/12
Rating 5/5

What do you think is unique about this program?
I haven’t been in any other MFEs, so I don’t know what others do / don’t offer.

RU has a really good math department. The RU math department is ranked much higher than the overall university. I just checked the US News & World website and found RU math at #20 and RU statistics at #37 and RU as a whole at #68. I’m not a huge fan of these rankings but in this case they are fairly indicative. In the MSMF you’ll be taking one or more courses in the Statistics department and most of your courses in the Math department (which is the sponsor of the program).

As mentioned in another review, in RU you take 7 required and choose three. Three electives actually strikes me as being a lot as the whole MS is only 10 courses. I still have two courses to take before finishing and one is an elective and one is not. My experience was generally getting an opportunity to most of what I wanted to do in terms of academics.

The courses are very mathematical and I think in general people find them either reasonable, difficult or very difficult. I haven’t encountered anyone who thought their courses were easy or didn’t spend a lot of their time on schoolwork, in other words. In choosing a program, it’s good because your paying money to be challenged not waste your time. On the other hand, the focus can be a little too academic for some students, so your mileage may vary.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The really bizarre thing about Rutgers is that they have 3 quant programs and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interaction between the programs.

I met a couple of the kids in the new FSRM just out of being friendly to new faces in Hill (and they’re great kids), but there is no effort made to facilitate this.

Another review mentioned the value of networking. Rutgers kids not networking with other Rutgers kids is a big missed opportunity, IMHO.

Similarly, Rutgers is a huge school and you can look into a lot of different departments to take courses that have relevance to mathematical finance (optimization theory, game theoy, econometrics, financial statistics). However, some courses are limited to ‘clan’ affiliation and it can be more trouble than it’s worth to try to force your way into someone’s course. It would be great if the school did more in coordinating the relevant academic opportunities for students.

Career services
The career services director is new. I believe she entered around when I started full time (Fall 2011). She’s been doing a good job and is very dedicated. She’s also dedicated to learning and I think she’ll do an even better job next year.

My personal experience is that she referred me to someone who ended up interviewing and hiring me as an intern before my second full time semester started. So I have no complaints.

Student body
I don’t spend a lot of time with the other students as I don’t live on campus. In general, I think they are a good bunch.

What do you think is unique about this program?
One of the most unique aspects about the Rutgers MSMF program is that we have our own career services director who sets up seminars & presentations from industry practitioners (see more below).

Another unique aspect is that all of the courses are taught at night (between 5 and 9:30) which allows the program to pick up industry practitioners after they finish work to teach some of our electives in High Frequency Trading, Interest Rate Derivatives, Credit Risk Modeling, and Portfolio Theory.

From the programming side, there is one elective offered by the Electrical Engineering school on C++ that is strongly recommended for all students to take. I wouldn’t say this course is hardcore, but I am a better programmer for having taken it. Most all of our courses have a programming aspect. Regression and Time Series use R or Gauss or SAS. Computational Finance, HFT and Interest Rate Derivatives use C++ with Excel interfacing. Numerical Analysis, Time Series, and Portfolio Theory use MATLAB.

What are the weakest points about this program?
A couple of the core courses in the program are way too theoretical, in my opinion. These courses are taught by very competent mathematicians, but the applications to finance are lacking in some of the areas. I have heard rumors that the program is trying to add more application to the theory courses, but only time will tell.

The main improvement that I would like to see would be to make some of the courses less theoretical. There should also be more flexibility in the course curriculum with more electives to choose from. One improvement they have already made, which will begin this summer, is a primer in mathematics to get incoming students up to speed.

Career services
I have heard rumors about the past career services in the MSMF program and they were not good. However, when I started a new career services director had just been hired. She seems genuinely focused on getting jobs for those who want one. She brings firms on campus and sends out resume books to the ones who can’t make it, which have led more than a few interviews this fall and spring.

Some of the career services seminars are very geared towards the foreign students to help them to understand the culture here. Everything from attire to dining etiquette to speaking etiquette.

Rutgers brings in recruiters from financial institutions to sessions for the general population. These recruiters are generally looking for Technology and Business analysts at the undergrad level, though. One good source of job postings is the campus-wide career services platform that matches your degree with recruiters who are interested in hiring people like you. Basically you just log on, fill out your profile and then check back every few weeks for new jobs that match your profile. Some postings you can just apply for on the Rutgers Career Services page. I thought this was impressive. The MSMF program has a similar platform that recruiters can post to, but it is not as advanced.

The most effective sources of jobs and internships has been from networking. That includes introducing yourself to the speakers that come to campus, going to events in New York and grabbing as many business cards as you can. Also, a lot of companies post positions to the MSMF career site and we apply through those, which have turned into intership/full-time positions.

I am pretty impressed by the speaker lineup that we have had this spring and last fall. In the fall there is a mandatory (pass/fail course) career services seminar every couple weeks where you are taught everything from how to write a cover letter/resume and make an elevator pitch to proper dining etiquette. On top of this, there is generally a speaker/recruiter from the industry giving a presentation to the MSMF students every 1 to 2 weeks. They are generally MDs from quant, risk, technology or portfolio management groups at BBs or Tech firms. Overall, career services is like another class (as it should be).

Student body
Class make up – 10% American, 10%-15% Indian, 75%-80% Asian (mostly from China). I would say that the American and Indian students are very interactive with the Asian students and probably around 50% of the Asian students are interactive with other groups.

I will classify the student body in two parts, those who really want to find a job in the US (50%) and those who either don’t care or plan to go back home upon graduation (50%). The ones who really want to find a job are hitting the street, making cold calls and basically doing everything they can to get there name out there. Out of this group that really want to find a job, they are finding really great internships and jobs at top banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, consultant firms, trading firms, financial software firms, etc. The roles range from quant analyst, associate, developer, trader, etc.

Some of the students do not want to work in the US but are actively seeking and finding quant jobs at banks back in their home countries.

Of those who aren’t as motivated to find a job, they will end up either finding a not so great job in the US or else matriculate back to their home country and work.

This review was submitted on 10/12/2010 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 9/2008-5/2010

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Graduate in Computer Science and Worked in Analytics for 2 yrs.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
Yes

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Curriculum and proximity to NYC

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Spoke to people who were enrolled in this course, internet

Tell us about the application process at this program
Online, prompt and the office staff was quick at communicating and responding

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
8

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
Yes but I didn’t take any

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
6

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
Some electives were great. However making a choice of 3 out of 4 or 5 courses was as good as no flexibility at all.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
2

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Average

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
5

Materials used in the program
Shreve 1& 2. Hull a couple of book for stats and a lot of research papers for the electives.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
7

Programming component of the program
C++, VBA, MAtlab,R

Projects
Coding and Math intensive

Career service
Helpful

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
4

What do you like about the program?
This course is more math intensive than many other financial engineering or Quant courses.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
7

What DON’T you like about the program?
lack of flexibility at least when I was in school. I hear a couple of things have changed.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Mark it to the industry than to books.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
9

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I am working.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

Other comments?
Good school

Click here to submit a review of your program

This review was submitted on Sat 5/8/2010 at 1:42 PM by a student who studied full-time in the program from 9/2008-5/2010

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I had just completed my undergraduate degree before starting this program with minimal experience in the field.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
N/A

What alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Visited the director

Tell us about the application process at this program
Online system

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
6

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? What do they offer and how much it costs?
Yes at tuition cost for undergraduates

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
6

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
I thorougly enjoyed the elective courses I took because I felt they really gave me a well rounded picture to understanding the context fo all the theoretical math covered in the Math finance and Numerical courses. I would recommend students to take as many elective courses as they can afford because it helped me tremendously.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
7

Tell us about the quality of teaching
The math finance courses are fine. However, the numerical courses require some improvement–the homework and applications of these courses should be geared towards using financial examples or using financial data in the least.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
4

Materials used in the program
shreve volume I and II, hull

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
5

Programming component of the program
C++ for mathematical finance

Projects
Assigned a Master’s research project with a ton of coding and a lot of homework assignments can be completed using different programming languages such as R and Matlab.

Career service
There is a full time career advisor with the program and there were efforts being made to bring different types of industry professionals in to speak about their experiences.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
5

What do you like about the program?
I like the rigor of the curriculum and the fact that it was housed the math department allowed for some exposure to different fields in mathematics. I felt that the program was evolving quite a bit even during my time there so I feel that curriculum now is more conducive for a student wanting to learn how mathematics and finance relate.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
7

What DON’T you like about the program?
I didn’t like the fact the assignments were not varied year to year–this gave some students an unfair advantage over the others. Also, I think there a lot of events available through the business school and undergraduate program that would welcome students from our programs, but their events are not publicized enough.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
1) bring more relevant industry speakers in
2) Also have some professional building workshops for the students so we could get all of our mistakes with career fairs and interviewing out of the way before the real position was available.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
8

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I am working.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

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This review was submitted on 12/26/2009 at 9:47:23 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 9/2/2008-5/13/2010*

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I have BS Engineering and worked (<2yrs) as an Associate with a Big 4.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
U. Manchester, MFE, U. Birmingham, Math Finance

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
It was more of choosing New York over London, my choice of Rutgers was due to the fact that of the reputable schools in the Tri-state area it had an extended application deadline. Considered Baruch/NYU/Columbia/Princeton but deadlines were past when I applied.

Tell us about the application process at this program
The application process was very straight forward, I had emailed the program director who responded timely. I sent in my application pack and got a response about a missing item, sent that over and got an acceptance mail then the paperwork followed, it was quite much being that I am an international student but everything went in an orderly manner.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
8

Programs like Baruch MFE, UCB MFE have refresher courses for incoming students. Does this program offer such courses? How useful was it?
Yes, the program offers a refresher course. I didn’t need to take the refresher course as it is only mandatory for certain people with provisional admission, also I wouldn’t want to incur additional cost. I did see the course content of the refresher courses though.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
6

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
My best course in the program is Portfolio Theory and Applications. The program as a whole requires completion of 7 core courses and 3 other courses from variety available or even one or two from the business school or computer engineering dept.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
8

Tell us about the quality of teaching
I’ve completed 8 courses so far in the program (2 to go!). Frankly two of the classes weren’t that good, not as practical as it could have been, another 2 classes were good but nothing beyond expectation but 4 classes were very good, well taught, reviewed papers, industry practice and engaged in stimulating class discussions.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
7

Materials used in the program
The core textbooks we used were:
course – Math Finance I&II
Shreve, Stochastic Calculus for Finance II
Wilmott, Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance

course – Numerical I&II
Quarteroni, Numerical Mathematics
Atkinson, An Introduction to Numerical Analysis

course – C++
Deitel & Deitel, How to Program in C++

course – Computational Finance
Glasserman, Monte Carlo Methods in Financial Engineering
Joshi, C++ Design Patterns and Derivatives Pricing
Achdou & Pironneau, Computational Methods for Option Pricing

course – Portfolio Theory and Applications
Meucci, Risk and Asset Allocation
Grinold & Kahn, Active Portfolio Management

course – Applied linear regression and time series analysis (I used lecture notes)

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
9

Programming component of the program
There is a significant programming component with two fully programming class (C++ and Computational Finance), the program however had an option for the not so pragramming savvy people to take the business emphasis route and avoid this.

Projects
Projects were both individual and group work depending on the class although there were more individual. The projects range from re-performing the fama-macbeth cross-sectional regression method to get risk premia using past 10 yr stock prices of 10 securities using the S&P as benchmark to pricing a double barrier stock option in heston stochastic volatility model using ADI finite difference method or implementing the black-litterman asset allocation model to find the mean-variance optimized efficient frontier and frontier allocations for a given market portfolio.

Career service
The program has a dedicated full time career staff and she has organized quite a number of company presentations and info sessions, although most times the firms still refer students to their website (Morgan Stanley, Schonfeld Trading, Murex, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg came this semester). Also the school itself has a number of career fairs and company info sessions that we leverage on for more reach, although the typical target there are the undergrad population. I was at the NYU/IAFE Math Finance career fair and I think I do appreciate the career efforts here better plus its free.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
9

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
Well yeah, we’ve got a Chinese group, an Indian group, a small American and the rest of us in between. Although this creates some barrier to harnessing the benefits of a diverse learning environment, it all depends on the individual to break such barriers. I interact very well with all groups in class and hang out for beer with them too, actually picking up some Indian and Chinese words now.

What do you like about the program?
At the end of the day, it is the rigor of this program that sells it. I remember a new student telling me she’s thinking of a part time job since all the classes are in the evenings and she’d be bored… only two weeks into classes I saw the same student rushing to complete an assignment before time complaining that she spent most of the night going through the problems and only just figured out how to do it.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
6

What DON’T you like about the program?
On top of the list here would definitely be it’s price tag, we pay significantly more than other graduate student here even when taking the same course. Also, in my view I think it better to admit fewer and more qualified students so as to reduce the class size.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Continue to take student recommendations about lecturers serious, they made some good changes after my first year. Try to get more employers to interview on campus as opposed to just coming around for info sessions.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
7

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I work part-time with the funds management unit of a global investment banking and securities firm and currently seeking full time positions for June 2010.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

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Angell Hall - University of Michigan

Bellow average
Reviewed 4/8/2012
Rating 2/5

What is unique about this program?
Nothing. Its got nothing different about it.

What are the weakest things about the program?
Its the staff. They are not really worried about students finding jobs upon graduation or not. They are not even willing to invite recruiters.

Career services
Below Average. Students have to find jobs on their own. If they are lucky enough they get an internship/full-time placement. For the past couple of years, about 20-30% of the students have been placed.

Students body
They do not generally find jobs in the finance and investment industry. They generally find jobs in the Financial Technology sector. Jobs like a trader or a quant analyst are a distant dream.

Personally I like the program and enjoyed it a lot. This program holds about 50 students each year with different backgrounds, such as physics, software engineering, electronic engineering, finance, math, economics, etc. About half of them do not have working experiences before, and others have relative experiences in finance, IT, trading or other areas.

Usually students need to finish 39 credits in three academic semesters. The program begins with a summer boot camp which lasts from mid July to late August. The summer classes cover statistics, finance, programming, algebra, economic, etc. which are mostly foundations. There are also some interesting network event and outdoor games. All these help new students learn basic knowledge which they lack of and get familiar with their classmates and professors. I love the summer semester, we had lots of fun both inside and outside of class. However, the cost is expensive. Many students think they spend too much on the summer courses and some of the courses are not necessary to open since they are too abstract, because one month’s time cannot give you a deep understanding in any area.

Students have lots of freedom in taking courses due to their career paths. They can choose to take courses from math school, college of engineering, and Ross school of business. Core courses cover stochastic process, markov chains, statistical methods in finance, optimization methods in finance, fixed income, financial engineering, capital market and investment strategy, portfolio management and investment, options and future in corporate decision make, computational finance etc. Others include risk management, programming skills in quant finance, trading, valuation, international finance, etc. I would say that all professors are pretty good and some courses open public lectures and invite speakers from trading firms, investment banks and hedge funds. There is also a small virtual trading room in business school. Students can learn to use softwares like bloomberg and factset. And most of the course projects require skills in quantitative analysis, MATLAB, C++ and R prog ramming. As you can see, the program is more mathematical and quantitative other than financial.

The career service is good as students can use career recourses both in engineering school and business school. However, most students complain that there is only limited recourses in business school open to MFE students. They cannot get as much chances as BBA or MBA. Although this is the case, many students can also get interviews from top investment banking and consulting firms, and finally get offer there.

Reviewer’s background:
I heard about this program from a ranking website which tells Michigan ranks top 10 among FE programs. The ranking might change over time. But overall, this is a good program and a good place to learn.

Students need to take GRE in order to be considered. Most students get high mark in quantitative part, from 790 to 800. As for Verbal, it ranges from 300 to 600. Of course GRE is not everything you have to get the administration. Try to gain practice experience in quant finance related fields, this adds great points to your resume and might extend an offer for you.

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This review was submitted on 3/26/2010 at 4:00:11 by a student who studied full-time in the program from 7/2008-4/30/2010*

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Work Ex: Accounting and fixed income derivatives trading desk support.
Educational background: Finance and computer science

Did you get admitted to other programs?
N/A

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
I chose the Michigan program because of its flexibility, relationship with a strong MBA program, and the overall reputation of Michigan as a business school and in general.

Tell us about the application process at this program
Same as the other school’s processes except that Michigan required a 2 minute video monologue. Did not have to correspond with the administration during the application process.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
8

Programs like Baruch MFE, UCB MFE have refresher courses for incoming students. Does this program offer such courses? How useful was it?
Michigan has a fairly intensive mandatory summer program from July-August and organized in a modular format. There are no grades but participation in all modules is mandatory.

The program covers all fundamental topics from corporate finance to calculus to C++. Because of its broad scope, most students including myself found some parts useful and some parts not. For e.g. I had a strong finance background so the finance & econ segments were useless to me, whereas the I was very happy to have the calculus, probability and stats because my math background was relatively weak; most students had strong math backgrounds and so many felt the other way around. Overall my opinion of the program was positive for these reasons: gets you back into academic mode if you’ve been away from academics for a while, and it gives you the chance and time to brush up on areas of weakness ahead of some very demanding semesters.

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
7

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
The flexibility of the curriculum was one of the biggest draws for me. A large proportion of credits are electives, and you can direct these elective credits toward making your program very quantitative or less quant-heavy. I was never interested in becoming a “quant” and the Michigan program allowed me to get about a 60-40 split between quantitative and MBA finance courses. However, one can make it 80-20 or more if one wishes.

My favorite quant finance courses were the capstone Financial Engineering II and Computational Finance courses because they made you actually do, instead of just passively learn, financial engineering type stuff. The FE II course had a heavy amount of project work and if you are looking for quant roles, you would have several instances of self-contained, practical project work that you could show employers. The computational finance course is all very hands-on type of work, with most students choosing Matlab for implementation. Both classes are requisites and are very demanding.

My favorite MBA finance courses were Advanced Equity Security Analysis (fundamental stock selection taught by a seasoned buy-side PM), Financial Trading (practical market making course), Private Equity (all work is on live PE deals with tremendous exposure to industry players), and Applied Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management (practical course where you play the part of a buy-side sector analyst on a real equity fund). These courses are all electives. Note that you can take a PE course in an MFE program. You can actually take just about any higher level MBA finance course as an elective.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
10

Tell us about the quality of teaching
I thought that most instructors were good, a couple were unforgettably amazing, and a couple were completely forgettable. A significant downside to the Michigan program in my opinion is the dearth of practitioners. Although there is a lot of solid theory behind it, finance is a craft, and no matter how well you know your subject matter and how good a teacher you are, you cannot teach what a practitioner can, which is the craft side of it.

There were TAs for just about every class but I never used them [because I'm so smart].

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
8

Materials used in the program
For the quantitative finance courses: Shreve I & II, Tomas Björk (arb theory in continuous time), Glasserman (MC methods in FE), Wilmott (mathematics of financial derivatives), Hull, Cornuejols (optimization methods in finance).

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
8

Programming component of the program
Depending on what electives you take, there can be a lot of programming. Among the required courses, there are three courses that require programming. For two of these you can choose to use whatever applications you want, with most students choosing Matlab, and for the third we used R.

Projects
All projects were group projects. Among the required quantitative finance courses, examples of projects were modeling the implied vol surface for equity options and modeling the yield curve using various interest rate models. There are quantitative finance electives which I did not take that have very heavy project work. The MBA finance electives I took had a lot of very practical project work. In my opinion there is enough project work that you can do and have to show employers examples of your work.

Career service
The MFE program is housed in the engineering school but is a JV between the engineering side and the business school. MFEs now have full access to both engineering recruitment and business school recruitment resources (on-campus hiring, alumni databases, career counseling, etc). In the past access to b-school resources was curbed but no longer; and from now on there should be an escalation of hiring opps through the b-school as the MFE program gets more visibility amongst recruiters who traditionally came to the b-school knowing only the b-school talent pool.

A word of caution for prospective students with full-time work ex: Michigan is by and large not a target school for associate-level sales & trading recruiters. Banks are happy to interview and hire MFEs without full-time work ex (or very limited full-time work ex) for analyst positions, i.e. they club MFEs without work ex along with bachelors students in the b-school. However they just don’t seem to like Michigan for associate-level hiring into sales & trading; they seem to go to Chicago and Wharton & the other ivies.

On another note, we unfortunately don’t get the hedge funds that NYU and Columbia probably get being in Manhattan, but we do get some prop trading firms given our proximity to Chicago.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
7

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
There was a fair amount of cross-ethnic interaction as far as coursework went, but as far as “socializing” went, my take on it is that a large portion of the Chinese students did cordon themselves off whereas most other people intermingled. Also, I put socializing in quotes because we are talking about MFEs, and MFEs (in all programs, not just U-M) aren’t the most gregarious creatures in the world.

What do you like about the program?
The flexibility of the program. The ability to get a mix of quantitative and non-quantitative finance coursework. Michigan alumni network.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
8

What DON’T you like about the program?
Not enough practitioners on the faculty, a serious negative in my opinion.

Not enough financial engineering specific career counseling. There’s counseling through the b-school and there’s counseling through engineering, but they are not very useful for MFE students, who have their own differentiated backgrounds, skill sets, and career focuses.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
The program should have a focused and comprehensive career services effort especially for MFE students, i.e. career services beyond a resume book, resume critiquing, general interview prep, etc.

The program also needs more marketing, it is a very good program but I believe that it does not have enough visibility amongst other MFE programs and other Masters programs in general.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
9

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Prefer to keep this info private.

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
8

Besides the program’s websites, what alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Forums (especially QuantNet) and alumni.

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Employer: Stevens Institute of Technology (Financial Systems Center)
Job title: Laboratory Systems Administrator (LSA)
Location: Hoboken, NJ
Compensation: Compensation is commensurate with qualifications experience

Job description:
The Hanlon Financial Systems Laboratory (HFSL) within the Stevens Financial Systems Center (FSC) is an essential component in the education process at the graduate and undergraduate level as well as research and corporate outreach at Stevens Institute of Technology. The HFS Lab Systems Administrator (LSA) will report directly to the Laboratory Supervisor and will work closely with laboratory technicians and IT personnel at Stevens Institute of Technology. When required, the LSA will also interface directly with personnel from across the financial industry—corporate and government.

Role & Responsibilities:

Scope of Responsibilities and Requirements includes a comprehensive understanding of the computer applications used to run the lab including financial applications, databases and networks. Financial software and applications refer to Bloomberg, Thompson Reuters, RealTick, etc. with a clear aptitude to learn new applications. Other software includes compilers for commonly used languages (C++ and Java) and higher order software such as SAS. Knowledge of operating systems is a must. The LSA is also responsible for coordinating other locally and remotely originated flows of information in the lab. This job requires experience with high reliability to avoid disruptions to classes, research and operations.

Job Description:

The LSA will provide laboratory computer information and application support for communications systems across the Lab which includes 35 seats with CPU’s and doubles terminals as well as off-campus operations. The candidate will be responsible for establishing communications, login permissions, data retention, and documentation of operations, security and disaster recovery for lab information systems. Ability to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues is required. 
The LSA is required to maintain efficient operations, functionality, minimize systems downtime, provide validation for new software versions or changes in hardware if necessary, maintain workstation setups and configuration support, 
maintain necessary documentation for auditing purposes, 
systems training, strive to utilize maximum system capabilities, 
maintain testing environment 
and collaborate with other data systems. There will be times when this position requires large blocks of time to fulfill business critical issues. Flexibility with this type of fluid schedule is required.

Education/Experience:

-Bachelors Degree or higher in Information Technology/Computer Science/Financial Engineering or related field

-Five years of relevant functional experience

-Required: Communication skills: ability to communicate well with teams, guests, and willing to share knowledge with co-workers and faculty; strong written and verbal communication skills is a must, with evident leadership skills, good organizational and planning skills are required.

-Desired: Demonstrated IT involvement in projects of similar scope (desired).

-Be able to identify opportunities to improve and take the initiative to get things accomplished and act as a resource for colleagues with less experience.

Compensation is commensurate with qualifications experience.

To apply: Candidates to apply for this position please submit your resume:

1) Online: https://www2.apply2jobs.com/Stevens/ProfInt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mInternal.showJob&RID=5532&CurrentPage=1

2) (and) Via email to: Elaine Chichizola, Administrator, echichi1@stevens.edu

Please do not call, if your qualifications align with the needs of the position we will contact you.

About the Stevens Financial Systems Center:

The Financial Systems Center (FSC) at Stevens Institute of Technology is a state-of-the-art financial research and teaching facility that supports programs at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. The first of its kind in the United States, the FSC will serve as a platform for financial systems research, and the development, testing and evaluation of software for financial networks and the investigation of cyber-security challenges in the financial domain. The Center was formed to apply systems thinking and related methods to analyze, understand, and characterize the behavior of the complex global financial system.

Job description:
Ronin Capital is looking to hire a Quantitative Research Associate. The individual in this position will work with other Quantitative Researchers to develop quantitatively based equity, future and option trade algorithms. Associate generally have 2 to 5 years of relevant experience. More experiences candidates may also apply. This position is located in our Chicago, IL office.

Responsibilities of the Quantitative Research Department:

• Generate trading algorithms through data and statistical analysis on financial time series.
• Develop back-testing and simulated trading algorithms.
• Develop other statistically-based trading algorithms as needed.
• Work with software engineers and trading staff to design and implement financial software.
• Work closely with market data and network infrastructure teams as well as quantitative analysis team.
• Optimize current trading strategies/systems and adjust parameters to adapt to changing market conditions.
• Perform related duties as required.

Requirements:

• Experience working with financial data modeling and performing advanced statistical analysis.
• Programming experience in C/C++; knowledge of R, SAS and/or Matlab a plus.
• Proven problem solving skills.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and meet multiple deadlines.
• Self-motivated and able to work independently on assignments with little supervision.
• Good verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to work in and contribute to the team atmosphere.
• Interest in the financial markets and trading a plus.

To apply: Interested parties should submit a cover letter and a resume (attached in MS Word or PDF format) via email to recruiting@ronin-capital.com. Cover letters should emphasis any experience dealing with financial time series data and the development of trading algorithms. Please specify “Quantitative Research Associate (Chicago) req. # 161” in the subject in of the email. Principals only, no agencies. No phone calls, please. Please visit our Website at Ronin-Capital.com for more details.

Employer: APG Group
Job title: Senior Portfolio Manager Quantitative Equities Strategies
Location: Amsterdam
Compensation:

Job description:
As Senior Portfolio Manager, you bear responsibility for the quantitatively managed portfolios for developed and emerging markets. You are charged with the day-to-day administration of the quantitative internally managed equity portfolios, and develop and submit proposals on how to improve the current investment strategies. You are closely involved in the enhancement of new strategies. You have solid market insight combined with a good understanding of quantitative models and techniques, programming languages, portfolio management and risk management systems.

At APG, you will be working at the Quantitative Equities department within Developed Markets Equities. DME Markets Equities is classified under the Capital Market Investments discipline at APG AM.

We ask:

• You have at least eight years of investment experience, an in-depth and extensive knowledge of financing and investment, and a solid understanding of quantitative techniques;
• You have a strong passion for equity investment and can preferably show a track record in this area;
• You feel an affinity for Financial Accounting;
• You have extensive research experience;
• You have good communication skills and a strong command of English;
• Familiarity with Axioma, Matlab and financial databases is a bonus;
• You are a good team player, decisive, quick to take the initiative and have an analytical/conceptual mind.

To apply: Fore more information about this vacancy, please contact Janine Hochstenbach, Corporate Recruiter, +31(0) 613 3409 67
If you have questions about the selection procedure please contact Chantal van Hilst – Dekker, Recruitment Officer +31 20 6048128

If you are the person that we are looking for then apply through our website www.apgjobs.nl, fill in the form and upload your CV and Cover Letter.

Please send us your application before the 21st of March

We do not appreciate acquisition in reference to this advertisement.

About employer:
APG is an excellent company to work for, both because of the friendly and supportive atmosphere and because of the opportunities we offer for continued development. APG enables you to receive the education and training you need to continue to perform your best, which means you effectively manage your own career. APG offers a competitive salary, flexible working hours, a variable bonus and – naturally – an excellent pension scheme.

Pre Employment Screening and a personality test might be a part of the procedure.