The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) offers a master's of financial engineering (MFE) program. The program is designed to last only one year and prepares students for various careers in the financial sector. The school's placement rate of graduates for this program was 98 percent in 2009 with an average starting salary of $95,581 with bonuses averaging an additional $35,095.
Students must complete 28 credit hours of course work along with a 10-week internship program or an advanced project. Courses required by the program include areas of study such as fundamentals of financial economics, empirical methods in finance, derivatives, fixed income markets, advanced computational finance and behavioral finance.
University of California at Berkeley
Haas School of Business
2220 Piedmont Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94720
510-642-7989
berkeley.edu
Columbia University also offers a master's degree in the field of financial engineering. The Columbia degree is a Master of Science in financial engineering. It is also a one-year program with the curriculum divided between general courses in the first half and specialization courses in the second half.
Core courses include areas such as data analysis and financial engineering, Monte Carlo simulation and various topics in quantitative finance such as hedge funds and inflation derivatives. Additional courses include security pricing models, quantitative risk management, applications programming for financial engineering and experimental finance, among others.
Columbia University
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department
Rm. 313, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
500 W. 120th St.
New York, NY 10027
212-854-2942
columbia.edu
A third option for a degree in financial engineering is the Master of Science degree in financial engineering (MSFE) offered by Kent State University.
The degree program requires 36 credit hours for completion and can be finished in one year if students take the summer term to complete required courses.
First semester courses include derivatives, financial management, advanced security and investment theory, computational finance and topics in probability theory and stochastic processes. Second semester courses include areas such as fixed income markets, time series analysis and financial mathematics.
Students then round out the program by taking additional courses in financial engineering, the legal aspects of financial engineering and a seminar in modeling projects.
Kent State University
Program Administrator
475 Terrace Drive, Rm 434
P.O. Box 5190
Kent, OH 44242
330-284-2455
kent.edu