MIT Sloan Students Speak: MFin Class of 2012

450 reasons to join the MFin program

 

My fellow classmates and I have already talked about many of the aspects that make this year at MIT Sloan unique. I could say such invaluable array of experiences can be summarized by our core course, Analytics of Finance, or 15.450 (or even 450) in MIT jargon. 450 combines all you can expect from MIT: great faculty, challenge all the times, incredible classmates, hard work. But very rewarding!

First, 450 is taught by professor Leonid Kogan, an extremely intelligent and capable person, who is able to answer with confidence virtually any questions posed by his audience. It is not uncommon to see students stare at him in awe when some classes end.

Second, 450 covers an extensive amount of finance theory. In less than 1 month, we have studied a wide array of topics, from measure theory to stochastic calculus. Classes, as expected, are very challenging and demand our full attention. You can expect to see the Black-Scholes-Merton model or Ito's Lemma derived in a matter of minutes.

Third, 450 requires from us great amounts of dedication and strong-will to solve the numerous and challeging problem sets. This also brings into play another crucial feature of MIT Sloan: teamwork. Trying to solve those problem sets entirely alone is an option, but certainly the whole experience is enriched by the possibility of spending a Saturday afternoon discussing ideas with friends who have the most varied points of view and skills. What I have learned from my friends is priceless, something that is way beyond classes. Seemingly impossible problems will always exist. Hard work and cooperation can change this picture.

Fourth, 450 is intense, an exercise in time management. Yesterday many of us were still finishing the last problem set, due today. It was a task that demanded very long hours and a full week of discussions and deep thinking. Finishing the problem set gave me (and certainly many others too) a sensation of accomplishment and fulfillment. 'Done! Now let me just check my emails and go to bed!' The first email I see is from professor Kogan himself. The next problem set is now available.

I love this place. 

Tchau!

 

First Few Weeks of Classes!

Hi Everyone!

The third week of classes is underway, and I'm already busy beyond belief.  Between classes, rowing, Sloan Business Club, interviews, friends, and everything else, I'm definitely busier as a grad student than I every was as an undergrad.  I wanted to go over my classes briefly and give you an overview of my impression of each so far.

15.535-Business Valutaion using Financial Statements-I have really enjoyed this class.  The hw isn't too bad, and I'm excited to work on the project, where we start with a company and really dive deeply into its financial statements. 

15.434-Advanced Corporate Finance-Another awesome class.  Each class we talk about a different case study, and really get a great discussion going within a big class.  I really enjoy the material, and having done banking for two summers definitely doesn't hurt when it comes to the valuation writeups

15.S04-Institutional Portfolio Management-This class only meets once a week, and our professor is really passionate about finance.  He should be, since he runs his own hedge fund!  One of the amazing things about MIT is being able to take classes taught by professionals like Professor Detore.

15.451-Proseminar in Financial Engineering-My second class taught by a portfolio manager.  We haven't actually met for the class yet, but I will let you all know how it goes.

15.665-Power and Negotiation-The simulations in this class are really cool, and the readings are also very interesting.

15.450-Analytics of Finance-Definitely my hardest class this semester, may be my hardest at MIT.  There is a lot of statistics and financial terms I am not familiar with, so we will see how this ends up.

Everything else is going with.  This is Sloan Business Club week, so every day our group is throwing different events to acclimate freshman/1st years to recruiting at MIT.  http://mit-sbc.org/ shows all the events we run, along with a list of all our sponsors.  There are a lot of different clubs at MIT that you can get involved in, and I'm very happy with my decision to join SBC.

Well I have to get started on some work, so this is the end of my post. I hope everything is well with you guys! And apply!

 

Start of Fall Term and NY Capital Markets Day

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not updating the blog so often but the MFins have had some busy weeks! As Jethro mentioned, we started the Fall Term two weeks ago. In my case, the courses that I enrolled are:

• Analytics of Finance (15.450)
• Proseminar in Financial Engineering (15.451)
• Investments (15.433)
• SSIM: Applied Fixed Income and Speculative Strategies (15.S05)
• SSIM: Data Technologies for Quantitative Finance (15.S12)
• PoF: Invesment Management (15.S20)

Choosing the courses you will take won't be an easy task, as you may have noticed the program is very flexible. For you to have an idea, more than 15 Finance courses are being taught during the Fall Term at Sloan. Furthermore, as an MFin is allowed to take up to three "General Electives" a huge number of possibilities opens: more than 100 courses are taught at Sloan and I don't even dare to count all the courses we are able take at other Schools at MIT or Harvard.

Some of the courses that are preferred by my fellow classmates this year are: Options and Futures Markets, Investments, Advanced Corporate Finance, Business Analysis Using Financial Statements, SSIM: Fixed Income and Speculative Strategies, PoF: Foreign Exchange Markets from a Quantitative Perspective, PoF: Foundations of Institutional Portfolio Management. Each course is different in terms of the methodology used but one common factor in most of them is that you are allowed to do some assignments in teams (where you get to choose the people who you work with).

I will let my other classmates write a little more about the academics as I also want to tell you about our recent trip to NYC: our Career Development Office in conjunction with The Master of Finance Program Office organized a visit to some companies at one of the biggest capital markets in the world. During Friday 16th MFins attended the following activities:

• 8.00-9.30am at JPMorgan. The Managing Directors of different functions explained their roles, their perspective of the industry and their expectations in terms of potential employees. Their roles went from Equity Derivaties Trading to Foreign Exchange and Quantitative Research at the firm.
• 10.00-11.30am at BlackRock. We heard from one of the founders a remark on the history of the world's largest asset management firm. It is amazing the growth the company has experienced throughout the years from 1988, when the company started operations.
• 12.30-2.30pm at Midtown Executive Club. We joined Faculty and members of the School's Finance Group Advisory Board for a lunch in which we shared our experiences and received advise from them.
• 2.45-4.30pm. We attended a session in which all of us discussed what we learnt during the day and sketched a plan in areas that each one of us has to improve.
• 4.30-6.00pm. We were invited to a reception with a handful of former MFin students, it was nice to learn from their experiences and to hear their advise in terms of what we should do in order to get the job that we want and be successful professionals. The former MFins we met were working in a variety of functions like Treasury, Investment Banking, Investment Management and Consulting.

Our CDO and Program Office did a great job in the organization of this event, it was indeed useful in preparing us in our search of career opportunities!

Thank you for reading our blog! Life at MIT continues and I better catch up with my readings and homework!

Bests,

End of Summer and Beginning of Fall

Hey everyone! As many of my classmates have already discussed, the summer session was very intense but fun at the same time. At the end, there was a barbecue organized for the class as well as some faculty and staff of the M.Fin. program, including Professor Kogan and Wang, who taught us Finance Theory (15.415), Prof. Minahan, who runs the Finance Research Practicum, Debra, our program manager, Glenn, our career development office director, and Yichuan, our TA for 15.415. Here are some pictures from the BBQ:

 

After the term end BBQ, I headed back home to Toronto to spend my short one week summer break with family and friends back home before coming back to Cambridge for course registration day.

Course registration day was Sept. 6th, and just prior to that, many of us were busy finalizing our course selections for the fall term. Selecting courses was a series of difficult decisions, especially when Sloan has so many interesting courses to offer, while you have limited time on your schedule. While I wanted to take many courses, I needed to make sacrifices to free up time for exploring career opportunities, which I think is essentially equivalent to around 3 extra courses worth of time and effort. So a good balance between courses and job search is important. After some serious decisions, I boiled my fall term enrollment down to the following:

• Analytics of Finance (15.450) *required for Fall
• Options and Futures Markets (15.437)
• SSIM: Practice of Finance: Foundations of Institutional Portfolio Management (15.S04)
• SSIM: Practice of Finance: Foreign Exchange Markets from a Quantitative Perspective (15.S25)
• Proseminar in Financial Engineering (15.451)

An important note on enrolling: you are still allowed to add/drop courses up to five weeks into the term, so you have quite a bit of time to sit in on lectures of interest to decide.

That's all for now folks. Will update this later when more interesting things happen, which will probably be quite soon.

- Jethro Ma

End of Summer Recap

Time flies so fast that it’s now the end of our summer semester. As promised, here are a few highlights of our non-academic activities for the month of August:

Wellington visit: A Sloan alumnus who works at Wellington Management invited the girls in our class to visit their office, where we spent a wonderful afternoon with a few analysts and associate analysts, discussing topics such as typical day of an associate analyst, different functions within the firm, and investment in general. This was a very special opportunity for us not only to learn about the asset management industry, but also how to succeed as women in this industry.

Workshops: As Rodolfo mentioned, our Career Development Office (CDO) has done an amazing job for putting up workshops such as the resume review, building career stories and cover letters, workplace writing, elevator pitch workshop and power networking. We even had a Dining Etiquette session, where we sat down for lunch to learn business-dining customs in the US. These events are specially tailored to M.Fin. students, and we could selectively attend the ones we are interested in. In each of the workshops, we had a chance to work individually with the instructor on a more personal level.

Technical training: We had a few sessions on technical modeling, to help us reinforce our technical valuation skills. We also had a Bloomberg training session at the Boston Bloomberg training center to familiarize ourselves with using Bloomberg terminals. These events are especially useful for students who do not have any background in finance.

Networking events: In August, we had two Sloan networking events – lunch with international MBA’s and lunch with Master of Science in Management Science (MSMS) students. Sloan is a relatively small community so it is easier to get to know everyone and stay connected closely. Talking to MBA and MSMS students is an excellent opportunity for me to learn from their rich and diverse experiences. Not mentioning that it is always fun to talk to a Sloanie.

Fall semester starts next Wednesday. I am looking forward to the new classes with more amazing professors. So stay tuned for my updates!