Tulane University Master in Finance Student Review #3

The Tulane University Masters in Finance program is very popular with my readers and I have posted numerous times about the program. Some of the most popular posts I put up on MSFHQ are student reviews, allowing readers to hear directly from students who are attending the programs they are considering. Well here is another great review of the Tulane University Master in Finance program. I hope it sheds some light on the recruiting aspect of the program.

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There are two types of individuals that come to the Tulane Master of Finance program: those who are looking for an extra year in New Orleans and those seriously looking for career opportunities in the fields of energy and research. While the program is based in the Gulf Coast where there are relatively few job opportunities other than Houston, the university has extensive alumni and recruiting ties to both the New York and Chicago job markets. With a focus on experiential learning, Tulane adds a differentiating quality to the program.

The competitive Burkenroad Reports program and Darwin Fenner Student Managed Fund are fair representations of this attribute. Burkenroad Reports, run by an ex-Kidder Peabody banker, focuses on equity research and analysis on small-cap companies in the Gulf Coast area that are not heavily covered by the street. This program consists of meetings with management, teachers, and analysts as you present a pitch book/research report and peg a target price to the company culminating in a presentation at the John Hancock investors conference in New Orleans.

Like other master in finance programs, Tulane has a student run portfolio of investments. The Darwin Fenner fund focuses on the investment management process from the quantiative value screens to the qualitative analysis and final portfolio and sector weightings. Students are broken into three teams to cover a specific sector in the Sp Mid and Sm Cap Index and go through discussions and analysis of 12 academic papers to conduct a quantitaive screen of there sector according to student proposals. Very informatitive and unique course if you are interested in going into IM.

The biggest strength of the Tulane program has to be its focus on energy trading. The graduate business school recently built a 28 unit trading floor fully sponsored by Trading Technologies and Reuters. Furthermore, the leader of the energy trading program was the former head of trading and hedging strategy at Shell and is connected to everyone in the business. Guest lecturers for the advanced class included the former head of oil trading at Goldman and one of  the heads of nat gas trading at Morgan Stanley. The classes are heavily quantitative and focus on the devolopment of models, algorithms, and hedging strategies. Very informative prorgram that covers the majority of strategies in trading around oil and gas. Students trade competitively against one another in individual exercises as well as collaborating in a team environment in broker/producer/consumer simulations to replicate the need in the physical markets.

In terms of recruiting and job placement Tulane sends people all over the country, but primarily in the Houston, Chicago, and NY markets. Having graduated in the 2010 class I will list companies that interviewed my classmates and myself and go on to show accepted FT positions. These are what I can remember but there are few I am sure I left out.

S&T Interviews:  

• Morgan Stanley
• Citi
• JP Morgan
• BNP Paribas
• RBC
• Sequent Energy
• Conoco Phillips
• BP
• Florida Power and Light
• Geneva Trading
• Madison Trading

Equity Research Interviews:

• Macquarie
• KeyBanc
• Janus
• Johnson Rice
• Howard Weil
• IB:
• UBS
• Raymond James
• Piper Jaffray
• Simmons Co.
• Tudor Pickering Holt

General Business:

• Bloomberg (4 offers)
• FactSet
• Capital One (2 offers)

Here is a link to the Tulane University Master in Finance program