MAE - Introduction To Me

The next few blog posts are made for current MAE students both first years and second years. I encourage everyone to ask questions, add advice, or leave comments.

First off I would like to introduce myself to everyone and share a little bit about what I’m doing and why I am involved with the MAE program. I started at BYU-I pursuing a biology degree with the goal of being a plastic surgeon. After a summer program at BYU-I I realized that I needed a better school that could get me where I wanted to go. I also didn’t think I would be able to cut live people open and so I transferred to Washington State University (WSU) to pursue finance. My father is an entrepreneur and started a company that creates precast concrete restrooms, shower, and utility building for the US government and other corporations. I started working there in high school doing secretarial work and over the next eight years I would work in almost every facet of the business. My experience at this company made me pursue finance and business. Economic courses were a part of the business curriculum and I fell in love with economics ever since Econ 101.

My senior year at WSU I took a financial engineering course and really enjoyed the added complexity to finance. I felt like I was cheated in my business degree since we lacked the math, statistics, and computer programming that seemed so valuable on Wall Street and in life. After graduation I continued to work for my father and applied to finance jobs in banking all across the US and specifically in New York. I only got a few phone interviews with no follow ups; even after networking with alumni and other contacts. I decided I needed a master degree in financial engineering and applied to about a dozen schools across the country with my dream schools being Columbia and Princeton. I ended up with an offer from Michigan and an offer from Claremont’s MBA program with the option to apply for the financial engineering program after I took a few more math courses. It was an easy choice due to Claremont’s absurd tuition cost and the fact that Los Angeles has a higher cost of living.

My wife and I moved to Michigan and both worked on our master degrees. The financial engineering (MFE) program at Michigan was crazy with the amount of course work and the depressingly low exam scores. I felt there were drastic changes needed for the program to make it competitive. I spoke on deaf ears as I talked to the program director and staff. After a depressing first semester I decided to transfer into the Applied Economics (MAE) program at Michigan. The program had five core courses and the ability to choose any other relevant course for an elective. I thought this was a great opportunity to continue my education and specialize it in financial engineering while maintaining a more reasonable academic environment.

Ever since I graduated from WSU I had been looking for a high end finance job and it seemed impossible without the best network contacts. Everyone I talked to said they got lucky or they knew someone that passed their resume to the right people. This was very frustrating as I had been networking for years with little progress. I noticed that other students around me were also struggling especially those with no work experience. I wanted to build my network and figured helping others would be a good way to make meaningful network contacts.

For the past year or so I have been volunteering my time and knowledge to improve the MAE as best as I can. I hope all of you find these posts helpful and participate in group discussions.