>> Hello and welcome to today's informational podcast of the Master's Degree in Finance that's offered here at Purdue University's Krannert School of Management. My name is Nick Rambo and I'm Assistant Director of Recruiting, and I'm excited that you're able to join us, but I'm not alone in that.

I'm actually joined by a great panel of guests and I'd like to introduce you to them now. First up is Dr. Alex. Alex is the Academic Director for the Master's degree in Finance. Alex, thanks for joining us today.
>> Thanks for having me today.
>> Tell us a little bit about yourself.


>> Yeah, so I've been at Purdue for a few years now, and one of my roles is the Academic Director for the Master's of Science in Finance degree. I also teach in that program, both in the summer and in the fall semester, and I also teach undergrad finance courses here as well.

So, that is my role here at Krannert.
>> Excellent, I'm sure we'll learn more about you as we go on today, and we're also joined by Jill Lynn. Jill is the Program Manager for the Finance program. Jill thanks for joining us.
>> Thanks Nick.
>> Tell us about yourself.


>> Yeah, well like you said I am the Program Manager for the Masters of Science and Finance degree here. So I work a lot with the students, primarily my role is to help the students come in, so I work a lot with the recruiting team, and then I work with them while they're here, I connect with Alex, and we just kind of keep everything moving and keep the students on track, and work with them to be sure that they're successful getting through the program, and then I also have a lot of contact with them afterwards, just to see how they're doing and keep in touch.


>> Excellent, well, we look forward to hearing more from you as we go on today. Finally, we're joined by Heather Goodwin. Heather is the Recruiter for the Finance program. Heather, hello.
>> Hi, Nick.
>> Tell us about yourself and what do you do here at Purdue?
>> Yes, I am another system Director for Recruiting, and one of my programs that I recruit for is the Master of Science in Finance program, and it's really my job just go out and find students who are issued in the program, make sure that they're aware of what we offer, help them through the application process, and get them prepared to start the program.


>> Excellent. Well, thanks for joining us. To get things kicked off today, Alex, we'll talk with you a little bit. I think that when you talk about a Master's degree in Finance, people may have an idea of what that is, but in learning of the program myself, discovered that finance actually is fairly broad as far as what you can do with the degree in this program, so that's what we're gonna talk about first.

We know that the goal of this program is to position graduates for opportunities in things like commercial banking, investments, asset management, but talk to us about what you can do with a degree in finance.
>> Okay, so let me start by talking about the message of science to finance degree is a very focused degree relative to the other kind of large business program, which is the MBA program, and so let me just compare and contrast.

So an MSF degree is almost exclusively focused on financial coursework. So there's very little that you'll have to do in other parts of the business school, let me put it that way, and what it allows you to do is get a broad base of financial knowledge in multiple broad parts of the financial curriculum, things like, options and futures, mergers and acquisitions, advanced corporate finance, risk-management, international finance, etc.

So what this program does, as I mentioned, plus other ones and learn about all aspects of finance in a lot of depth, so it's not as broad of a degree as other types of programs. It's really focused on finance, and the plus of that is you get exposed to all the areas of finance.


>> So as we talk about outcomes, we talk about how it's a fairly focused degree program and yet, there are a variety of outcomes, right? I know that, first, industry that are concerned, we send people in the corporate finance, in the commercial banking, into diversified financial services, but talk to us about some of the employers and some of the, perhaps, job titles that graduates from this program will be able to achieve.


>> Right, so a lot of the graduates along the way over the course of the one year of the program sort of find an area of the financial world in which they'd like to specialize, and then target their career search to that area. So one example would be corporate finance.

So that would be working in a financial arm of a company that does something else, so an example would be Amazon, or Cummings, which is an industrial firm. All those big, large Fortune 500 companies have a large financial department working on financial decision making, and that is one type of industry our students can pursue.

Some prefer to go to a pure financial firm, like an investment bank, or a commercial bank, and that the entire business of that company is doing financial transactions, and so depending on their job role, something like a risk analyst would work on the risk side, obviously. There's also investment analyst doing investments, and even within those companies there's a corporate finance division as well.

So lots of ways to go in this program and lots of careers are open to you.
>> Excellent. From there let's transition over to really the value of a degree in this program. Now that we know what you can do with it, ultimately, in doing some research with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I've learned that financial analysts are in demand.

There's a projected growth of more that 10% through 2026, and that's driven largely by economic growth, globally speaking, and really a growing arrange of financial products that need sort of that in-depth knowledge that someone with a degree in finance might be able to have. So as we send people out into the workforce, we find that having a Master's in finance really helps our students set themselves apart.

We talk a lot about resumes around here. So, how do you get your resume to the top of the stack? One way to do that, to differentiate your skills as an applicant is to have a Master's degree, but talk to us a little bit about how this program specifically can offer some focusing or some refocusing opportunity for people at various stages in their career.


>> All right, so first let me talk broadly about finance, and then I'll talk about the program here in particular, but broadly speaking, over the last multiple decades, finance has gotten more and more complicated. And so what that means is you need more people that are working and also smarter people that are better trained working in the field just to make sense and navigate the waters, because its gotten more and more complex, and we saw it many years ago with the subprime financial crisis.

The things that lead to that event were incredibly complex, and required lots of study and knowledge just to even understand that there was something bad about to happen. So I guess my point is, from now going forward, that's gonna continue to be the case. The financial markets are complex, they're global, and they get more complicated everyday.

So there's demand for people that understand, not just broadly how finance works, but the details, and so an MSF program like ours, like I said earlier, focuses on depth of knowledge, and that is a very valuable thing in today's economy. Second of all, the Krannert Program, one of the unique things compared to some other programs is that we do not require financial knowledge on day one, all right?

So we have a range of students. Some students have done a business undergrad that come into our program, but a lot of them have done something else, either humanities, or sciences, or engineering, and that is all fine. We have history majors, we have English majors, we have science and chemistry majors, things like that.

So if you're looking at our program and you're worried that you've never taken a class in finance, and that's going to be a problem, the answer is not a problem, all right? So it might require you a little bit of work on the front end to get up to speed, but we do not assume knowledge in finance before you start the program, so that's one of the unique things of the Krannert MSF.


>> Great, well I think that understanding that financial knowledge isn't a prerequisit of the program, we wanna talk a little bit about that ideal fit. So we understand that this is what we consider a pre-experience program. As in, you can finish your undergraduate, that experience, and then transition directly into this.

So Heather, I'll bring you in here. Why don't you give us a little bit of an idea of really, who the people are who are successful in this program, and what skills they bring in?
>> I think the successful student is someone who is comfortable working with the teams, they're skillful in working with teams, they are going to have to do that in their real world job so we try to prepare them in that way.

We see that they typically have above average communication skills. They're able to take on the challenge of the MSF curriculum, which is not an easy Curriculum and I think it's someone who knows that they want to be in the financial world. So like we said before, they don't have to come from that world as their undergrad.

We have people with history majors and majors in the school of business. We have accounting majors who come to that program. So it's someone who knows that finance is the area that they want to be in.
>> Generally speaking and Alex this might be a better question for you, but obviously finance there's a strong quantitative component to that, right?

There's an expectation I'm sure that you need to be able to handle that side of the curriculum. So talk us through sort of basic expectations mathematically that we would expect.
>> Yeah so I think as Heather pointed out, one of the most important things, maybe the most important thins is an interest in finance.

All right, so obviously if you're gonna so an in depth program that goes very deep into the knowledge base of finance you need to be interested on the front end. As far as quant skills it's definitely important, but maybe not as important as you may be thinking sitting and listening to this podcast.

So, there's definitely math in finance. There's no ways around that. But our program is focused more on kind of the real world applications and relevance of a lot of the tools, and theories, and equations. But certainly you need to be comfortable with a decent amount of math. So algebra and maybe a little bit of calculus, but it's certainly not like you need to have a math degree in undergrad to survive this program.

So is sort of, I would say middle of the road as far as quant requirements in the master's in finance kind of world. Some programs you'll actually see the title is master's of mathematical finance and this is not like those programs. This is more applied to real world settings and case studies and things like that, as opposed to just solving deep calculus questions.


>> Well, that's good information for a lot of people I'm sure, I'm not afraid of math I just don't really run toward it ever.
>> Same.
>> I'm sure there are people out there like me, right? So transitioning from there I wanna talk about really what makes this program unique.

I know that we've achieved some strong likings from publications like the Financial Engineer. Who ranked us in the top five for corporate finance programs, but ultimately when we look at the curriculum itself we know that it's a focused program. But it does really blend together finance skills and general business skills.

So Alex, why don't you talk us through the curriculum as far as how the hours work and really what experiences students are gonna be able to have access to.
>> Okay, so the program is designed to be finished in 11 months. So it's less than a year, 37 credit hours is the number of credit hours.

And the way the program's organized is, before the fall semester starts, you take one week classes to get the prerequisites out of the way for the upper level classes you start in the fall. So over the summer you take things like intro accounting, intro corporate finance, advanced corporate finance, investments, and a couple other classes, which will allow you to hit the ground running as soon as August rolls around and the semester starts.

And for those you that haven't clicked on the website, is organized in something called modules which are half semester self contained classes. So once the fall starts you actually takes one set of eight week classes and then another set of eight week classes before the winter break. So there is actually a lot of time I guess with specific faculty members focused on individual topic within finance.

So the classes are not full semester, which is a good thing in the sense that you can take a an eight week class in mergers and acquisitions and then an eight week class in futures and options. And those are very different topics. So instead of taking a full semester class on each, you get a quicker, but focused class in that area, which is part of how this program is less than a year long.


>> But one of the great things we're able to do is, if you look at finance obviously that affects a lot of other areas of business, right? As you look at marketing and operations and supply chain management and obviously it touches a lot of that. So we're able to expose our students to things like business analytics.

To some of the foundational courses like you had mentioned like accounting, also economics and things like that. But why don't you talk us through some of the different course offerings available within finance. I know that one of the more popular ones tends to be the venture capital and investment banking sort of options.

As each student looks at where they want to land, we have courses that really fit in all of those areas. So talk us through some of the more maybe specialized experiences that students can have in the classroom.
>> Yeah, so you brought up a good one which is the venture capital class.

It's a very focused class on a very kind of niche area of finance that's very interesting which is venture capital. And so, for those of you that don't know, venture capital is providing finance to very young startup firms, typically speaking. And so there's a lot of issues that pop up that are very different from what you might study in a corporate finance class.

Where you're dealing with the decisions that an Apple or an Amazon type of company make. There's a lot of things that are very different with small startups. So, a class like that will give you a very unique kind of background relative to other more general classes. And so we have a handful of classes like that one that are, something that are very unique to an MFS type of program.

It's hard to get that kind of course work with other types of degrees because there's just not time to take those very specialized classes.
>> Excellent, well, one thing I wanna touch on is just the idea of our faculty, right? We offer some of these great experiences because our faculty ultimately have experience in these areas.

I know that you have some great professional experience in your background before you came here to Purdue. So, why don't you talk us through the average, right? You maybe show your experience, talks about the average faculty member and what experience they're bringing to the table.
>> Yes, our faculty in the finance department here at Krannert is very diverse, and so all you have to do is look at our website and you'll see what I mean.

There are faculty from all over the world, in our department and people have their own specialization. So before I did my PhD, I worked on Wall Street and did investment analysis. And so I can bring a lot of my stories to the table when I'm talking about investments, stock, trading, some of the things in futures and options that I talk about in class.

I have direct experience, either firsthand or secondhand with how these things work in real life, and I can bring that to the table. In a lot our other faculty have either worked in a different part of finance, or have consulted over the years doing some very interesting, helping companies with very specific situations.

And so when topics that those experiences are related to come up in class, then they can actually speak on what they've seen first hand. What companies and problems they were facing and how the faculty member helped that company, and the advice they gave to get through that experience.

So like I said, our faculty are from all over the world, and they also have their own specializations. So for example, the international finance course is taught by someone who's lived all over the world, and can really speak to lots of international issues that the companies face. Whether it's political pressures from different countries or currency problems that happen pretty regularly when you're dealing with a global company and they can really talk first hand about how those things work.

So that's kind of a nice thing for our students I think to see different perspectives on different parts of finance along the way.
>> Well, that idea about different perspectives is actually a perfect launching point for my next topic, which is about what it's like to be here at Krannert.

For those of you who don't know or aren't as familiar with Purdue obviously, we rank in the top five historically for total number of international students. So when you come to Purdue, you're gonna be working along side of people with different backgrounds, people with different experience sets, people who speak different languages sometimes.

And so that I think, creates a really unique experience for students here. So Jill, I wanna bring you in here to talk a little bit about what it's like to be a student here at Krannert and just the diverse international community you get to be a part of.


>> Like you said, Dick, it is a very diverse international community, so it's very nice to have classes and teams with all those people, You get that global perspective. I know Alex was referring to that, so you actually get that in your class. We like to refer to it as a Krannert family.

A lot of our cohorts might be smaller than some of the other places, so on average, we go between 40 to 60 students in the MSF cohort. And that's really nice it gives them a chance to work on teams together. They really get to bond together and get to know each other pretty well.

The other thing that's really great about Krannert is we have phenomenal recruiting opportunities for people who are seeking jobs. We want you to have a great education, understand the finance world and gain those skills. But we also know at the end most students would like to have a job when they come out-


>> That tends to be somewhat important, right?
>> Yeah, when they come out to graduate. Alex mentioned many of the companies that come here, we have Caterpillar, Amazon, Bank of America comes here. And then we have an area called Krannert Professional Development Center that all of our students have access to.

And they each get to work with a career coach one on one to help them get ready. So it's really a community, we're here to support the students, the students support each other. But our main goal is to help you be successful but not just in your academic but also in your career pursuits.


>> Another actual added value having a faculty with such a great experience and they still have industry connections as well, right?
>> Correct.
>> Alex said that you've been enable to advocate for various graduates based on where they wanted to land and your relationship with them. We talk about the Krannert family, and I feel like it kinda sounds like a talking point.

But it's something that really exists in talking to our students and our alums. Cuz when someone's family, you often go out of your way to help them. So Alex, I've heard from students that you've stepped in a number of occasions to help them in their career search.
>> Yeah, so that's one thing you'll find about Krannert is the faculty are very engaged with the students.

And what I mean by that is we just don't teach the class, give you a grade, and then leave and you'll never see us again. And so as Nick pointed out I do spend some of my time helping students directly land jobs and I can't do too much, right?

But, I have a lot of connections. I also, as Nick pointed out, Krannert is a very family kind of environment. What that means is, I know a lot of Krannert alums in New York City, Chicago, and other places. And, they're interested in hiring more Krannert alums, meaning you.


>> So the nice thing here is that there is sort of a nice feedback loop going on where Kannerts alum go out there and they work with consulting firms and financial firms and all over the world. And then when new MSF graduates are up for the job market, if the company is looking to hire, they will put your resume at the top of the stack which is a huge benefit for the student.

So yeah.
>> Absolutely, and one other additional benefit were they able to offer our international students is the fact that this program is STEM certified?
>> That's right.
>> So that's basically marks the opportunity to extend the OBT period up to three years. And that we see is a significant value for those students coming here internationally Who want to find work in the US, but may not wanna go through the whole lottery process and things like that.

So Alex, talk a little bit about the STEM certification, and what that means for this program.
>> Yeah, so STEM certification was a lot of work to get done, it took a lot of my time. But I think it's gonna be a very worthwhile thing for our students which is why we did to the process to begin with.

So as Nick pointed out it gives students a three-year OBT work visa after they graduate as opposed to, the normal is one year. And what we found before we had STEM certification is that a lot of employers will interview our international students. And they'd get to the second to final round interview.

And the copy would say we can only hire you for one year, we're gonna go with somebody else. That's obviously disheartening for the students, but it's also bad for us. We want the MSS students to ge the best jobs they can. And so it's a new certification. So we don't have much data yet.

But we're convinced based on the things we've heard over the last few years that this is gonna be very helpful for our students interviewing for jobs in the US. Cuz companies don't have to do the work visa application right away. They can give three years of job experience.

They can see if they like the student. The student can see if they like the company, vice vera, and then if things are good then they can start applying for the H1V. So I think it'll be a very good thing for our students and for our program.
>> Excellent, well, speaking of extensions, one of the things that we didn't mention was the opportunity to extend this particular program.

It is what we refer to as a one year program. But I know we've recently added a specialization in financial metrics. So before we wrap up today, I'm wondering if you can just give us a little overview on that.
>> Yeah, so I think I mentioned this earlier.

The program is designed to be finished in 11 months. That's the kinda default setting. But for students that are interested, there's a financial accounting metrics concentration. And what that does is adds a semester to the program, meaning there's gonna be an additional fall semester. So this kinda does two things.

It provides a summer in the middle of your program to look for an internship anywhere in the world, all right? So it gives students internship possibilities which is good for the student.
>> And can oftentimes lead to a full-time offer, right?
>> And those can lead to full-time offers, exactly.


>> That's another move for the career savvy, I would say.
>> Right, and the second thing that also helps with a career is the training that the concentration provides. So that final semester students take classes in things like Python, coding, and how to apply that for business and finance settings in our programming.

So it's sort of computation and econometrics heavy, those extra courses that students take. But those are also good things to have on your resume to help find jobs. And it's completely up to the student, which is unique. So if that does not sound interesting or if you land a full-time job offer, you can graduate in 11 months and go start your career.

If that sounds fascinating and you love the computer side of things and you want that to be on your resume for job searches, then you can do the financial econometrics concentration and then you'd be ready to go after that.
>> Excellent, well, thanks for the overview. And with that, that brings our podcast today to a close.

I wanna let you know that there is certainly more information available on our website. If you're looking for application deadlines, requirements, current cost, placement statistics, rankings, it's all available online as well as a handy FAQ section. So go to krannert.purdue.edu to check that out. And as always we hope to see you here at Krannert Sunday SDoon.

And with that we'll sign off. So thanks so much.
>> Thanks for having us.
>> Thank you.