If the Yale School of Management’s inaugural class of students who graduated with a master’s in asset management are any indication, the latest cohort won’t have trouble finding work.
Laurel Grodman, the assistant dean of admissions at the Yale School of Management, was excited when she recently received a list of all the places the class of 2022 landed. (Admissions professionals at universities often aren’t working with granular data such as where every graduate is employed, she said.)
But this is no ordinary master’s degree. Not only are there few university degree or certificate programs in the U.S. focused exclusively on asset management, but Yale’s program was the idea of Tobias Moskowitz, a renowned Yale professor, and the late David Swensen, Yale University’s long-time chief investment officer who revolutionized endowment investing. Moskowitz and Swenson wanted to foster talent by developing a master’s program that combined cutting-edge academic theory taking place at Yale with tangible practices currently used in asset management, Grodman said. “They didn’t believe that a need was being filled by the market currently, and felt that Yale was very well positioned to do this,” she added.
Asset managers obviously agree.
The class of 2022 is working at a minimum of 37 different asset management firms of various types and sizes. Most are focused on fundamental and quantitative strategies across asset classes at bank-affiliated and independent managers, including UBS, Janus Henderson Investors, AQR Capital Management, Brookfield Asset Management, and Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. Some graduates are working at institutions, including Aflac Global Investments, Fannie Mae, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
“I knew from the career development office that the students were finding a lot of success in identifying positions. A lot of international students have interest in at least starting their career in the United States, and the majority of these offers were positions in the U.S. as well,” Grodman said. The degree “just sells itself.”
The median salary of the 2022 graduates was more than $100,000 and they are based near Yale University in Greenwich, Connecticut and as far as Shanghai, China. The first class represented 13 countries and had an equal number of men and women.
An MBA — a two-year program that develops general business and leadership skills — can open different career doors, including management consulting, investment banking, and product management. The master’s in asset management specifically teaches participants investment selection, asset allocation, portfolio management, and risk management, with a focus on quantitative methods. It’s a shorter, more narrowly focused curriculum than an MBA, but the master’s in asset management offers many different post-graduation paths, Grodman said. She was happy to see that so many different companies are willing to hire students participating in a new program and that students were taking advantage of that.
On Tuesday, after months of evaluating 1,300 applicants, Grodman and her colleagues sent a small group of students and young professionals invitations to become one of 50 participants in the master’s program 2024 class.
“It’s an extremely competitive process but, once again, it’s an outstanding group of students that we’re excited will hopefully join us in the fall,” Grodman said.
“My sense from speaking to the career development office this year is that this continues to be a really compelling degree for employers. And even with the financial markets, as rocky as they are, there’s still a lot of opportunity for these students who are on the verge of graduating.”
