- Headline
- Amazing program that prepares you well for industry
- Class of
- 2025
Reviewed by Verified Member
Overall, my personal experience with this program was fantastic.
Admission Process:
1. Admissions process was very simple and easy.
2. I applied in Round 2 and leveraged my certificates in the Baruch Pre-MFE program to supplement my lackluster grades from undergrad.
3. Admission teams valued these certificates which landed me acceptance into the program.
Courses:
1. Mathematics/Stochastic Calculus - 10/10. If you want to get into sell-side pricing of exotics using analytic methods, fourier transforms, monte carlo simulations, CMU will give you an amazing foundation to start from.
2. Statistics/Data Science - 10/10. The coursework puts a heavy emphasis in Python data science packages like seaborn, scikit-learn, statsmodels, etc, while teaching you methods like regularization, decision trees, SVMs and more. Regression is taught well enough but I think in practice, regression is most heavily used and thus some learning will be done on the job itself.
3. Programming - 7.5/10. While python is taught very well in the data science courses, the python coursework in the main programming classes is not the best. I would recommend studying leetcode a lot before joining as those skills are taught well in the classes. C++ is also covered utilizing smart pointers, templates, and inheritance.
(I have heard from younger students that the programming track is being overhauled, which is a great relief)
4. Finance/Econmics - 9/10. Teaches convex optimization, fixed income pricing, options pricing, and market microstructure. They are taught from a very practical perspective.
Other Aspects:
1. Speaker series - speakers from major fims like Citadel, Millenium, Point72, Optiver etc speak to students directly on some cutting edge topic or research.
2. Competitions - CMU students participate in a wide variety of competiions including Rotman International Trading Competition, Optiver Market Making Challenge, Quantbot Datathon, and Poker AI.
3. Internships - I landed a quant trading internship at a commodities market making firm which the career services helped me get. Career services tries its best but it is not a guarantee that everyone gets an internship that they are satisfied with.
- Recommend
- Yes, I would recommend this program
- Students Quality
-
5.00 star(s)
- Courses/Instructors
-
5.00 star(s)
- Career Services
-
4.00 star(s)