Latest reviews

Courses:
The program has put more emphasis on AI and ML related courses as of late; you'll get a plethora of robust electives touching on these topics. There are some project based AI courses worth noting, where throughout the semester you work on an industry submitted project. At the end of the semester you present your project to professionals from the company that submitted it, and I know of several students that received job opportunities from the collaborating employer.

On the other hand, the program lacks CS related courses for someone wanting to go more into a software developer, quantdev or HFT role, and very few CS courses have been approved for registration.

The courses themselves are highly demanding, not necessarily in terms of the difficulty or complexity of the topics, — you'll be able to follow the material with a strong undergraduate background in math — but in terms of the workload. So, this is a strong point if you are looking for an academically demanding program, but it can also be a weakness if your priority is landing an internship and you might need more time for applications and interview prep.

Career Services:
They have a personalized career advisor for MFE students. They do a great job in bringing companies to give talks on campus, and this opens opportunities to network with people in industry. Like many other schools, they have a portal exclusive for Columbia students with jobs being posted on a daily basis.
I know several MFE students that received emails from people working at top financial companies, with a message saying that a career service person from Columbia passed them your resume and they invite you to apply for their internship program.
Moreover, the program career team will send update emails throughout the first year, to know who has and hasn't obtained an internship yet. For those that haven't, they will send your resume to companies they have connections with to help you land an internship before the end of the spring.

I personal criticism is the use of VMock for resume, cover letter and elevator pitch compulsory submissions. You'll end up making detrimental changes to your work to merely get the necessary points to satisfy the requirement.

Nonetheless, at the end of the day it will be up to each student to land a job or summer internship. So, don't expect to get one for merely being in the Columbia program.

Alumni:
Columbia MFE alumni currently work in many top financial firms. The program will organize a couple events throughout the year that will allow you to meet recent grads working in industry and be able to create the rapport that will enable you to ask them for a referral, but I feel it wasn't enough. Many were the times I would see MFE Columbia alumni on LinkedIn that I wish more networking events were organized to meet and speak to them properly — to know them enough so they would be comfortable in putting in a good word about you when applying for a job with their employer.

Current Campus Status:
I have to admit that when I was there, the current campus protests made campus life burdensome. What was previously an open campus integrated with the surrounding community, became an entire block guarded with barricades and city police, restricting campus access to students and faculty only. This is not the program's fault, but it is something worth considering since it can have a detrimental impact on the graduate school experience.

Best program. Received good offer after my graduation at citi . Professor Hatzakis one of good professor helps students & also helped me in understanding derivatives which help me in cracking my interview

I wanted to share some thoughts on my experience in the Cornell MFE program, in case it helps anyone who's considering applying or joining.

Overall, I think it's a solid and well-rounded program. The academics are rigorous, and there’s a strong focus on career preparation, which is crucial for breaking into quant finance.

One of the biggest positives for me was the program director, Victoria. She's very approachable and genuinely supportive. I always felt comfortable reaching out to her about internships, coursework, or general advice, and she made time for those conversations.

Before the program even starts, there’s some structured “summer homework”—resume review, LinkedIn workshops, tips on networking, etc. It’s a useful way to get in the right mindset for recruiting and helps build momentum early.

On the flip side, career services were a bit hit or miss. We had a new career coach join while I was there, and unfortunately, I didn’t find her particularly helpful or engaged. That was a bit disappointing given how important good career guidance is in a program like this.

If I were starting the program again, I’d definitely begin interview prep in the summer—way before classes start. Doing technical prep (like the Green Book) early on would’ve made recruiting less stressful and put me in a stronger position during the fall.

In short: it's a very decent program, but like with any MFE, your success really depends on how proactive you are. Things won’t always go the way you expect, but if you stay focused and confident, there’s a lot to gain from the experience.

The Baruch MFE program was instrumental in helping me pivot into my quant finance career. The highly-engaged alumni network provided invaluable insights into the quant landscape, complemented by the program's long-standing relationships with many leading firms in the industry, facilitating QR/QT opportunities at top multi-strats, prop-shops, and investment banks. Dan Stefanica, our incredibly dedicated and genuine program director, was always there to personally guide each of us toward roles that best matched our aspirations. If you dedicate yourself fully and follow Dan's process, you will undoubtedly launch your quant finance career on the right path.

The hands-on, applied coursework allowed me to explore topics I was passionate about and showcase my research skills to potential employers. Additionally, our team's success in winning the Rotman International Trading Competition demonstrated to employers that we are competitive, driven, and high-achieving. I recommend anyone who's admitted to the program to take part of the team. Beyond professional growth, and perhaps most importantly, the friendships I formed at Baruch have become an irreplaceable part of my life, which I will be forever grateful for.

If you’re considering Georgia Tech’s QCF program, I strongly urge you to think twice—especially if you’re international, career-focused, or hoping for a supportive, high-quality academic experience. This program is not what the brochure promises.

1. Academics: A Mess of Unstructured, Overloaded, and Poorly Taught Courses

The coursework is grueling—not in a good way. You'll get tons of weekly assignments, but learn almost nothing of lasting value. The program is so packed with deliverables that you’ll have no time to prep for interviews, and your GPA will tank, affecting full-time job prospects.

• Derivatives: The professor barely follows any structure. He jumps from topic to topic, provides no slides, and lectures at lightning speed using Excel/Matlab. If you miss one step, you're lost—and there are no materials to review afterward.
• Fixed Income: Professor can't even explain interest rate models clearly. Concepts are skimmed or left ambiguous.
• Stochastic & C++: A disaster. The instructor reads incorrect slides, doesn’t understand what he's teaching, and can't even code C++ himself. Assignments, lectures, and exams feel disconnected.
• Capstone Project with Chava: Pure chaos. If you expect faculty guidance, forget it. The professor forces his own irrelevant research papers on you, offers no project support, and evaluates students arbitrarily.
• AI in Finance: Sounds exciting, but the instructor (again Chava) has no real understanding of machine learning. The class ends up being a buzzword soup.

2. Toxic Culture: Sink or Be Sabotaged

The peer environment is cutthroat and manipulative. Many students are only here to use others for group projects, then turn around and throw teammates under the bus. Trust is nonexistent, and there’s zero faculty support if you’re treated unfairly.
Dr. Chava, the program director, fosters this environment. He rewards students who "worship" him, and punishes anyone who dares to question him. Academic bullying? Gaslighting? Retaliation? It’s all here—and tolerated.

3. Career Outcomes: Way Below Expectation

Let’s be honest. QCF is not a quant feeder program. The best most students get are model validation or product analyst roles. In fact, most job outcomes are either:

• Jobs you could’ve gotten with a bachelor’s degree, or
• No job at all. Roughly 40% of students graduate without full-time offers.
The so-called “job support” is laughable:
• Career platform lists roles that require 4–5 years of experience—useless for new grads.
• Most shared “opportunities” are old public links you could find on LinkedIn or a company's site.
• Resume book occasionally gets you 1–2 interviews per semester, but it’s a lottery.

Worse, many U.S. employers now blacklist QCF students due to previous integrity issues with alumni. The program doesn’t help restore that image—it just ignores it.

4. A Few Bright Spots (That No Longer Exist)

Once upon a time, there were great professors—like in Financial Optimization or Data Mining—who genuinely cared and taught well. But they’ve either left the program or stopped teaching.

Conclusion

QCF at Georgia Tech is not worth your time or money unless you already have experience, a green card, and want to validate an existing resume. For everyone else, it’s a high-stress, low-reward grind with little academic depth and even less career payoff.
If you want to suffer under a broken system run like a personal fiefdom, come meet Chava. Otherwise, run.

Although we had great professors and excellent classmates, there was no 6-month AFP (Graduate Project) and no help from summer interns. We only had one week of AFP, which was the week before graduation. Employment is extremely bad as you might see from the official website. As long as you are accepted by the school from the east coast, do not consider UCLA MFE.

I don't know what happened to this program but it seems most instructors are reluctant to give A or even A minus. Most of the course grades were like B+, B or B-
If the program has a harsh grading scale, it is not suitable for students to seek jobs. (We all know students want to find jobs through this program but the program itself is making it hard for no reason.)

The MFI program's name is slightly misleading: The 'insurance' in the title would maybe lead you to believe that it's an actuarial science program, but in reality the coursework is more suited to a financial engineering / quantitative finance degree (Actuarial science is only 1 course in the entire year).

The coursework is difficult. The more theoretical courses (Like mathematical finance, machine learning, etc) have a thorough amount of theoretical depth for the class content, while focusing on the application of theoretical concepts for assignments.

The professors are some of the best you'll ever be taught by: They are leading authorities in their respective fields and don't only have experience in academia, but in the industry as well. If you're struggling with coursework, the professors are more than willing to take time out of their day to assist you, which great helped my time in the program.

The career services are not a 'get a free job' pass. They give you the tools and set up as many interviews for you with their contacts as possible. You still very much have to look for your own opportunities and grind internship applications, but the internship coordinators will be more than willing to help.

Employability after the program is mostly what you make of it. Most people get jobs in banking, portfolio management, risk or data science. Even though the degree helps a ton with employment, you still need to make an effort in networking, applying and learning additional skills.

The students admitted into the program are generally intelligent and hardworking. Most of them are nice, and a lot of them will most likely be lifelong industry connections.

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.