Latest reviews

I am currently studying Financial Mathematics from NCSU. My journey so far has been pretty good. Before joining this program, I have over seven years of experience in derivatives trading. This program enhanced my skills to a new level. The icing on the cake, through Friday's seminar I am able to make connections from industry professionals

Pros
CECL and Backtesting engine - these two projects improved my coding skills on python and give more insight into the current/upcoming risk management practice.

Program director Dr Tao Pang understand each student needs and always try to meet the current industry demand by conducting webinars, workshop and so on. For example- python, SAS and R workshop conducted for students who want to improve their coding skills.

Cons
The program is very intense, sometimes we have to do multiple things at the same time.
To get a degree we have to score minimum B in cores subject this constraint which I think can be relaxed as it is possible that some


Overall, I am happy with the program and I am giving 4star ratings
because nothing is perfect in the world and there is always scope for improvement

Recent grad grateful to have chosen CMU. This program is fantastic on account of the caliber of student across both Pittsburgh and New York campuses. As someone with a more entrepreneurial and less quant/finance background coming in, I understood how effective teams depend on a diverse set of skills often coming from different people. As part of this program, I had the opportunity to work with an incredible number of highly intelligent and motivated young professionals. Not only did that make group projects very enjoyable, but it also opened up the possibility for collaboration on projects outside of class as well. For example, two colleagues and I applied some of the material learned in our Machine Learning course to a crypto trading project, which has produced interesting results! To add to it, this program has a fantastic Machine Learning curricula. 1) Because along with Stanford, Berkeley and MIT you are at a center of AI and Machine Learning itself 2) Professor G'Sell is amazing and helps transition students from very limited knowledge of ML to interesting applications with more serious treatment of the material and programs.

I have learned a lot from the UMN MFM program during the last few years, and I’d like to recommend it to you if you also get a chance to join this program!

Most courses from the MFM program are taught by the experienced industry practitioners, which greatly benefits the students as they can have different views when they look into the quantitative finance world. The courses cover different interesting topics such as Risk and Asset Allocation, Volatility Models and Mortgage Backed Securities, etc. For each topic, the practitioner will give the students certain projects which help them deeply understand the topic. This would be great helpful when you graduate and want to try different things during the job hunting.

Except the practitioner courses, the MFM program also designs several mathematical courses which help their students to get a solid math background. The courses would introduce the main mathematical tools, such as probability and statistics. In addition, the coding classes were what I loved when I was at the U. The coding classes will let you build a portfolio management system in C# step by step.

Another thing I need to mention is the directors and many alumni associated with the MFM program. They are not only helpful in our academic life, but also helpful in our career development. For example, they would instruct you how to draft a resume, how to build a connection and even how to prepare an interview, etc. We can easily connect to the financial industry through them. Thanks to their help, we can have different interesting seminars given by professors or practitioners in math or finance almost every Friday nights. And they are always helpful to offer us a help or suggestion when we have any question in our career.

The overall program is fine. However, I would have to agree with the review below about elective courses. According to my best knowledge, a lot of MFE programs nowadays offer different tracks for students with different interest in the industry. UIUC is a decent school (especially when we are talking about computer science) with many great courses offered, making it quite a shame that MSFE students could not customize their own tracks and take courses in their own interest in the first two semesters. I believe it would be really beneficial if future batches of students can get more electives.

I graduated MSCF in December 2018. I had a tremendous experience at Carnegie Mellon and thank classmates, teachers, counselors, and administrators for making my schooling memorable.

Before going into the top ranked program, I was expecting excellent teachers and career services. My expectations were exceeded, and I can confidently say this program is worth every penny. Beyond my expectations, I further found that the academic advisors and administrators provided a feeling of home by offering in depth and personalized guidance, passion for each individual's journey, and an environment to breed success.

I have attained my dream job through the program and strongly suggest undergraduates and early career professionals to consider the opportunities MSCF can provide.

I am a first year student at NC State in Financial Mathematics Program, enrolled in the last FALL 2018. I think, I am well placed now to review the program.

MFM (Masters in Financial Mathematics) is a rigorous program for the students interested in specializing in Quant Finance. Seniors and Alumni of the program are doing pretty well in the industry, primarily in three broad roles namely, Risk Management, Quantitative trading and Business Intelligence.

My fellow classmates are from different backgrounds with varying background of Maths, Statistics, Compute Science and Finance. Most of them either have FRM and CFA or pursuing the same, thereby making the class very competitive.

Program is growing very well under the leadership of Dr. Pang and because of small class size individuals' aspiration are well accounted in the selecting the subjects. Program offers flexibility in selecting subjects from Statistics, Finance, Operations Research or B-School. In order to provide accelerated learning, on a regular basis workshops are being organized to name few on Python, R and SAS.

Moreover, in terms of flexibility - I was one among the few who got a chance to attend "Derivative Pricing" class with Skema Business School in the last semester as part of the exchange program. in addition, program has been providing various opportunities like participation in CFA Challenge and IAQF case competitions.

From infrastructure perspective, program has got dedicated Bloomberg Terminals, Graduate Lounge and Career coaches from NY,etc. added wit state of art of infrastructure of NC State.

Every Friday, we have seminar whereby we get a chance to meet Industry leaders, including potential recruiters. Program as a whole is industry bellwether in the area of Credit Risk (CECL - new accounting requirements) and is deeply invested in the same.

Overall program is power packed with Statistics, Finance and Programming and doesn't allow much room to party but we do have regular get togethers like, Chinese New Year, Christmas and Halloween Celebrations.

Overall the experience had been so far very good.

I graduated from the MSCF program in December 2018 and I was on the NYC campus. My experience with the MSCF program was very positive. I joined the program hoping to gain more quantitative knowledge and technical skills to peruse a career in a pure quant filed, and I’m now working as a Data Scientist in Silicon Valley.


Background: I graduated from the UC system with BS degrees in Business and Statistics, and directly joined the program without full-time experience. I had a variety of internship experience in financial services, such as commercial banking, brokerage and risk consulting.

Curriculum: The program curriculum can be split into four branches: financial mathematics, Statistics and Machine Learning, Computer Science, and Finance and Business. This curriculum is very updated to reflect the change in the financial industry and it aims to equip MSCF students with not only quantitative skills but also soft skills such as communication and presentation.

Career Service: Each campus has their assigned career counselors who are available for 1-on-1 appointment for resume editing, mock interviews, and general career guidance. In addition, the MSCF program offers many career opportunities through on-campus interviews, which are exclusive to MSCF students. The program also helps students to connect with alumni, which adds more career opportunities.

Personal Experience:
1. The Staff on campus really cares for every student. Going through this program is very stressful: hard classes, heavy workload, pressure for finding jobs, etc. It is very helpful that there are people there to help you with any issue you have, either on an academic level or personal level.
2. Due to lack to strong math foundation, I was having a very hard time during both stochastic calculus classes. My professors and academic advisor noticed the problem and offered me weekly tutoring sessions with a department Ph.D. candidate free of charge. Moreover, almost every difficult class has tutoring sessions offered by the TA. This program is really trying to help us succeed.
3. The program takes students and alumni opinion very seriously. There are multiple Town Hall meetings where you can go to make your voice heard about any issues you have with the program, and MSCF also updates its curriculum based on alumni feedback after every year.
4. The broad curriculum of the MSCF really makes it possible for its graduates to peruse a career outside of quant finance. For me, what’s covered in Data Science and Machine Learning classes, together with the strong CS classes, was good enough for me to land a job in tech.

All in all, the MSCF program really is a program that cares and tries its best to help students to be successful. I highly recommend it.

As an experienced student who just graduated, I love this program and enjoyed every minute of it very much. I got enrolled as a part-time student with years of experience as a quant in the financial industry. However, I still found the program very informative and it broadened my knowledge horizon with up-to-date materials and topics taught in the classes. The course design is always trying to catch if not lead the trend of this industry. I felt it very worthy to go back to school for this program after so many years of profession.

I have also learned and harvested a lot from the people of this program. Professors and other faculties do care about each of the students. They know each of our names, backgrounds, and to some extent, personalities. Professors and academic faculties spare no efforts on teaching, trying to prepare us as much as possible, while the career service faculties do whatever they can to help students locate their ideal positions. I am very grateful to them for their endless commitment. Also, I really feel amazed at the resources this program provided. I got my internship from a start-up by one of our alumni, and a full-time job offer from another one too!

Peer classmates are even more lovely. Each of the ~100 students has his/her own strengths worthy of appreciation. This brought pretty much fun when we worked on group projects/homework. What could be more touching to you when your team members provided to back you up and encouraged you when they knew you had a job interview tomorrow? I think that is the partial reason why in this highly competitive industry, MSCF network could stay strong and last for long.