NYU Tandon School of Engineering - MS in Financial Engineering

This is the third edition of my comment. Try to be more objective.
1. In response to some comments below, I appreciate some of their ideas, which helps me to suggest Peter on how to improve our program.
2. For others, I have to say that any program will never guarantee you any job placement. It’s not like you paid the department 60k USD and a red carpet will appear automatically to lead you to Wall Street. You have to work hard. Some people have already land great jobs in quant or other fields. If you don’t know any of them, then it is your problem. If any jobs other than a quant is not “placement”, then there will be far less employment records in other programs as well.
3. To the so-called “professor”, I wish you can present any evidence, or simple pay us to create “evidence”.
4. To the guy who claimed that many recruiters refuse to take our resumes, please name them, or their companies so you claim will be more compelling, and we can save time avoiding these teams. Please. Please.

True, the department is collecting students’ reviews to bring more changes to the program, but it is not a marketing campaign trying to furnish our reputation. I have sat with Peter and spent a few hours to discuss my experience so far in this program, and how he can improve it.

I’m here to express my own opinion, not to flatter, not to slander. I appreciate what the program has brought to me (quant skills, access to great resources, scholarships, etc.), and I dislike some other aspect (some professors’ accent and attitude, delays in some daily operations). That’s why I’m sharing my experience and giving 4 stars instead of 5, while I know some guys genuinely want to contribute nothing other than 0 stars (but sadly, they can’t give 0).

The program is rising from mediocre, with the help of some talented and determined people. This summer (2017) the incoming students are taking an online boot camp. I’m sure they will be better prepared for internship application and interviews. I’m very happy that in less than a month Peter have put what we have discussed into action. He loves this program.

My thoughts are presented as follows:

What were your favorite courses and instructors?

I regard Prof. Jerzy Pawlowski (R and Algorithmic Portfolio Management), Prof. Tang (Financial Computing and Big Data Analytics), Professor Mandel (Fixed income quant trading) as the best instructors of this program. Be sure not to miss their courses.

What courses are missing?

For courses, I would like to have Python, machine learning course (Peter had a new professor and he will open this course in Fall), maybe deep learning. It will be great if we can organize our students to test strategies on open platforms like Quantopia.

What would you improve in the program?

Some advice from faculty members are very helpful, like joining meetups. We can make the advice into 0 credit courses to push students into learning things.

How would you improve the job placement process?

The job placement process is hard to take off quickly. We had an awesome director, but she will not provide job offers to all of us outright. We need to focus on two parts: job application and interview. She is working very hard at the job application side, and we need to improve the interview side, like using Financial club to organize interview training/peer interview sessions.

At the very end, I would like to notice anyone who will be reading this review: all reviews are subject to everybody’s very own experience. As time passed by, and as the situation changes, some of these reviews may not be valid anymore. Take our words with care.

I graduated from this program in May 2016 and right now work in Susquehanna International Group after I left Soc Gen.

The overall experience in the program is positive.

I am quite disappointed by those 1 star/ harsh reviews below. Especially the people who blame this department did not place them with a job. My suggestion is that If you really want a job, then go talk to people, go networking, go prep for the interviews, go find internship, read more books at home. No such program is going to spoon fed you and make sure you have a job right after you graduate.


Pro:
Recommendation of professors:

1. Professor Hoff (commodity ) : super nice and knowledgeable, his lecture is divided into 2 part, first half is industry insight and second half is the Math.
2. Professor Pawlowski (R, Algo portfolio) : everything you need to know in R related to Finance and quant trading. His lecture is really useful, I share it with my colleague and having traders and quant using this as template of our code.
3. Professor Mandel: Cover fixed income in solid and practical, it is the kind of knowledge you need before you join a fixed income trading desk.
4. Professor Tang: C++, great teacher, teach the material well. A good refresh for student who already know basic data structure and fundamental object oriented programming.


Overall the courses are great except Accounting(useful for Credit trading and Equity trading) but now accounting has been cancel which is a good thing.

Since this program has so many courses to choose from, it would be helpful that you ask yourself what you plan to get out of it after 2 years right from the beginning and build your profile and chose courses according to that goal. (Technology, Quant strategist, market risk management or quant trading)

Great location, just being in New York is a big plus for such program like Financial Engineering. This mean lot more job opportunity and the classes are more practical.

Small Class size, even the program is big but the student in each class is around 20

Lots of industry professors, so you have a good idea of what is going on in the street.

With Peter Carr being our new Department Chair, he restructure this program and already brought in talented industry professors from the street and initiated industry projects with companies. Also, Sara new Career Placement Director and she did a great job in reaching out to company and alumni to assist with placement.


Con:
1.5 credit course( 7 lecture) seems too short. Could restricted such that 2 professor teach one topic like in Courant.

Need one python classes. You can learn at home, but would be a great idea to structure the class around Python or R.

More courses on fundamental Statistic, probability theory, and Stochastic Calculus, even it is listed as requirement but students come from different background.

Cheating in the class should be punished more severely.

I am a Fall 2016 student in NYU Tandon's FRE program. Overall, my experience has been pretty good... academics (including the coursework, professors) are good. Yes, few professors/courses might need some tune up, but there in multiple course offerings by different professors which can be pursued.

The career cell at NYU performs satisfactorily however it can do better. Sarah, the new placement director at FRE is doing the best she can considering the uncertainty in the job market (especially for International students, which is 99%+ of the enrolled students)

If you build your profile well, take the right courses (according to your interests), put effort in your academic projects, I don't think there is a downfall to the experience.

Recommendations for Negative Reviewers:
1) Don't expect to be spoon fed all the way through the program. No one can cover 100% of the stuff in class. I have seen people crib that they could not correctly answer a question in an interview and blame that it was not covered in class. (Thats just total BS). If you are gonna blame someone ....blame yourself for not cracking the interview.

2) No program will promise you a job at graduation. If you want a job you will need to get go out and get it....Applying through portals only gets you upto a certain point...

3) Most skills are picked up in Finance are OTJ. If you are looking for an entry level job, the chances are you will be interviewed on your academics (mostly basics). If you know your stuff, you will sail through..... There is difference between academic knowledge and industry practice.... you will know it once you enter the industry.


Recommendations for the Program:
1) Scrap the 1.5 credit courses: I don't think there should be any course with 1.5 credits.... You can make the syllabus more detailed and make them 3 credits. Personally, I don't think 1.5 credits does justice to any subject.
2) The program size is too big: I mean 150+ students (you must be kidding me). Most programs on an average have 60-80 students graduating each year. Its difficult to place that many students in a year (no matter how high the quality of students you have... which is not the best anyways).
3) Faculty: Please review the faculty, ...I have personally not faced any issues like any of the comments below but I guess they are far too many to be ignored.

Overall, the program can be a home run or a strike out but it depends more on the student and less on the academic program/department/faculty... yes they are always to guide and help you out in case of questions. The program is undergoing major changes in terms of coursework as well as the faculty, Peter Carr is making changes which I feel will move the program in the right direction.

I recently graduated from NYU Tandon, so I would like to share my opinions about this program.

Pros:
1. Although we have more than 100 students in this program, the size of classes is small. The limit of the class is 30 students, which means we have more classes. The classes are diversified enough to cover the most business that investment bankings are doing. 80 percentage of the classes are offered both in spring semester and fall semester.
2. There are some financial classes offered. If you are not familiar with finance, it is a good chance to choose them. Otherwise, you will be able to waive them.
3. NYU has a powerful career service. NYU CareerNet is a very convenient and useful website to apply for internships and jobs. Many students got their internships and full-time jobs through that. Besides, Sara, the new placement director has provided us a lot of information since she went to our program in Feb. As far as I know, some students got full-time quant or risk jobs at J.P Morgan, Societe Generale, RBC Capital Markets, Citi Group. Some students interned at J.P Morgan, Barclays, Goldman Sachs.
4. New department chair Peter Carr tried to improve the program. He hires a lot of professors working in the street. New courses such as Machine Learning, will be introduced in the next semester.

Cons:
1. The final exams of some courses are kind of too easy, so some students can get relatively high scores by merely practicing the sample exam even if they may not have a thorough understanding of the courses.
2. Most of the professors are not as famous as professors teaching at Courant's Mathematics in Finance Program.

I am May2016 graduate. It is very positive for me to take this program. The full-time prof.s are responsible for their students, not to mention being kind. I was very thankful to get every response from my every question via email. I chose my courses depending on my capability and interest. Therefore, they were effective and efficient for me to learn. Since there are ample supplies of knowledge in each course, being highly motivated is helpful. Or I would like to say "being interested". Prof.s' notes are extremely useful for understanding new concepts and for exams. The more I read, the better gist I got. On the other hand, part-time prof.s have different styles. Some would give presentations on class and some focus more on practice. I gained a lot from those courses. They trained me to be a qualified financial engineer. For some minor points, there might some culture shocks among students, which challenged us in every aspect of study and career. There were four tracks to choose and we could also customise our own depending on what kind of job we want to do. The new department chair has arrived after I graduate. I truly want to take one or two courses of him or other new interesting courses. I feel thankful for taking such great program in my life.

I recently graduated from Tandon. From what I know, a lot of students can get bb interview, Tandon’s name is definitely not a problem like the review below mine described.
The program offers tracks besides quantitative finance, so courses are much diversified, and that is probably why some people think some courses are not helpful for quant interview. Most of professors here are responsible. If you do some research, you can surely find great and challenging quantitative courses. There are a few courses not as useful, the department is collecting student’s opinion and restructuring these courses. So I think the situation will get better soon.
Finally, I don’t think it is fair to say there is no one really to help find quant jobs. Professor Peter Carr has brought many job opportunities for students. We have a very professional career placement director to help students with job search and interview. We are also building our program career resources and opportunities.

I am a fall 2016 MFE student.

Now we have Dr Peter Carr as the director. And the program is obviously improving now. He hired several noted professors from the industry. He is working on the placement, hiring the placement officer, inviting the guest speaker to the seminar.

Pros: the curriculum is well diversified. We could freely choose different tracks. The location is excellent. And the careernet of NYU is very useful for students.

Cons: There are some core courses that seem to be irrelevant to the financial engineering. Some professors are not dedicated to teaching.

Couple reviews above seem butthurt (sorry for being blunt, well.. not really sorry). Like all MFE programs out here, it's a professional degree. If you want the jobs bad enough, you go out and get it, network, talk to people in the industry. School only takes you so far, you should also pick up stuff on your own, and quite frankly you learn most O.T.J. and its a continuous learning process.

If you hope to have a job handed to you by the time you graduate, boy maybe you are just in the wrong industry. Absolutely Caltech, Princeton students do get frequently targetted/approached by HRs, and you have to go the extra mile to land an interview, but once you're in, its a level playing field.

but i digressed, there has been big shift in the industry, specifically on the sellside. Greater emphasis on risk management, modelling more focused on time series and statistical learning. School tries to accommodate, next year (from what I heard) they are bringing in a new professor in machine learning.

Curriculum:
School provides curriculum in programming, numerical methods, derivatives and sto calc, if you are interested in particular asset class, there are special topics class in commodities, interest rate, credit and abs. They are more than enough to prep you for the interviews.

If you are into hardcore research/modelling role, I don't think any of the mfe programs out there will prepare you for it, unless you have a prior phd background.

Job Placement:
Granted I wish there were bit more help from school on the career services front, I have enjoyed the job searching process (even though it has been a long, stressful process, I do appreciate it, the experience could be useful down the road). Received offer from bb asset management, risk management, and consulting. Job market has been pretty tough on S&T front, thanks to volcker, and possibly worse with frtb coming online. I also know couple classmates decided to go into analytics, big data.

You do get a lot of interviews with bulge brackets GS/JPM/MS etc in strat/market risk/quant related roles. Again, S&T is almost nonexistent, but that's the same for everyone.

Student Body:
Majority asian/indian, as quant industry in general.

PM me if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

I am a fall 2015 MFE student, and I rate this program as tier 2.

Pros: 1) The location is good, along with lots of job opportunities. 2) The career service is very professional, especially the On Campus Recruitment (OCR) System, which reflects NYU's high reputation in financial service. 3) The courses are very diversified, covering all finance areas. 4) Audition is possible, and you can audit Courant's class if you want.

Cons: 1) Some professors are good at teaching, but others are not. 2) The career service of the program is not as good as the one of the university.

Totally speaking, the platform is well established, and the program is suitable for those of high self-motivation.

A program where you can either get out as a hero or a zero

What do you think is unique about this program?
The program all together is decent, it doesn't focus on Financial Engineering, the track system makes it that you obtain a masters in corporate Finance or actuarial sciences instead of a pure FE degree. So you get to readjust yourself based on what part of the financial industry you want to work for. it Has an enormous amount of classes, and so choice won't be a problem.

What are the weakest points about this program?
The choices offered in this program can either make you a hero or a zero, I personally recommend to take Maymin's classes as well as High frequency trading, if you pick your classes and your professors well you will get the most value out of this program. However if you go for easy classes you might get your degree without learning much.
1.5 credit system isn't appropriate for most classes, Derivative Algorithms and Stochastic Processes should be 3 credits at least.Remove Econ as a required class, nobody needs it. Finally instead of tracks just have masters in FE, actuarial science or MS in Finance.

Career services
NYU careerLink is where I got most internship interview calls it's a large university so companies reach out for NYU students. Poly's career service is almost inexistant for FE students.

Student body
A lot of communautarism in this program, some times I get into the class and half of it is chinese taking the right side and indians the back left and then the rest of the world. Chinese hang out with Chinese only, and make it hard for a strong student relationship, specially when they speak broken english and prefer to speak their own language instead.

So why the hopeful 4/5, well because of the merger with NYU, things improve and you can feel it. I heard stochastic will be a required class, Quant finance is made harder and most importantly the next batch of applicants will know huge selectivity. The department is trying to make the program more technical to be at par with Courant, so give it 2,3 years either poly FRE department will be merged into Courant or vice versa.

A practical approach to Financial Engineering

What do you think is unique about this program?
The biggest advantage of this program is that you learn from practitioners. Professors who are or have worked in the industry tend to have a much different view of finance than someone who is a pure academician. Most courses are not heavy on the math and instead they incline towards helping you gain the underlying intuition. My star picks from this course would be classes taken with Prof. Philip Maymin, Prof. Peter Cai, Prof. Andery Itkin, and Prof. Nasim Taleb.

What are the weakest points about this program?
I felt throughout the program that there should be more focus on certain concepts of math and programming. There were many 7courses which needed a full 3 credits to do justice to them, 7 lectures is just not enough. Programming should be incorporated more strongly, especially for implementation of the concepts that you learn.

Career services
The Career services offered by NYU are quite good. A structured On-Campus recruiting along with a very active career website gives you umpteen resources to find yourself a job.

Most jobs are into Risk Management, Valuations, Financial consultancies, financial software firms. Though is highly depends on your skill set. Sales and Trading is also an option.

Student body
The students in this program are helpful and smart. Most of them being new to finance have a keen enthusiasm to learn and explore this domain.

There is a Trading club which is a good forum to get yourself started. In the past two years our team has entered the CME Commodity Trading challenge Championship Round by qualifying in the top 16 of 160 teams globally.