Princeton University - Master in Finance

I am part of the 2027 class.

Course Flexibility: 9/10
Courses are highly flexible. Whether you are into a highly quantitative domain or a more traditional finance/economics domain, there are options for you. There aren't too much of strict requirements on what courses one has to do, besides basically 5 core courses. Most people I know in the program take courses outside of finance and absolutely love it. You can basically learn anything you want.

Career support: 10/10
Provide a lot of support for internship/full-time search. Obviously, they won't show you every step of the way what to do, but they will check your resume properly, have a lot of career events and talks, and also have a lot of good connections with the industry.

Fun: 9/10
Lots of free food opportunities at talks/events/and seminars. There are like 2 places where students in the program would go for fun, so it is kind of limited, but you can't ask for much when you're in Princeton. I suggest getting a bike if you're coming here.

Swags: 7/10
It could be better. Companies that come to give talks provide really good swags, though.

Friendships: 10/10
The most important thing anywhere. Everyone here is insanely smart. I know people who have started a hedge fund in the past. Everyone is insanely driven. It's also close to ORFE, which is arguably one of the best in the country, so you learn a lot from people outside of the program as well.

Brand name: 10/10
I did my undergrad in a less prestigious school. Immediately upon coming here, I can see the difference in how people recruit/see me. The network and brand name can take you really far at Princeton (obviously, you still have to work for it, but people will definitely interview you).

This is a fantastic program, definitely one of the best quant finance programs in the world, outstanding industry reputation and powerful alumni network!

Career
The career support is incredible. From the very first week on campus, you're meeting alumni/recruiters/people from top hedge funds, prop firms, and banks who are there to share insights about their companies and recruitment processes. Career services reviews your resume (and provides great tips to get it right) for a resume book that goes out to many of these employers. Many employers will directly email candidates to schedule interviews. The program also offers interview prep and actively connects students to alumni and firms.

Coursework
The program is extremely flexible. You can choose electives from a wide range of departments (Operations Research, Stats and ML, CS, Econ, Finance), allowing you to really focus on what you're passionate about. The professors are top-notch, and many are practitioners who know exactly what the industry is looking for, which is a big plus. There's also a strong focus on non-directly CS/ML topics, contrary to other programs.

A slight downside is the core coursework. I found some of it to be a bit too simplistic or not directly "useful" for the industry. Some courses also cover too much material condensed into one, and I think the program would benefit from giving students the chance to choose more in-depth courses on particular subjects instead.

Cohort & Culture
The small class size makes it very easy to make friends. My fellows in the cohort were really friendly, interested in getting to know people, and always willing to help. This collaborative environment is why the Princeton network is such a big deal, you'll always find someone willing to help you with a particular topic you're interested in also with people in the years above.

Other
My only other suggestion is that I think it would benefit more from a length of 1.5 years instead of the current two years.

Princeton’s MFin combines the most attractive features of a top master’s program: a small and highly selected class, the best alumni network and reputation, and a uniquely rich academic environment.

The small cohort definitely helps in getting to know each other better and developing friendships that last over time. This is also reflected in the alumni network (all over the top banks, hedge funds, prop trading firms, etc.), which makes for valuable connections. It goes without saying that the professional excellence of alumni is tangible proof of the reputation the program holds in the industry. The career service is also extremely supportive: with tons of experience, they actively connect students with firms and alumni and organize events. Most importantly, Lindsay is very helpful in navigating the recruiting process and the offers. This makes a real difference, especially during internship and full-time job searches.

The curriculum is very flexible and allows specializing in your area of interest (whether it’s more computational finance, quantitative economics, etc.). In general, classes are small, so that leaves space for much interaction between students and professors, benefiting the learning process. Furthermore, the homework assignments are hands-on and very helpful for students on their way to their summer internship.

Finally, beyond the program itself, Princeton offers an exceptional environment. The campus is gorgeous, and you have the opportunity to meet with brilliant students from all disciplines and diverse backgrounds. A big part of my experience has been making friends also outside my program and taking classes in other departments for personal curiosity. The university really provided the ideal setting to focus, learn, and grow. Would definitely recommend and redo the program, time and time again!

Course:

The program offers a mix of finance, computer science, and mathematics courses, with a strong emphasis on theoretical foundations and financial pricing. There are only a few compulsory courses, while most are electives. Students have the opportunity to enroll in PhD-level courses, which provides academic depth for those interested in advanced or research-oriented topics.

Career Services:

Career outcomes are generally strong. The career service office organizes information sessions, offers interview prep, and connects students to the broader university career fair, which includes a larger pool of employers from different sectors. Career support tends to focus more on information and guidance rather than hands-on job placement.

Peers and Community:

The student cohort is highly capable and diverse, both academically and professionally. While many students aim for quantitative roles, others pursue careers in consulting, asset management, risk, or data analytics, making the overall career paths more diversified. The environment is collaborative yet competitive.

Princeton MFin is one of the top quantitative finance programs. Here is what I like about it:

Coursework: The core courses covered asset pricing, stochastic calculus, accounting, and data analysis. Since I was an engineering major, these courses helped me to build a solid understanding of quantitative finance. Above that, there is also a wide range of elective courses across math, economics, computer science, statistics, and more.

Career Service: We had a career camp before the start of the first term, which was very important because it helped me prepare for internship applications starting in September. The program maintains good relationships with several prestigious firms. They usually hold recruitment events, which is a good opportunity to apply. I also got a lot of help from my classmates and our career director.

Other: I really enjoy the environment. The facilities and dining are also excellent.

I’ll divide this review into two parts — the recruitment side (career services) and the academic environment.

Recruitment Side:
The career services team does a solid job. They bring a lot of companies to campus throughout the year, and even outside the MFin program, plenty of top trading and quant firms show up during university-wide career fairs. It’s a great chance to connect directly with people from those firms. They also post new openings pretty frequently and help with interview prep. Princeton MFin alumni are literally everywhere — at all the top firms — and that network can really help if you reach out.

Academic Environment:
This was the main reason I chose Princeton. The professors here are incredible — some of them are the ones who wrote the textbooks or research papers we study from. The program is very rigorous and theory-heavy, which I personally like. You also get a ton of flexibility: you can take classes from applied math, economics, computer science, and pretty much any other area you’re interested in.

If you want to get a flavor for research, you can do that in your second year too — one of the advantages of it being a two-year program.

That said, a few things could be improved — for example, I wish Corporate Finance was optional since most students don’t get much out of it. You can also make a case that the program can be wrapped up within 1.5 years as well and 2 years is long. And to be completely transparent, the atmosphere can sometimes get a bit toxic, especially during recruiting season. People are competing for top-paying roles, and conversations often end up revolving around offers and comp. It’s not constant, but it’s noticeable. Still, most people are genuinely nice and helpful — at least in my experience.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time here so far.

I chose to attend this program over other top quant finance programs in the US I was admitted to. It combines strong brand name, vast selection of courses across different disciplines, strong alumni network and manageable class size which allows for individual attention. Stellar reputation on Wall Street.

Disclaimer:
Purely my opinion, and purely based on my experience in my cohort.

Very decent program:
(1) Strong reputation, both among potential applicants and on the street.
(2) Great faculty & staff. Professors and career service are fantastic and knowledgeable.
(3) Great flexibility in terms of curriculum.

But one star off the overall rating, and two stars off student quality because of the toxic social atmosphere. My definition of high quality is not high GPA, high test scores, BB/top fund work experience. If you disagree with the standard/definition of high quality, that's OK, I'll keep mine and you'll keep scrolling.

My background - Math degree from top college in India, 2 years as a trading quant at BB.

Other admits - MIT, Columbia MFE, Chicago, NYU Courant

1. Great peer group with diverse experiences - Students from the program are from diverse backgrounds with expertise in both quant and macro, so there is a great avenue to learn from your peers

2. Flexibility - Only 5 of your 16 courses are compulsory, and the rest can be chosen independently. Princeton is a top college with one of the best Econ and Math departments (also ORFE and SPIA, among others) and the opportunity to tailor the program is a great feature which sets it apart from the other top programs. Really feels like a proper university experience rather than a training program where you're only doing preset courses.

3. Career Services (speaking only from internship recruiting experience, not sure personally about 2nd year recruiting) - Great career services. Career Services set up all my interviews for my internship, it was pretty difficult to get interviews independently this year. So I feel it was quite important. The website has a list of BCF partners who come to campus every year. In many cases, a company would bring a team of 5 or 10 to present to a batch of 20 BCF students which really gives you a chance to interact with the firm. There were also boot camps but I guess that isn't really the main role of career services

Cons

1. Core courses - The core courses, although well structured in terms of content, were not very good apart from maybe 2 (out of 5). There isn't too much focus given to the core courses, and the professors teaching them usually have their expertise in other fields. So although a good chance to interact with great professors, the classes really aren't too helpful to learn the material. Core courses are less than a third of your courses however so not a huge deal

2. Misc - No particular cons as such, but some general concerns people have are around the cost and the length of program. Also, probably it's not as intense as CMU or Baruch if you really want to specialize in the computer science or ML aspects.

I joined this program after having worked for 6 six years on the sell side as a derivatives trader and structurer with the main idea of getting a more updated set of technical skills that could be broadly applied on the buy and sell side upon graduation. After Princeton, I took a job as a quant trader at a global macro hedge fund on the buy side and am still currently there.

I chose the program first and foremost because of the Princeton brand, strong alumni base, and its general reputation within the finance community. I did not apply anywhere else.

Specific points that I liked about the program:

1) Broad curriculum which potentially allows you to focus if you're in the two year version of program

2) Small classes and helpful Professor's and TA's

3) Proximity to New York for recruiting

4) Advanced academic standards and strong level of peer aptitude


Materials Used:

Mostly professor's notes but I did utilize many of the reference textbooks for certain parts


Programming Component:

R (used more frequently through program)
C++ (if you take the class)


Suggestions to make program better:

1) I took the 1 year track for program but I think the ideal length is 18 months

2) It would have been useful to have some more industry practical seminars (even if not for credit)

Coursework Taken:

Asset Pricing parts 1 and 2 with Stochastic Calculus
Econometrics 1 and 2
Risk Management
Options
Portfolio Theory
Computational Finance (C ++)

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I joined this program right after college. I studied full-time in the program from 9/2008-06/2010

Did you get admitted to other programs?
NYU Courant
Stanford FinMath
Columbia MFE
Harvard Applied Math
Berkeley Haas MFE

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Job placements / Average first year starting salary.
Brand name.
Quality of professors / Courses offered.

Tell us about the application process at this program
Reasonable application process. Interview required for final part of application.

Does this program offer refrsher courses? How useful was it?
Yes, math refresher camp. Not so useful for me since I came straight from college, but well taught.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
Fixed income (very rigorous)
Risk management
Financial crises
Behavioral finance
Stochastic calculus

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Great professors, both academic and professionals. Great help from motivated TAs.

Materials used in the program
Not so many textbooks, mostly notes and slides from Professors.

Programming component of the program
R
C++
Matlab
VBA

Projects
All sort of projects, both individual and in groups. Can do an independent project (1 or 2 semesters) with possibility of being published if you work hard enough.

Career service
Princeton career services and Bendheim Center staff.

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
Very diversified, people from all over the world: North America, South America, Europe, Asia.

What do you like about the program?
Small class size, high standard, job placement, tuition support.

What DON’T you like about the program?
More flexibility in course selection for the 1st year (6 core courses out of 8).

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Shrink the length to 1.5y instead of 2y.

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Associate position, Interest Rate Trading.

Besides the program's websites, what alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Quantnet.com
Globalderivatives.com
Alumni

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Undergraduate: one of the top universities in China, majoring in Economics
Work experience: summer intern in Citibank
I studied full-time from 9/2009-6/2011

Did you get admitted to other programs?
Chicago: MSc of Financial Mathematics
LSE: MSc of Finance & Economics
USC: MSc in Mathematical Finance
UCLA: Ph.D. in Economics

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
It is definitely my top choice. Besides the brand name of Princeton University, this program has been keeping a excellent placement record throughout good times and bad times.
Plus, this program provides greater flexibility in choosing courses, compared to most of other Financial Engineering programs that focuses mostly on quantitative skills.
And the duration of two years would better prepare me for the prospective job in financial industry.

Admission process
After submitting all the required material, the top 100 applicants would be invited to interviews. For students from China, there are normally two rounds of phone interviews, conducted by faculty members of Bendheim Center for Finance. Then one would expect to hear back from admission committee by the end of February.

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? How useful was it?
Yes. This program offers Math Refresher courses as well as Boot Camp, through which students would hear from many financial industry practitioners.
It is quite useful for me who has little working experiences before joining this program.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
We have a vast number of courses to choose from. Besides the 6 core courses, we could tailor our own curricular according to our interests. Courses from the Department of Economics, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science are mostly chosen by MFin students.

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Most of the faculty members of this program are professors from Department of Economics and Engineering. We have practitioners and visiting professors from other universities to teach too. TA would hold Precept every week and grade our homework. They are quite helpful and dedicated.

Materials used in the program
Options, Futures and Financial Derivatives--John Hull
Derivatives Markets--Mcdonald
Intermediate Financial Theory--Danthine & Donaldson
Introduction to the Economics and Mathematics of Financial Markets--Jaska Cvitanic & Fernando Zapatero
Microfoundations of Financial Economics An Introduction to General Equilibrium Asset Pricing--Yvan Lengwiler
Principles of Financial Economics--Leroy and Werner
A Random Walk Down Wall Street--Malkiel
Investments--BKM
Statistical Analysis of Financial Data in S-Plus—Carmona
etc.

Programming component of the program
We need to use R and S-Plus for some courses.
Many students choose courses in C++ as well.

Projects
We have both individual and group projects. For example, some courses would require a research paper by the end of the semester and some courses would ask students to give presentations.

Career services
We would get a lot of information from career service and whenever we want, we could always have mock interviews.

What do you like about the program?
A good combination of academic studies and preparation for future career.

What don't you like about the program?
The township is little bit too quiet, compared to NYC and other big cities.

Suggestion to the program
Provide fellowship.

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Will do a summer internship in IBD.

Student body
Very diversified students background. There are a lot of interations between different ethnics groups.

Besides the program's websites, what alternative sources of info you used to learn more about the program?
Forum: Global Derivatives-Higher Education

Can you tell us a bit about your background?
12 years of work experience in private equity and venture capital.
I studied full-time in the program from 9/2008-5/2010

Did you get admitted to other programs?
Columbia
MIT

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Quality of professors.
Course options.
Past career placement success.

Tell us about the application process at this program
Reasonable application process. Interview required for final part of application.

Does this program offer refresher courses for incoming students? How useful was it?
Yes. Math boot camp. Particularly useful for me as I had been away from school for so long.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like?
Fixed income (very rigorous)
Risk management
Financial crises
Behavioral finance
Stochastic calculus

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Fantastic professors. Excellent TA's (very helpful with homework).

Materials used in the program
A few textbooks. Mostly faculty notes and academic papers.

Programming component of the program
C++
R
Matlab
Mathematica
Programming requirements vary based upon curriculum choices.

Projects
Both individual and group projects.
Option of conducting independent research with a professor for 1 or 2 terms.

Career service
Dedicated career service staff.

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
Group very international (<20% from U.S.) Strong representation from Europe, Asia and South America.

What do you like about the program?
Small class so very personalized service from the faculty and staff.

What DON’T you like about the program?
More course flexibility in the first year.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
With small class size, could probably offer more scholarships for tuition.

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Asset and Portfolio Management
Offer pending.