Stanford University - Mathematical and Computational Finance

Part 1- Program Design: Program Size & Courses & Resources & Outcomes

This is not a traditional MFE program, this is a applied math program with a bit financial elective. Student need 45 credits to graduate. In general, each course count as 3 credits and the required finance related credits are only 9, approximately 3 courses. Other course requirements are about CME, Computing, Data Science, Practical. The CME requirements are about CME courses, which are the PhD level applied math and also the requirements for PhD Qualification exam. Computing requirements are about fundamental CS and Advanced CS, which includes data structure & algorithm, operating system, parallel computing, CUDA etc. The data science requirements are mainly stay around at Stanford's CS and Statistics courses. The CS courses are those famous Stanford public open CS course, while Statistics courses are about those courses for Statistics PhD Qualification Exams. The Practical requirements are quite chill, they can be some 1 unit seminar, or some research project/assistantship units or some easy financial practical courses. You can see, the program is very math intensive because many required courses are for PhD Qualification Exam among the Math, ICME, Stat departments. That's why the MCF or the whole ICME department prefers the students that have strong math background.

The class size for MCF is super small, only around 10 people each year. According to my experience, the admission difficulty in ICME MS could rank like this: MCF > General > Data Science. I am not putting the image science here because the class size is too small, only 1-3 student each year, so it's too hard to estimate. Moreover, may be 2 out of 10 spots are reserved for Stanford undergrad, which is called the co-term program.

Very good resources at Stanford, include funding, free foods, trips, and other opportunities like networking. Also Cheap tuitions. I know many ICME student get Teaching/Research Assistant at school, which can fully cover the tuitions and getting $3-4k salary each months, but it's not easy to get these since it's pretty competitive. Every week, we do have free foods like bagel or pizza in our office. Each year, we also have free trip for all ICME MS and PhD students, this year we went to SF together. Every Friday, we also have Friday's beer, which is the time to meet with cohorts, alumni, and professors. For tuitions, this is much cheaper than other MFE programs, even cheaper than Baruch.

Many students may choose to do PhD after graduation due to its rigorous training in applied math and many research opportunities at school. I am the student that admitted for fall2024, I can say there are around 3 of my cohorts have a plan for PhD, so they do not participate any intern/full time job search. I also have the plan for PhD, but my return offer is decent enough to pull me away from doing a PhD at Stanford. Overall, ICME provides very good resources for students to PhD.


Part 2 - Career Service and Job Placement

Almost not the career service as what you see as other MFE programs. The only typical career event is ICME career fair, only open to ICME and Stat students. The companies in the career fair are not that decent as you may think (like HF, Props, etc.), but they are still pretty good and high pay, include Vanguard, Upstarts Apple, and some Labs.

One possible way to get jobs via school's career service is like go to the general career fairs like Stanford CS Forum, Stanford Career Fair. These events will involved many companies includes famous tech companies/startups, also those HFs, Prop shops, etc.

Another possible way to get jobs is go to the company events. Each week I remember there are a lot of companies (tech, startups, HFs, Prop shops) info session, events, activities, networking on campus, some of them provide Stanford specific pipeline for application. Other than job application, you can also network with many people for many companies, also get free food and swags!!!

Job placement is pretty good, I don't know the data for internship right now, it seems almost everyone get pretty good intern offers except those plan to do PhDs (yes! they did RA at school during summer). For full time, I already know 2 cohorts get return offer that has number ~500k+ (damn! very good numbers!), which seems not rely on those career service, only the strong skill and past experience.


Part 3 - Life

Very very goooood campus experience!!! Beautiful Campus! Many many campus activities! Many many funs! Best campus experience in the world!