University of Chicago - MS in Financial Mathematics

This program deserves only one star as they still have Roger Lee, otherwise it will be worth 0 star with no doubt. It’s not a rare or radical opinion – Many students hold the same view with me. Nor this is not a review from a biased bad student - I got job offers after graduation, and I have very decent grades in my undergrad.

Pro:

- The only Pro of this program is Professor Roger Lee - He is a master in the field of option pricing and his teaching is tremendously great. The course contents & lecture notes are well-designed, and he can explain complicated concepts in a very clear way. Homework and exams are also very properly designed such that they help you gain deeper insights in derivatives pricing.

- Some of my classmates also like Professor Lawler, but in my opinion his teaching is merely at or below the average quality of my undergraduate math courses. Probably you will have better experience if you are his PhD students.

Cons:

- Many useless courses wasting your tuition!!! Their curriculum titles seem fancy, but in reality many of them are either too basic (at or even below a college sophomore level) or instructors don’t care about it at all.
 Any courses related to programming and machine learning are extremely badly structured (e.g., Python programming, full stack tools for quant fin, machine learning for fin). Trust me, your undergraduate CS/Stats classes are way much better than these.
 You can also clearly tell that some instructors are just wasting time and teach something which probably a college sophomore already mastered, and assign some useless homework to keep you busy, but you wont learn anything from them.
 Basically you are paying over $90,000 tuition and won’t learn much things comparing to your undergrad education.

- Career services is just a joke. Those staffs do not even have a real career themselves, how come they are capable in advising you to get a six-figure job?

- Don’t be deceived by the job placement rate they reported to QuantNet. The statistics look better only because they admit more students with full-time work experience than other programs with similar QuantNet ranking. But if you are a student go straight from college, you will struggle with finding a decent job whichever program you go to.

- Some of their staffs act like toxic parents - They want to control everything over you. If you let them know you get an offer, they will keep harassing you to withdraw your other job applications/interviews in order to let other students potentially have interview opportunities. I mean, seriously?

- Btw I can’t believe a professor can have romantic relationship with students. If it’s in my undergraduate university, the professor will be fired immediately without any doubt.


So unless you are very determined to work in a derivatives pricing related job after graduation, otherwise I don’t recommend this program at all.