2011-2012 Quantnet Ranking of Financial Engineering (MFE) Programs

[Yike Lu]

Any MFE rank that is not totally insane should place a high emphasis on the course setting/quality of teaching. However, Mr.Nugyen's "rank" totally ignored it.

It is impossible to produce a consistent, objective, unbiased measure of course setting and quality of teaching. Not to mention that it would be operationally prohibitive to actually gather the data necessary for such a measure if it did exist.

 

[Lin]

lol this was bound to happen

 

[Andy Nguyen]

For anyone interested in learning/attacking our methodology, please be assured that it is modeled after the methodology of US News Business School Ranking.
http://www.usnews.com/education/bes.../14/business-school-rankings-methodology-2012

 

[TraderJoe]

plz kick emalu out.. i wasted my time reading his post...

At least he has the guts to say what he is believes in.
There are too many losers on this forum who try to suck up to Andy because they believe that Andy will get them admitted into Baruch or NYU or CMU. It is like herd mentality where average people find strength in numbers.
If he has Berkeley MFE, then he is going to make big $$$ on Wall Street, while you with all the sucking up may get stuck in some third-world country.

 

[arjunk]

At least he has the guts to say what he is believes in.
There are too many losers on this forum who try to suck up to Andy because they believe that Andy will get them admitted into Baruch or NYU or CMU. It is like herd mentality where average people find strength in numbers.
If he has Berkeley MFE, then he is going to make big $$$ on Wall Street, while you with all the sucking up may get stuck in some third-world country.

no body is sucking up dude........y is he wating his time in this forum if he doesnt believe what is posted here is fair...............

 

[arjunk]

So that's how you work? If a very imortant/crucial piece for making a decision is missing, you would pretend that it's not exsist and make a decision based on whatever is available to you? Which company you're working for? I would short a s**t load of it. LOL

all rankings in the world work like that.....
there is no direct measure of great teaching.
the only indicator is employment and salary rates which id due to teaching and the reputation of the univ.

 

[Lin]

What company do you work for? I'd like to know what company employs individuals that would put a significant amount of capital at risk over personal vendettas.

Inflated-Egos LLC

 

[Yike Lu]

Thank you for the straw man sir. I am merely saying there is no way to include what you desire into a ranking. Anybody who bases their decision solely on a rank such as this is, as you imply, is misguided. Andy would agree with that statement.

This ranking is not meant to be used as the sole input into a decision making process. Whether or not somebody uses the ranking in this manner is not my concern. However, with the information that Andy has provided about how the ranking is done, one CAN assess the ranking of programs in the selected metrics. For example, with CMU at the top, we can infer that on average their selectivity, employer preference, and placement are better than e.g. Baruch or Berkeley.

While the flaws you point out are relevant and should be kept in mind, the ranking never claims to judge quality of teaching. It is like criticizing averages as tools because they do not incorporate the dispersion of a distribution. Well, nobody ever claimed they did. The fault lies in the user.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I'd like to remind everyone that we have a good numbers of hiring managers who took part in our ranking survey and were invited to visit this forum often so keep that in mind when you represent your programs.
There is no need for personal attacks. I'd like to see follow up comments on the methodology that we use and US News use. It makes for more interesting quantitative discussion than fighting childlike.

 

[koupparis]

Andy, did you look at how the 2011 rankings would compare using 2009's methodology?

Also how would the rankings change had you included 2009's methodology in 2011's methodology? Easily done by assigning a simple weight to each methodology.

 

[MRoss]

As I have posted before. People should stop hating on each other and start being positive. If Emalu has a problem he should open his own QuantPost, QuantForum... However, it would obviously not be as succesful as QuantNet because Andy is good. Please don't hate on sucessful people. It's not smart.

Do I agree 100% with the ways these programs were ranked? Should acceptance rate be included in the ranking? Probably not.

Point is: Anyone with a good head on their shoulders, strong study habits, and acceptance to any MFE program will succeed - so long as he/she has a positive attitude!

Smile and stop whining! :D

 

[Aditya Chitral]

Neither will any wall street ppl really take his rank seriously.

1. You work on wall street (at least according to you) and you are taking it seriously enough to spend your valuable time whining about it.
2. All rankings are heuristic. The methodology is given and rankings are given. A right mind would make a decision for himself if he wants to believe in the rankings. If somebody solely depends on some rankings then he has greater things to worry about.
3. If you think you have a better methodology (according to you berkley guys are way better than anyone else) then please put it down, collect data, and present it. I am sure the forum and Andy would take them as seriously as quantnet's methodology.
4. If you had taken any PR class ever (whether one needs a class or not is another question) then you would know that the right idea presented in the wrong way is not going to yield any results.

I request not to throw the thread off topic by making personal attacks.

 

[fallingleaf]

Probably Andy should publish the spreadsheet with all scores for each school ranked. Methodology aside, there is no audit how Andy did the calculation. People can present a great methodology but somebody has to make sure it's all applied strictly to the ranking.

Secondly, there are people who just applaud the effort of publishing. One has to know that sometimes it's a disservice to the public if the ranking is biased.

I, instead, applaud people who voice their different opinions on this forum. I also sense that quite a few members want to feel welcome on this forum and only say nice things about whatever Andy does. Let alone the guys who actually personally know Andy.

Those who ask the people with different opinion to start a new forum is not really seriously about the debate either.

This ranking seems to be a one-man show anyway. You cannot deny that Andy does have conflict of interest problem here. Therefore he should not be the person ranking MFE programs. Whether he did it impartially or not is another story. Peace out!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

An addition I'd like to see, that FT does with its rankings, is have a column with the previous ranking (so in this case column 1 is 2011 ranking and column 2 is 2009 ranking) to allow easy tracking of changes in ranking.

That's a good idea, something we may consider doing in future rankings.
2009 and 2011 rankings have totally different methodology, data input so it does not make sense to compare them side-by-side. For example, our 2009 ranking rank programs in group of 5 and arranged in alphabetical order while the 2011 is closer to the mainstream US News ranking of Business Schools.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

This Andy Nguyen is a joke.

I suggest that Mr. Nguyen should go and try to find a real job. Probably not a too quantitaive one though. I wouldn't suggest any financial institute to hire any quant modeling like this. LOL

If I have not made myself clear earlier, we welcome everyone to voice their opinion in a respectful manner. This should not be mistaken as "everything goes" sign.

So if you believe you can maintain some minimum level of civility, enjoy your stay with us. If not, this will be my last comment on the matter. I'm not going to tolerate any kind of abusive language here.

 

[bigbadwolf]

You cannot deny that Andy does have conflict of interest problem here. Therefore he should not be the person ranking MFE programs.

This discussion is silly. If he had graduated from CMU, he'd be accused of partiality towards that program; if from Claremont, he'd be accused of putting it in the top 20. He just can't win. And where's the conflict of interest? He graduated from the program years ago. As far as I know, he's not a Baruch employee. Unless the site is accepting Baruch advertising dollars .... It seems that to preserve the credibility of the site, he'd work hard to scrupulously use only the facts to make the rankings and not less bias enter. I'm convinced he did. I'd have thought people would have more substantial things to quibble about.

 

[EMalu]

This discussion is silly. If he had graduated from CMU, he'd be accused of partiality towards that program; if from Claremont, he'd be accused of putting it in the top 20. He just can't win. And where's the conflict of interest? He graduated from the program years ago. As far as I know, he's not a Baruch employee. Unless the site is accepting Baruch advertising dollars .... It seems that to preserve the credibility of the site, he'd work hard to scrupulously use only the facts to make the rankings and not less bias enter. I'm convinced he did. I'd have thought people would have more substantial things to quibble about.

Please take a look at the front page of this site and count how many Baruch advertisements are there. Do you think he's not getting paid for those?

 

[fallingleaf]

This discussion is silly. If he had graduated from CMU, he'd be accused of partiality towards that program; if from Claremont, he'd be accused of putting it in the top 20. He just can't win. And where's the conflict of interest? He graduated from the program years ago. As far as I know, he's not a Baruch employee. Unless the site is accepting Baruch advertising dollars .... It seems that to preserve the credibility of the site, he'd work hard to scrupulously use only the facts to make the rankings and not less bias enter. I'm convinced he did. I'd have thought people would have more substantial things to quibble about.

That's why business school does not publish rankings themselves. Quantnet does not accept advertising money? I hope it's true. We need some disclaimer here. Which school does Andy help review applications? if you are paid by these programs, you should disclose it.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

I posted this on another forum and got comments back about the ranking being crap simply because baruch was #5. What people fail to realize is that Baruch is a good school and well known in NYC. Also, many positions that quants would want or be hired into are directly available in NYC. When you are hiring a quant you care less about brand or Ivy League and more about actually knowing your stuff. When I think of the best engineering/math schools I think CMU, MIT, UCIC, CalTech, etc. Berkeley isn't one of them. Not saying it isn't a great school or a great program, but it was ranked just behind Baruch. It wasn't as if the ranking placed Berkeley 13th or something.

As far as I am concerned, if you really want to get technical, MIT and Princeton shouldn't really be on the list since they are not PURE MFE programs. Princeton is half MFE/ half MSF and MIT is more broad based. CMU, Baruch, NYU, etc are all pure MFE's.

Regardless, this ranking is a start and pretty even handed. People can disagree, but the level of venom is sad and pathetic. The name on your diploma means a lot less than your actual skills and abilities. Maybe some Berkeley grads are feeling bad because a "lesser" school grad out performs them.

 

[MRoss]

I am certain QuantNet accepts advertising but advertising is different then biasing. Andy is an honest person. People who keep their composure despite people shouting and calling names usually are good people to associate yourself with. But I agree with Joy