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

[didje]

Seriously, some people here need to calm down a little. Rankings cannot be tottaly objectives, everybody knows that. Now, you can be disapointed with the fact that your school is not in it or got a bad rank but, you know what, NOTHING prevent you from making your own ranking based on your methodology and get your school to the number one place.

For example, I like Stevens MFE because the curriculum is amazing when I read it, and NYU-Poly because Nassim Taleb is a professor there.
My ranking :
1 - Stevens
2 - NYU-Poly

My Methodology:
70% Curriculum (only read)
30% World-known professor/best-selling author/philosopher/lebanese trader

You see ? It's not that hard.

 

[CN Chen]

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.

I think the risk of conflict of interest is pretty obvious... alumni have incentive to promote their alma mater, no matter how many years ago they attended the school. If their degree goes from second tier first tier then they obviously do benefit from that if nothing else then prestige. I don't think the advertising dollars is really a concern, but someone who chose to attend Baruch may have different weights in formulating the ranking methodology than your average MFE applicant for example. That being said, I think Andy did a great job given the circumstances, and would look forward to seeing more transparent data in compiling the ranking if he's willing to release it.

 

[fallingleaf]

I don't understand why people are so tolerant toward this "conflict of interest" when it comes to this forum. you all automatically assume Andy has great integrity. I am not saying he compromised because quantnet takes money from Baruch and he and quite a few members are from Baruch.

I am simply pointing out that there should be a disclaimer like " The person who ranks the program is a graduate from one of the programs and quantnet generates revenue from some of the programs ranked".

This is America. When it comes to politics, I don't think anybody think conflict of interest is a good thing and can tolerate it. Why it's different on this forum?

Also the best engineering schools in the U.S. are MIT, Stanford and Berkeley based on US-news, hands down.

 

[Kenny L]

Being not related affiliated with any uni/programs being ranked, I think that the ranking serves its purpose well. As a prospective MFE programs applicant myself, I want a list that would provide me with an idea about each program's relative strength.

The purpose of the ranking isn't "Woohoo, I am better than you guys". Well, I won't decide entire based on any ranking, be it THES, QS uni ranking or QN, GD's ranking. I believe no hiring manager would do the same.

 

[bigbadwolf]

To all the people who seem to have a problem with Andy being a graduate of Baruch and Baruch being in fifth place: just pull out Baruch and put it somewhere else. If you like, take it out of the top twenty altogether. End of argument. Is the ranking the final word? No-one ever claimed it was. Is it useful to prospective MFE students? I think it is.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

So someone getting a degree in engineering from Harvard knows more on the subject than someone from CalTech? UIUC?

You argue that the ranking is garbage because of Berkeley's placement. Is Berkeley not a "better" school, on a whole, than CMU? I mean that is the whole premise. You are saying that the ranking is crap because it is obvious that MFE grads at Berkeley know their material better than Baruch. I disagree.

If this was a discussion on investment banking I would 100% agree with you. Quants are different. Baruch has an established program with close connections with NYC recruiters. Most firms looking for quants are in NYC. If someone is 10 minutes away and knows how to program and create black box algo's why would they want to fly people in from California?

 

[GOOFBALL]

How did the admins of this website decide which employers/hiring managers to survey? I attended the Berkeley mfe, from which the largest 5~8 investment banks / mmgrs/ top hfs recruit 60%~90%-ish of the student body every year in portfolio mgmt, sales & trading, or quant strategies. When I was applying to mfe programs, it seemed that the only school that had as good industry/alumni connections/placement record as Berkeley was Princeton. When I went through internship / full-time recruitment, my thots were proven correct. If quantnet was able to obtain the contact information of front office hiring managers at the most prestigious fin institutions that recruit regularly from Berkeley and a few others above, which I have a strong suspicion that they weren't able to (because what kind of mfe program director / career officer at any of the schools above in their right mind would volunteer such information to a website that appears to have strong ties to a competitor program?), the rankings would be vastly different. Someone prove me wrong.

 

[GOOFBALL]

And please don't get me wrong. I think every program has its own merit. All academic programs can only amount to what the individual makes of it, and I am sure a hard-working/intelligent individual could benefit greatly and start a successful career from any of the programs listed above if they set their mind to it. But if you are going to create a ranking, advertise it as being legit, and use it to argue that X is better than Y, you ought to get your facts right. I simply don't think this ranking does.

 

[abcdefh]

This thread is hilarious. Couldn't stop laughing. People are so green or just naive.

I wish there are more people decline MIT/Princeton/Standford to go to a community college. Unfortunately, it's not true in the real world.

EMalu is just being a bad ass even though he got valid points. Just let it go dude.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

When did I say Berkeley was not a good school? I saw the rankings and they have Berkeley #3. They also have CMU rather far back in the rankings, yet you are not debating that CMU should be lower ranked than CMU. UIUC is also a very highly ranked engineering school as is CalTech.

My issue is that you asset that Baruch should automatically be ranked lower than Berkeley. I am saying that programs other than Berkeley can provide a great engineering education and if they tailor their program for financial engineering, while being located in the financial capital of the US, there is a chance that they could be ranked higher.

Maybe Berkeley didn't fully respond to the survey, maybe they did. I don't know, all I do know is that your argument is rather smug and naive. Furthermore, you accuse Andy of being biased or basically being paid to promote Baruch, which I find horribly distasteful. Wherever you went to school you obviously did not learn tact or manners. Please post a link showing me the contributions you have made towards advancing the MFE or providing some type of transparency and order to this.

Quantnet helps countless individuals make a very expensive and important decision. This ranking is just one of the tools necessary. You sit back and attempt to tarnish a persons reputation with ZERO proof and a rather flawed argument. Even if you completely remove Baruch, Berkeley would still only be 5th. Is Andy biased in favor of MIT, Princeton and CMU also?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I will only say this on the topic of our ranking
If 19 of 22 programs agreed to participate in the 2011 Quantnet ranking and provided all the data we asked, it speaks volume for the level of trust they have on what Quantnet and I do. After all, Quantnet has been around since 2003 and I am no stranger to directors/administrators from many of these programs. If they are concerned that I'm biased, they are not going to willingly disclose the data that they never publish before.

Just think about it for a moment. 19/22 is the only number that matters most to me since it demonstrates how serious programs take our ranking.

At the end of the day, when many of these posters move onto other things to argue about, the Quantnet MFE rankings will still be quoted and referred to by many future MFE applicants, regardless of how much some people may not like it.

We have been helping future MFE applicants since 2003 learn more about the field and different MFE programs. No amount of hateful posts will stop Quantnet and myself from continue providing a service to our members.

I can assure you all that I take the services we provide to our members very seriously and we will work to provide all the information our members need to make a well-informed decision on their education and career choice.

 

[bansalmohit]

Quantnet has helped me immensely regarding application procedure. They are helping quant community and i thank Andy greatly for that

 

[bigbadwolf]

I am amuzed by how many logic flaws and grammatically wrong sentences you made in your commend, but somehow I managed to understand most of what you were trying to say.

 

[EMalu]

Quantnet has helped me immensely regarding application procedure. They are helping quant community and i thank Andy greatly for that

I will only say this on the topic of our ranking
If 19 of 22 programs agreed to participate in the 2011 Quantnet ranking and provided all the data we asked, it speaks volume for the level of trust they have on what Quantnet and I do. After all, Quantnet has been around since 2003 and I am no stranger to directors/administrators from many of these programs. If they are concerned that I'm biased, they are not going to willingly disclose the data that they never publish before.

Just think about it for a moment. 19/22 is the only number that matters most to me since it demonstrates how serious programs take our ranking.

At the end of the day, when many of these posters move onto other things to argue about, the Quantnet MFE rankings will still be quoted and referred to by many future MFE applicants, regardless of how much some people may not like it.

We have been helping future MFE applicants since 2003 learn more about the field and different MFE programs. No amount of hateful posts will stop Quantnet and myself from continue providing a service to our members.

I can assure you all that I take the services we provide to our members very seriously and we will work to provide all the information our members need to make a well-informed decision on their education and career choice.

Saying that makes you feel great, isn't it?

"I am a great person making the most credible rank and helping weaks despite of all hates from those unjust opponents!"

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

......Come on, knock it off

Just let everyone know:

1, How are you related to any MFE program?
2, Do you or your site recieve any compensation for advertising Baruch and/or other programs?

And then let the public do their own judgement about whether you've been trying to help others, or help yourself(and whoever supports you).

 

[mfegrad]

emalu,

if you were half as important as you believe yourself to be, you wouldn't have spent so much time on this thread as you'd need to be spending time...i don't know...working? furthermore, if you're going to criticize others for using "grammatically wrong sentences," you should ensure you're on the up and up in that regard first. that aside, let's get to the meat of the issue here.

did andy go to baruch? yes. does he hide it? no. does it matter that he went to baruch? a lot less than you're making it out to be.

berkeley is a great school. i don't think anyone will claim otherwise. again, with my comments on the first page, i acknowledged that i mostly agreed with the first seven (with one exception), not necessarily in the order in which they were posted, but that they were the top programs. after those, there's a big dropoff. i think most people can *mostly* agree on that.

you know nothing of baruch's program, and yet you seem to have gotten your knickers in a twist over this ranking. i did not attend baruch. i have friends who went to a seminar held by baruch who came away very impressed by the facilities, the curriculum, and the dedication that dan stefanica provides to his students. did you know that baruch has a mock trading floor set up for its students? anyways, the two friends graduated from the same program from which i graduated, and they're no slouches.

does baruch promote itself? yes, but there's nothing wrong with that. years ago, i also thought it was a lot of hot air on internet forums. but, the fact of the matter is, it is a strong program that supports its students and does a great job trying to enrich the community. maybe the fact that you don't know much about the program or that you were on the other side of the country for your program might explain your unfamiliarity with baruch, but to trash it and whine repeatedly, as you've done here, is really not the kind of foot i'd want people associated with my school putting forward.

just something to think about.

 

[DanM]

Did EMalu just ridicule someone for their grammatical errors? Seriously?

 

[lv_hk]

How did the admins of this website decide which employers/hiring managers to survey? I attended the Berkeley mfe, from which the largest 5~8 investment banks / mmgrs/ top hfs recruit 60%~90%-ish of the student body every year in portfolio mgmt, sales & trading, or quant strategies. When I was applying to mfe programs, it seemed that the only school that had as good industry/alumni connections/placement record as Berkeley was Princeton. When I went through internship / full-time recruitment, my thots were proven correct. If quantnet was able to obtain the contact information of front office hiring managers at the most prestigious fin institutions that recruit regularly from Berkeley and a few others above, which I have a strong suspicion that they weren't able to (because what kind of mfe program director / career officer at any of the schools above in their right mind would volunteer such information to a website that appears to have strong ties to a competitor program?), the rankings would be vastly different. Someone prove me wrong.

strongly concur.

just a few thoughts to add:

1. If Berkeley explicitly requests NOT to be ranked (though got ranked anyways), I doubt where do you get the information to start with, in the first place, say detailed placement stats.

2. "A 5% bonus was awarded to the score for each of the 19 programs who responded to the survey"... i kinda fail to understand the logic here... just curious, which programs didnt reply?

anyways, thanks for putting something together.

 

[mfegrad]

your response has very little to do with what i wrote. you either chose to ignore what i wrote or didn't understand it. again, not a good showing on your part.

 

[physEcon]

Dude you're killing me. It's Claremont Graduate University, it hasn't been called Claremont Graduate School for decades!

All in all really good. I get that you can't release some of the data, but it says that in some cases you simply used the most recent public data. Do you mind listing for each school the data source? You can still keep stuff confidential, just something like:

Employment stats: www.someschool.edu/employment
Average GRE scores: Confidential
Cost: www.someschool.edu/tuition

Would it violate your confidentiality agreements too much if you allowed for custom weighting? Perhaps you could require that no category be more than 60% of a "ranking" so that people can't isolate specific attributes.

You might consider including average scholarship/fellowship next go around. This is pretty common practice in rankings/reports in other fields.

 

[martingaletrader]

I am sorry but these rankings are deceiving. Putting Chicago so low is not quite right. The truth is that while UChicago MSFM has had problems it remains one of the top programs. Their faculty now teaching is superb. They manage to place a lot of their students in good jobs in Chicago.

For Quantnet, placement being NY-centric I can see why Cornell, Baruch and Columbia would fare well. But please. UChicago has had some problems in the past but these seem to have been sorted out now.

And I would put NYU Courant as no. 1. If placement is taking into account then maybe CMU or Berkeley would do well. But Berkeley MFE or UCLA does not compare with programs housed in the math dept. UChicago is a top school - unfortunately their curriculum was stagnant for a few years but now seems to have been revised for the better.