2026 QuantNet Rankings of Best Quant Programs in the US

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In the 2026 ranking, we introduced several updates to our methodology to more accurately reflect the strengths of each program:

• Increased emphasis on placement success:
  The weight for this category has been raised from 55% to 60%, with the 3-month placement rate now weighted at 20% (up from 15%).
• Adjusted weight of student selectivity:
  The student selectivity category has been reduced from 25% to 20%. Within this category, the new weight distribution is:
  • Undergraduate GPA: 5% (down from 17.5%)
  • Acceptance rate: 10% (up from 7.5%)
  • Yield rate: 5%

 

[kakimochi]

If you are competitive in nature, you will have your proving ground in NYC. There is a saying "if you can survive in NYC, you can survive anywhere". It's a jungle, cut throat environment in a lot of ways.
I spent all my formal study and working in NYC and that's where I thrive the most. For young people working in finance, no better place to be. Of course, there are good reasons to live and work in Chicago, Boston or elsewhere. Everyone has his own criteria.
Chicago is very generous with their scholarship and it has attracted a lot of students. None of Columbia programs provide scholarship currently as far as I know.

I've done my fair share of research through talking to uChicago Alumni on LinkedIn and it seems that uChicago has a pipeline to Wall Street as well. If this is true, I think the main focus is just to consistently study and interview prep as early as possible.

Looks like the reviews for uChicago MAFN has students saying the career support was quite helpful as opposed to the reviews for Columbia MFE. I'm curious to see what the outcomes for the two schools are in the 2026 Ranking. 9 more hours to go! haha.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Yes, the reviews are having great impact. I'm making a strong push to get more reviews from all programs. In additional to the data from the ranking, it would be very helpful for our audience to make a good decision.
There is no other place on earth you can find this much data and insights on top quant programs.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

We are getting everything ready for the release in an hour. Please make sure to read the first post(s) of this thread where we updated with some notes on how to make the best insight out of the 2026 rankings.
Please feel free to ask any question.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The 2026 QuantNet ranking has been officially released and we'd like to thank all the parties involved from all the programs who participated, to all the alumni who generously contributed to the growing list of reviews on QuantNet.
We appreciate the patience of our members who have been waiting for this ranking for the past few months. I hope the latest ranking will give you much needed clarity on the strength of each program so you can make an informed decision.

 

[sheamusthegreatkhali]

Surprising to see Berkeley going down and Columbia coming up!

 

[rousette]

I graduated from an MFE program years ago, and at the time my impression was that fewer than 30% — possibly even under 20% — of international students landed legitimate U.S. offers. I didn’t run any formal statistics, but this was based on the cases I saw around me. Many students ended up returning to their home countries within a year. Since they wanted to use their OPT and remain in the U.S., some even reported fabricated offers. Because of this, I believe the employment statistics for most programs are considerably inflated.

 

[MikeLawrence]

I graduated from an MFE program years ago, and at the time my impression was that fewer than 30% — possibly even under 20% — of international students landed legitimate U.S. offers. I didn’t run any formal statistics, but this was based on the cases I saw around me. Many students ended up returning to their home countries within a year. Since they wanted to use their OPT and remain in the U.S., some even reported fabricated offers. Because of this, I believe the employment statistics for most programs are considerably inflated.

For most programs, yeah, unfortunately. Knowing which program you attended would say a lot.

 

[rousette]

For most programs, yeah, unfortunately. Knowing which program you attended would say a lot.

I may be biased, and my experience was years ago. I prefer not to disclose the exact program I attended to avoid sharing potentially misleading information. This reflects a broader issue in the quant job market rather than a problem with any specific program. There are more quant job seekers than available positions, especially over the past two years (hiring freeze, tech layoffs). That said, the program I attended remains one of the most popular in NYC. Incoming students should expect a harsher environment than the numbers in the rankings suggest, to be prepared psychologically.

 

[arohan]

I graduated from an MFE program years ago, and at the time my impression was that fewer than 30% — possibly even under 20% — of international students landed legitimate U.S. offers. I didn’t run any formal statistics, but this was based on the cases I saw around me. Many students ended up returning to their home countries within a year. Since they wanted to use their OPT and remain in the U.S., some even reported fabricated offers. Because of this, I believe the employment statistics for most programs are considerably inflated.

I see a top 5 program saying 70+% employment at graduation and at the same time a mail from their career services stating 40% graduates had accepted full time offers just 10 days before graduation. Really don’t know how these employment stats work.

 

[Yuvraj Chauhan]

I may be biased, and my experience was years ago. I prefer not to disclose the exact program I attended to avoid sharing potentially misleading information. This reflects a broader issue in the quant job market rather than a problem with any specific program. There are more quant job seekers than available positions, especially over the past two years (hiring freeze, tech layoffs). That said, the program I attended remains one of the most popular in NYC. Incoming students should expect a harsher environment than the numbers in the rankings suggest, to be prepared psychologically.

My money is on this being probably NYU

 

[Yuvraj Chauhan]

I see a top 5 program saying 70+% employment at graduation and at the same time a mail from their career services stating 40% graduates had accepted full time offers just 10 days before graduation. Really don’t know how these employment stats work.

True, it is a little perplexing to see such a wild discrepancy in these statistics. What I'm more surprised by is seeing Cornell's statistic for employment at graduation to be in the low 40s and Columbia MAFN to be in the 50s.

@Andy Nguyen , out of curiosity, does the "% employed" statistic only consider those who are working, and not those who are pursuing academia (i.e.,a PhD or a predoc), since there is a case made by a few folks that being a Doctoral candidate is similar in some senses to being an employee of your university since you're contributing to its research

This question is more towards veterans in the industry or anyone who's currently doing their MSFM/MSFE. The statistic for employment at 3 months from graduation, would it not include only those people who are domestic citizens in the US? The reason I'm curious about this metric is that most programs at ~80% international, and the changes to the grace period for finding employment after graduation is 60 days. So naturally, by the three month mark, most of the internationals who didn't find a job would have left and it probably doesn't paint the most accurate picture. Perhaps QN could move the 3 month mark to 2 months given that most candidates at these programs are internationals and this would be a better marker of placement success?

 

[arohan]

True, it is a little perplexing to see such a wild discrepancy in these statistics. What I'm more surprised by is seeing Cornell's statistic for employment at graduation to be in the low 40s and Columbia MAFN to be in the 50s.

@Andy Nguyen , out of curiosity, does the "% employed" statistic only consider those who are working, and not those who are pursuing academia (i.e.,a PhD or a predoc), since there is a case made by a few folks that being a Doctoral candidate is similar in some senses to being an employee of your university since you're contributing to its research

This question is more towards veterans in the industry or anyone who's currently doing their MSFM/MSFE. The statistic for employment at 3 months from graduation, would it not include only those people who are domestic citizens in the US? The reason I'm curious about this metric is that most programs at ~80% international, and the changes to the grace period for finding employment after graduation is 60 days. So naturally, by the three month mark, most of the internationals who didn't find a job would have left and it probably doesn't paint the most accurate picture. Perhaps QN could move the 3 month mark to 2 months given that most candidates at these programs are internationals and this would be a better marker of placement success?

You get 60 days after graduating to apply for OPT and then another 90 days of unemployment on OPT. So, most international students get 3-6 months to find jobs. And you can extend this even longer. A vast majority of campus jobs do fulfill the requirements for OPT. I’ve seen international students remaining for a lot longer than 3 months to look for jobs in the US.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@Andy Nguyen , out of curiosity, does the "% employed" statistic only consider those who are working, and not those who are pursuing academia (i.e.,a PhD or a predoc), since there is a case made by a few folks that being a Doctoral candidate is similar in some senses to being an employee of your university since you're contributing to its research

We ask the programs to categorize the graduates into 3 groups: seeking FT employment, not seeking employment (doing PhD), and status unknown. The placement stats are then collected on the seeking FT employment group.

 

[Yuvraj Chauhan]

Wow, that's nice to know @arohan !

 

[Yuvraj Chauhan]

We ask the programs to categorize the graduates into 3 groups: seeking FT employment, not seeking employment (doing PhD), and status unknown. The placement stats are then collected on the seeking FT employment group.

Thanks a tonne Andy!

 

[quantlarper]

I may be biased, and my experience was years ago. I prefer not to disclose the exact program I attended to avoid sharing potentially misleading information. This reflects a broader issue in the quant job market rather than a problem with any specific program. There are more quant job seekers than available positions, especially over the past two years (hiring freeze, tech layoffs). That said, the program I attended remains one of the most popular in NYC. Incoming students should expect a harsher environment than the numbers in the rankings suggest, to be prepared psychologically.

This remains true right now, I'm currently in one of the top MFE programs on this list. Most of the main employers for MFE grads are having wider hiring freezes (GS) or outright not sponsoring for H1-B visas anymore (JP, might be true for MS too).

Sell-side FO grad roles seem mostly wiped out if you're not in from the internships; anecdotally I've had 8 buy-side processes through the initial resume screen and only 1 sell-side process this graduate recruitment cycle. Competition's getting very stiff for the few roles that are still open. I'd say even a good amount of the top students in my program have no jobs lined up with 1 month left to graduation, let alone the average student here. So either these numbers pushed by admissions are inflated or we'd see a nosedive next ranking

 

[Andy Nguyen]

So either these numbers pushed by admissions are inflated or we'd see a nosedive next ranking

The ranking used the last fully graduated cohort i.e Dec 2024 or early 2025. The cohort that graduating in Dec 2025 will be reflected in the next ranking.
This is because the timing of our ranking and the requirement for 3-month trailing data.
And yes, the employment numbers for next ranking could be terrible for many programs. We will have to wait and see how bad and which program will survive.

 

[Yuvraj Chauhan]

This remains true right now, I'm currently in one of the top MFE programs on this list. Most of the main employers for MFE grads are having wider hiring freezes (GS) or outright not sponsoring for H1-B visas anymore (JP, might be true for MS too).

Sell-side FO grad roles seem mostly wiped out if you're not in from the internships; anecdotally I've had 8 buy-side processes through the initial resume screen and only 1 sell-side process this graduate recruitment cycle. Competition's getting very stiff for the few roles that are still open. I'd say even a good amount of the top students in my program have no jobs lined up with 1 month left to graduation, let alone the average student here. So either these numbers pushed by admissions are inflated or we'd see a nosedive next ranking

Scary

 

[redoctober]

We ask the programs to categorize the graduates into 3 groups: seeking FT employment, not seeking employment (doing PhD), and status unknown. The placement stats are then collected on the seeking FT employment group.

Maybe “status unknown” should be incorporated into the unemployment denominator. Career teams are being rewarded for poor information tracking with an inflated employment rate and average salary.

It’s natural to assume that many of those who aren’t in contact with their program anymore are unhappy with their outcome.

And some (many?) schools are counting school sponsored unpaid projects, designed to help international students maintain OPT status, as full time employment. Misrepresentation at best, fraud at worst.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Yes, I think we would have our own reporting standard for future rankings, clarifying many of these gray areas that can be exploited. It would separate the wheat from the chaff. You may see a larger disparity between programs.