COMPARE CMU MSCF (15k) vs. UChicago MSFM (60%) vs. Columbia MSFE (FinEcon)

[escheffer]

You didn't get the point. You should re-read the original post I guess. Apart from Princeton, CMU, and UCB, tell me any other US QuantFin program that places students into those types of firms regularly.

UCB and CMU places probably only about 5 (sometimes maybe 2-3) student(s) in those types of firms per year. And saying the roles are not competitive is such a laugh in the face of thousands who applied and desperately desired those roles.

No need to have any further arguments, when it comes to job search, rankings are not as important as your personal qualities. If you are exceptional, you will get the job. It's as simple as that!

Funny is that there are even folks from schools that have worse rankings than Boston, studied courses like Maths, Stats,, no masters and they are working in those firms. You should spend more time on LinkedIn just as I did before you come back here next time to make a point.

My opinion is also that personal curriculum and preparation matters more than simply the university you've got your masters (provided that they are the same tier). For UCB, CMU, CU, NYU and UChicago, I don't think there is much difference in terms of landing an interview or education-wise. It would probably go to personal preference and costs. CMU and UCB salaries are better because the best applicants eventually went there, not because these applicants did CMU or UCB. It's the other way around.

 

[escheffer]

I still think there is a case to make that the Cost benefit of CMU is perhaps even better than UChicago. Yes cost is higher, but so is the benefit. The curriculum (at least to me) seems much more "future proof" in terms of my understanding of the buy side positions im exploring - more data science, more ML, more computational finance. This makes me think that what you will learn at CMU will prepare you better and in turn make you perform better long-term at these positions, hence a higher benefit. This is hard to accurately gauge though of course. Also CMU has a higher average starting salary, so the increased cost is somewhat dampened through your higher sign-on bonus and higher savings your first couple of years of working. CMU also has a 5-year career report which looks very promising in terms of buy-side prospects salary progression for CMU students. Also interesting is what alumni report as the most valuable skill for QF success: 1) 53% say programming, 2) 28% say data science, 3) 24% say softskills... exactly what the CMU curriculum is centered around.

This is what puts me on the fence - Chicago is very obviously great value for money (and perhaps even a better overall brand name than CMU), but I think CMU, even with a higher price tag might be a better long-term investment for success in the industry.

Keep in mind that UChicago's MSFM curriculum has only 4 mandatory subjects (all with great faculty) and the rest are electives, so you can tailor your own curriculum to your career goals, which in my opinion values more (besides the fact that people there can take classes from the world-class Statistics, Econ and Business schools as well).