From the 2023 rankings
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Financial Engineering
4.75 star(s)20 reviews | 93 | 4.0 | 88% | 100% | 87% | $169,634 | $78,142 | 78 FT, 7 PT |
| 4 | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA/New York, NY
Computational Finance
4.92 star(s)38 reviews | 91 | 4.1 | 88% | 96% | 88% | $132,291 | $92,534 | 96 FT |
Berkeley is a 1-year program. That goes against them. You're paying 78K to do portfolio-building projects, get the brand name and make a quick career transition. What do I mean by this? 1 year @ Berkeley = Projects + Rebranding. Example you take someone adept Statistics, and intro them to Data Science. They realize it's 80% the same, learn the other 20% and do DS-based projects that potential employers would like. Berkeley pro vs
CMU... California. Even though the city of Berkeley itself is a bit run down and overpriced, in comparison to NYC it's cheap, and you have the rest of the Bay Area of California to enjoy.
If you want to
learn quant finance, do a 2-year program, and in this case go to
CMU.
CMU downside... New York City. Yes. It being in NYC is worse than the 93K price tag. Haha.
You should do a course curriculum comparison. Also, talk to representatives of the program to find out which elective can be taken and why. Sometimes electives require enough people to sign-up/vote/enroll in, for them to take place. See if and when that is the case.
Also, where do you want to work? Which state would you prefer? Which companies? Buy or Sell? You should message people who went to those programs on LinkedIn to get some insight.
