• C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
    Highly recommended by thousands of MFE students. Covers essential C++ topics with applications to financial engineering. Learn more Join!
    Python for Finance with Intro to Data Science
    Gain practical understanding of Python to read, understand, and write professional Python code for your first day on the job. Learn more Join!
    An Intuition-Based Options Primer for FE
    Ideal for entry level positions interviews and graduate studies, specializing in options trading arbitrage and options valuation models. Learn more Join!

Columbia MFE Columbia MFE 21

Joined
5/1/20
Messages
18
Points
13
Does anyone know if Columbia is only considering the prerecorded questions that were included after the application this year? It seems that they had sent out live interviews by this time in previous years.
 
I personally have not received an invite for a face-to-face and have not heard of anyone else getting one either. It seems that they may be taking the same approach as schools like Cornell and only using the prerecorded 5-question interview.
 
Does anyone know if Columbia is only considering the prerecorded questions that were included after the application this year? It seems that they had sent out live interviews by this time in previous years.
I personally have not received an invite for a face-to-face and have not heard of anyone else getting one either. It seems that they may be taking the same approach as schools like Cornell and only using the prerecorded 5-question interview.
 
Same here, it was a prerecorded interview with 3 questions. When do we get our decision for Columbia mfe?, according to last year it was by first week of April.
 
Same here, it was a prerecorded interview with 3 questions. When do we get our decision for Columbia mfe?, according to last year it was by first week of April.
Last year the first round of decisions were given out sometime in February I believe. There was a decision deadline for round one admits of March 10th. I think the April admissions were the last round.
 
Last year the first round of decisions were given out sometime in February I believe. There was a decision deadline for round one admits of March 10th. I think the April admissions were the last round.
yes you are right just saw in quant net, but only admits were released in feb most of the reject are updated as march-may
 
yes you are right just saw in quant net, but only admits were released in feb most of the reject are updated as march-may
I think a decent number of those admitted would wait until close to the deadline hoping for results from other programs (CMU, Princeton, Berkeley), so you can expect Columbia to send out more offers shortly after that deposit deadline.
 
Has anyone received an 'application under review" mail yet? From what I gather, in previous years applicants generally would have received this mail by now.
 
Me too. Did u send the official score report??
You mean GRE and TOEFL? Yes. Did the video interview on the 10th.
They mention on the website as well that they will send a notification when the application is under review. But I haven't received it yet.
Has anyone here received the mail?
 
I think a decent number of those admitted would wait until close to the deadline hoping for results from other programs (CMU, Princeton, Berkeley), so you can expect Columbia to send out more offers shortly after that deposit deadline.
Got it, are you currently part of the program. If so would you suggest someone from cs undergrad with intent to become a front desk quant to join the program if admitted interms of learning and job opportunities from Columbia mfe and how was your experience. Would help many of us a lot if you can provide us an answer.
 
Got it, are you currently part of the program. If so would you suggest someone from cs undergrad with intent to become a front desk quant to join the program if admitted interms of learning and job opportunities from Columbia mfe and how was your experience. Would help many of us a lot if you can provide us an answer.
I was admitted last year, currently in my second semester. Hard to say how useful the courses are, first semester was mostly about the fundamental maths (stochastic, time series, convex opt), which could be boring for those with prior experience.

In terms of job opportunities, I know a couple of my classmates have secured their summer internships but I only regularly keep in touch with a few (hard to chat with 60+ people only relying on zoom/discord). I'd say from the ones I know of, it was a 3:1 split between banks and buy-side.
 
You mean GRE and TOEFL? Yes. Did the video interview on the 10th.
They mention on the website as well that they will send a notification when the application is under review. But I haven't received it yet.
Has anyone here received the mail?
Hi - Does any of you acknowledgement of official GRE score receipt? I am not seeing Official GRE Score Received in the checklist, however, ETS shows it was delivered in the first week of December. I uploaded unofficial score just to be sure. I did the video interview soon after the application was submitted at deadline. Any insight on GRE score report appreciated. Thanks.
 
Hi - Does any of you acknowledgement of official GRE score receipt? I am not seeing Official GRE Score Received in the checklist, however, ETS shows it was delivered in the first week of December. I uploaded unofficial score just to be sure. I did the video interview soon after the application was submitted at deadline. Any insight on GRE score report appreciated. Thanks.
I have the same issue, however, a few weeks back once my official score was delivered it did show up on the checklist and then disappeared a few days afterwards. The website says that they will contact us if they are not able to verify the scores so I wouldn't be too worried about that.
 
I have the same issue, however, a few weeks back once my official score was delivered it did show up on the checklist and then disappeared a few days afterwards. The website says that they will contact us if they are not able to verify the scores so I wouldn't be too worried about that.
Thank you for sharing that insight.
 
I was admitted last year, currently in my second semester. Hard to say how useful the courses are, first semester was mostly about the fundamental maths (stochastic, time series, convex opt), which could be boring for those with prior experience.

In terms of job opportunities, I know a couple of my classmates have secured their summer internships but I only regularly keep in touch with a few (hard to chat with 60+ people only relying on zoom/discord). I'd say from the ones I know of, it was a 3:1 split between banks and buy-side.
Maybe you can help me with a curiosity I am having. I posted this on a forum a few days ago:

“Hi everyone, I got accepted recently to the Cornell MFE Program and am still waiting to hear from Columbia. I have seen many people on other threads compare the two programs and, for the most part, award Columbia as the favorite. It seems that the two biggest biggest reasons for this is the reputation of Columbia's program and its superior location in NYC. I see how Cornell's location in Ithaca is problematic, but shouldn't this disadvantage be somewhat mitigated with the semester at CFEM? This would seem to allow for ample networking opportunities as one works with practitioners coupled with the excellent career services Cornell has that could be comparable to the advantage of Columbia's location. Why does their location and overall program excellence clearly exceed that of Cornell's even with the semester at CFEM? Anyone with a more informed perspective able to share some insights would be very helpful (fingers crossed I even get into Columbia).

I am also specifically leaning towards a career in quant research so if either program stands out as a better option given that, please let me know. Thank you guys!”

Maybe you have a better understanding of the two programs and can shed some light.
 
I was admitted last year, currently in my second semester. Hard to say how useful the courses are, first semester was mostly about the fundamental maths (stochastic, time series, convex opt), which could be boring for those with prior experience.

In terms of job opportunities, I know a couple of my classmates have secured their summer internships but I only regularly keep in touch with a few (hard to chat with 60+ people only relying on zoom/discord). I'd say from the ones I know of, it was a 3:1 split between banks and buy-side.
Oh thats good to know, what I have observed from most universities latest admission q and a replies was they are trying to move thier program more toward data science and ml degree. Also most placements are offered for risk , data sci roles in colleges like ncsu, gatech etc. Wanted to know if columbia's program is rigorous for traning a student to make a career as quant researcher or analyst
 
I was admitted last year, currently in my second semester. Hard to say how useful the courses are, first semester was mostly about the fundamental maths (stochastic, time series, convex opt), which could be boring for those with prior experience.

In terms of job opportunities, I know a couple of my classmates have secured their summer internships but I only regularly keep in touch with a few (hard to chat with 60+ people only relying on zoom/discord). I'd say from the ones I know of, it was a 3:1 split between banks and buy-side.
Oh thats good to know, what I have observed from most universities latest admission q and a replies was they are trying to move thier program more toward data science and ml degree. Also most placements are offered for risk , data sci roles in colleges like ncsu, gatech etc. Wanted to know if columbia's program is rigorous for traning a student to make a career as quant researcher or analyst
 
Maybe you can help me with a curiosity I am having. I posted this on a forum a few days ago:

“Hi everyone, I got accepted recently to the Cornell MFE Program and am still waiting to hear from Columbia. I have seen many people on other threads compare the two programs and, for the most part, award Columbia as the favorite. It seems that the two biggest biggest reasons for this is the reputation of Columbia's program and its superior location in NYC. I see how Cornell's location in Ithaca is problematic, but shouldn't this disadvantage be somewhat mitigated with the semester at CFEM? This would seem to allow for ample networking opportunities as one works with practitioners coupled with the excellent career services Cornell has that could be comparable to the advantage of Columbia's location. Why does their location and overall program excellence clearly exceed that of Cornell's even with the semester at CFEM? Anyone with a more informed perspective able to share some insights would be very helpful (fingers crossed I even get into Columbia).

I am also specifically leaning towards a career in quant research so if either program stands out as a better option given that, please let me know. Thank you guys!”

Maybe you have a better understanding of the two programs and can shed some light.
I also got admitted into Cornell and UChicago aside from Columbia, but personally I don't consider those two to be on the same tier as Columbia (which I'd place alongside Princeton/Baruch/CMU/Berkeley as "tier 1" quant programs). I'm sure others will disagree with it, but that was (is) my stance.

Location-wise I don't think it's a super big deal, especially post-covid most, if not all of the big firms (banks/funds/prop) would have developed systems to interview/test applicants remotely, and by the time you recruit, it'd be their third time around (first was for Summer 20, then now Summer 21) so they should be more comfortable and prepared. I'm probably having a very skewed perception of the "NYC location" factor since I haven't really had many chances to go to campus or meet my classmates, let alone use the location advantage to network with people in the industry, maybe I'll have a different perspective after the vaccines are rolled out and we can go back to socializing, maybe not. Try to reach out to some Cornell MFE students or alumni, see whether they see the location as a disadvantage in their career development.

Oh thats good to know, what I have observed from most universities latest admission q and a replies was they are trying to move thier program more toward data science and ml degree. Also most placements are offered for risk , data sci roles in colleges like ncsu, gatech etc. Wanted to know if columbia's program is rigorous for traning a student to make a career as quant researcher or analyst
There are ML courses too (intro ML, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and possibly some others I haven't had the chance to look at), but the core courses are pretty vanilla (basic math finance intro, convex opt, stochastic, time series, continuous time models, monte carlo). Previously they were offered 3-3 in the first two semesters, so you take 3 cores + 1 elective in each semester, but this time around we had to do 4 of them in Fall and 2 in Spring possibly to accommodate those who joined in Fall B or Spring semesters (previously Columbia only admits people for Fall start).

Regarding my classmates' placement at banks, I think it's a pretty close breakdown between quant analytics and quant risk management roles, and a few of them got quant trading roles. Take this with a grain of salt, I didn't survey the entire class, these are only based on the few of them I'm close enough to discuss job offers with.
 
Back
Top