Columbia MFE Columbia MSFE Placement Record

[qchan]

I went back to Columbia's website and they now have placement records for their 2008 - 2009 class.
Seems like their placement record is strong, but I'll let you all make that judgement for yourselves. This is for MSFE only.

****************************************************************************************************

The full-time placement statistics for students who started in July 2008 (completed the Program in 2009) are listed below.

Total number of graduating students: 55
(2 students did not respond to the survey)

Students with employment*: 49

Percentage of students placed*: 92%

Range of Annual Base Salary: $65,000 - $125,000

Sign-on Bonus: $5,000 - $40,000

First Year-End Bonus: 10% - 150% of Base Salary **

*of respondents
**historically

MSFE Placement 2008-2009

 

[Joe Yu]

Columbia MSFE placement stats available

The full-time placement statistics for students who started in July 2008 (completed the Program in 2009) are listed below.

Total number of graduating students: 55
(2 students did not respond to the survey)

Students with employment*: 49

Percentage of students placed*: 92%

Range of Annual Base Salary: $65,000 - $125,000

Sign-on Bonus: $5,000 - $40,000

http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/pages/graduate/ms_financial_eng/fe_placement_08_09.html



I wonder what the placement for MSOR students who went into finance is. Since both MSOR and MSFE students get similar career service, I would assume the stats for MSOR to be similar (or at least I hope).

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I'm very glad to see Columbia MSFE finally publishes their placement stats. We have been calling on them for a long time. I hope other programs will follow as well.

It's often inaccurate to correlate the stats from one program to its sibling programs. MSOR is several times the size of MSFE.

Moreover, the stat does not reveal when the survey took place, the average, median salary.

At first glance, the premium cost for Columbia brand does not seem to translate well into higher salary compared to other non-Ivy programs like Baruch, UCB, CMU.

 

[Joy Pathak]

I wonder what the placement for MSOR students who went into finance is. Since both MSOR and MSFE students get similar career service, I would assume the stats for MSOR to be similar (or at least I hope).

That is a really BIG assumption. The MSOR program has 150 students on average and they are mostly people who did not get into the MFE or MAFN programs. I would find out what the stats really are. See if you can get the stats for the other two programs. That will really show how strong the Columbia programs really are considering they have a total of 250 "FE" students every year. Although many MSOR students might not have the FE focus too actually. Maybe there is someway for them to differentiate this for the people who do the stats.
If the stats are good it will really show how strong Columbia is considering the size of the class. I feel like the MSOR program stats will not be as good.

 

[qchan]

Yeah, I don't think you can correlate the MSFE stats with the MSOR stats. I went to visit campus and talked to a couple of MSOR students. Both said that MSOR is a strong program and they do get e-mails constantly about career service. As usual, they said that if you are a citizen/PR, your chances are much better to find a job/internship. One is currently doing an internship at a hedge-fund.

Andy, I understand that we don't know when the survey may have taken place. Further, at Columbia, you are able to graduate in August or in December, so that will also affect the timing of survey. From one student who graduated the MSFE program, I was told that around 30% graduate in July and 70% graduate in December.

I do disagree about your assumption that the premium price at Columbia does not translate to high salaries. Maybe compared to Baruch's tuition, but CMU/UCB/Princeton's tuition are all higher than Columbia's and from the salary range, the range is pretty much identical as well as the positions/company. We could get a better picture if they did indeed post median salary for the graduating group, but this report is better than nothing.

What the survey does tell us though, is the fact that students DO find jobs, despite the reputation/myth around here that the program is too big and that only a small percentage of students are able to find jobs after graduating.

 

[Joe Yu]

Did those MSOR students you talked to mention anything about their placement rate? I personally know a guy who graduated from MSOR last yr working at Morgan Stanley now. Also there are a few posts on here about MSOR students getting interviews/jobs with bulge bracket firms. And there is a profile of an options trader on BarCap website who went to Columbia for MSOR. I will ask the MSOR staffs about their program's placement rate when I visit them for open house next week.

 

[qchan]

No, I did ask about others but the student said that there are a lot of people. However the student did say that not everyone in the MSOR department is interested in going to the finance/quant path, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise since OR is more than just finance. I'm pretty sure that still a majority of the students are wanting to go the finance route, but at least the competition isn't ALL MSOR students. You still have MSFE and MAFN too, although the student didn't know anything about the MAFN, since its not in the IEOR department.