COMPARE Columbia MSFE vs Berkeley MFE

Archimedes · 3/2/14

Hi to everyone!

A few days ago, I received offers for the Columbia MSFE, the Berkeley MFE. However, I am totally confused on what to choose from. My thoughts are the following:

1) Berkeley has excellent record placement and at the same time, internship is incorporated in the program. On the other hand, taking into consideration what I have read, career services in Columbia are not good (correct me if I am wrong) and at the same time no internship is incorporated in the program.

2) The program in Berkeley starts in March 2015, something which will give me additional time to become a more prepared candidate.

3) The class size in Berkeley is much smaller than in Columbia, something which enables the interaction between the students and the professors.

However the major concern for picking Berkeley is its location far from NY, something which might prove to be a severe deterrent factor from placing a job (distance, expenses, time).

I would be grateful if you could give me some advice on my concerns. Any further thought is more than welcome of course!

Thank you very much!

moretodo · 3/2/14

It depends on your profile - What's your profile ? If you have 2-3 years of work experience, I'd recommend Berkeley

Cham · 3/2/14

And if you have no experience?

HelenM · 3/3/14

these two are really top programs, so I would not consider too much on the program-related factors (placement, class size etc.) I think the life at Berkeley and Columbia is significant different. I will suggest you to consider which kind of life style you want to stay during this 1-2 years.

BTW, can you share when did you get the 1st interview and hear back from Berkeley?

moretodo · 3/3/14

Cham said:
And if you have no experience?

You will be at a significant disadvantage since most of your peers will have work experience so would not get as many interviews through the program as your peers with work experience would be given preference. Also, most jobs that come in at UCB MFE are mid career opportunities as opposed to entry level at Columbia which is more relevant and compatible to your profile.

fe app · 3/3/14

For this coming yr they extended the columbia program to include an internshop and an extra fall semester unless u push to graduate in august

jasonshieh · 3/4/14

Have u ever applied CMU?

ygmwy · 3/4/14

Columbia MSFE Career Placement is not bad. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about it because it is secretive, and people get very anxious in the fall before the major recruiting season. Many of the jobs that go to the Columbia MSFEs are not advertised, so MSOR students, and even the other MSFEs don't really know how deep the pool goes. The way it works is employers come to Columbia and hand pick from the MSFE resumes who they want to contact. Then only those students are contacted, so no one, not even the MSFEs really know how many jobs there are. (Not to mention the lack of communication between the Chinese and non-Chinese speaking halves of the class.) But from my personal experience, there are a lot, and the best positions are not advertised. As long as you write a good resume and tell the placement people what you want, you will get calls from secret firms with non-advertised opportunities without having to lift a finger--and there is very high demand since it's New York. I personally didn't even have to apply to anything myself.

Also, people have a bad opinion of its placement because Columbia accepts a lot of foreign students with poor communication skills, and these students have a struggle finding a job (although they usually do in the end). This coupled with the fact that the process itself is non-transparent adds to the mystery and anxiety. Also, Columbia's career placement officers are tough people who have "no sympathy" and no patience for incompetence, so don't go asking them stupid questions. If you get on their bad side, you will be mostly on your own. If you get on their good side, you will have a lot of opportunities. I think in the end, the best Columbia jobs are more awesome than the best Berkley jobs, but then again, I don't know much about Berkley or how it works, nor why everyone says it has the best job placement. (Columbia's numbers are just as good.) Then again, it's also a good program from what I hear, and you will get a good job just fine. I just like being in New York.

fe app · 3/4/14

ygmwy said:
Columbia MSFE Career Placement is not bad. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about it because it is secretive, and people get very anxious in the fall before the major recruiting season. Many of the jobs that go to the Columbia MSFEs are not advertised, so MSOR students, and even the other MSFEs don't really know how deep the pool goes. The way it works is employers come to Columbia and hand pick from the MSFE resumes who they want to contact. Then only those students are contacted, so no one, not even the MSFEs really know how many jobs there are. (Not to mention the lack of communication between the Chinese and non-Chinese speaking halves of the class.) But from my personal experience, there are a lot, and the best positions are not advertised. As long as you write a good resume and tell the placement people what you want, you will get calls from secret firms with non-advertised opportunities without having to lift a finger--and there is very high demand since it's New York. I personally didn't even have to apply to anything myself.

Also, people have a bad opinion of its placement because Columbia accepts a lot of foreign students with poor communication skills, and these students have a struggle finding a job (although they usually do in the end). This coupled with the fact that the process itself is non-transparent adds to the mystery and anxiety. Also, Columbia's career placement officers are tough people who have "no sympathy" and no patience for incompetence, so don't go asking them stupid questions. If you get on their bad side, you will be mostly on your own. If you get on their good side, you will have a lot of opportunities. I think in the end, the best Columbia jobs are more awesome than the best Berkley jobs, but then again, I don't know much about Berkley or how it works, nor why everyone says it has the best job placement. (Columbia's numbers are just as good.) Then again, it's also a good program from what I hear, and you will get a good job just fine. I just like being in New York.

hey thanks for this post. hugely informative bc many people think that columbia doesnt have as good a recruiting dept as other programs, which i found not to be the case during my research of different programs and the fact that my interview was with the specific placement officer for mfe.
i dont wanna hijack this thread but do u know how columbia would compare to cmu?

ygmwy · 3/4/14

Those are the two programs which I was deciding between. The reason I chose Columbia is because I found that Columbia is very good at only teaching you what you need to know, and not wasting time with things that you don't need to know to interview (like measure theory, intro-level programming, or elementary probability and statistics). They call it the "Engineering Approach." I found that I was ready to interview much earlier than my Princeton and CMU peers, and the curriculum Columbia gives is extremely rigorous, so that when you get out, you are ready for anything. Many of the courses given to MSFEs are taught at a PhD level. Yes, there is a lot of hand-waving, but you don't need to know that stuff. When are you ever going to use measure theory in your job as a quant? Probably never! Most people forget that stuff anyway.

CMU is not a bad school, but the best professors (that are actually practicing and making money in the field) are really at Columbia. I view Carnegie Melon as a very good school--that is, they are very good at doing things a school does: train you in academics (useless or not), and make connections with industry to get a job. But Columbia is more than just a good school. It is a better network, a better campus, and attracts the best people and the best opportunities. You won't get much industry reality at CMU until you're out of school.

fe app · 3/4/14

ygmwy said:
Those are the two programs which I was deciding between. The reason I chose Columbia is because I found that Columbia is very good at only teaching you what you need to know, and not wasting time with things that you don't need to know to interview (like measure theory, intro-level programming, or elementary probability and statistics). They call it the "Engineering Approach." I found that I was ready to interview much earlier than my Princeton and CMU peers, and the curriculum Columbia gives is extremely rigorous, so that when you get out, you are ready for anything. Many of the courses given to MSFEs are taught at a PhD level. Yes, there is a lot of hand-waving, but you don't need to know that stuff. When are you ever going to use measure theory in your job as a quant? Probably never! Most people forget that stuff anyway.

CMU is not a bad school, but the best professors (that are actually practicing and making money in the field) are really at Columbia. I view Carnegie Melon as a very good school--that is, they are very good at doing things a school does: train you in academics (useless or not), and make connections with industry to get a job. But Columbia is more than just a good school. It is a better network, a better campus, and attracts the best people and the best opportunities. You won't get much industry reality at CMU until you're out of school.

all of this is extremely helpful and i think will go a long way towards making my decision, which is due tomorrow at 11:59pm. so this couldnt have come at a better time.

curltron · 3/4/14

Archimedes said:
Hi to everyone!

A few days ago, I received offers for the Columbia MSFE, the Berkeley MFE. However, I am totally confused on what to choose from. My thoughts are the following:

1) Berkeley has excellent record placement and at the same time, internship is incorporated in the program. On the other hand, taking into consideration what I have read, career services in Columbia are not good (correct me if I am wrong) and at the same time no internship is incorporated in the program.

2) The program in Berkeley starts in March 2015, something which will give me additional time to become a more prepared candidate.

3) The class size in Berkeley is much smaller than in Columbia, something which enables the interaction between the students and the professors.

However the major concern for picking Berkeley is its location far from NY, something which might prove to be a severe deterrent factor from placing a job (distance, expenses, time).

I would be grateful if you could give me some advice on my concerns. Any further thought is more than welcome of course!

Thank you very much!

Hi Archimedes. I'm a current UCB student so I can comment on the Berkeley MFE. The career services at UCB are phenomenal. The class size is much smaller which allows them to spend plenty of time placing each student, and as you said, more interaction with professors. For my fulltime offer, I went in to talk with the program director about an automated trading role I was interviewing for and wasn't hearing back from. She called up the MD that night, and literally, the next day I had an offer. Placement seems to be the top priority here, and you get started with mock interviews within the first week. For us, interviews from places like Morgan Stanley came in the first month (and they took almost 1/6 of the class, at least 2 of them were fresh graduates). The program director spends extra time getting to know the students and re-reading their applications/resumes so she can sell them properly. Note the interview itself came via the program as well, and I was also a fresh graduate in the program.

If you really just like studying near NYC, then of course Berkeley can't offer that, but I wouldn't say it's any damper to placement opportunities. In fact, I'd be hard pressed imagining any program spending as much time on placement per student as Berkeley. I know at least two of my fellow students are flying out for interviews with Goldman this week in GSAM, expenses paid. Berkeley MFEs are all over NYC, and I think it's very likely you will interview with one, even coming from Columbia.

Be careful listening to non-students about Berkeley's placement. Moretodo in particular is someone who has been waitlisted, and has been making false claims related to UCB:
https://www.quantnet.com/threads/ucb-mfe-admit-conditions.16263