Another poster started a thread last night about this, but seems to have deleted his post. Nonetheless, I wanted to open up a conversation about this for future prospective students to read, as it's a good topic and I've been finding the current information to be a little thin.
Here's what I had posted:
I'm leaning heavily towards Cornell. Their placement stats seem similar to that of Columbia's MSFE program (source: the slide deck they showed to admitted students, with placements for 2013 and 2014), and possibly better than Columbia's MSOR program (?). They also have a smaller class size and the program is run by two former Wall Street practitioners. I spoke to a current or former student recently and they said the career team really works their ass off to place students, and they felt that probably no other program approaches the level of dedication Cornell has for its students' placements.
So it sounds like they have CMU-level placement help. Also, the program has been around since the mid-1990's, so I would imagine that the program's alumni network is quite extensive by this point.
My goal is to become a trader. For what it's worth, I managed to find a page on Columbia's MSOR site that showed that, of the graduates who went into finance, about 25% ended up in "sales, trading, and equities." But I just get an uneasy feeling about turning down a finance-specific program for a generalist program, with double or triple the class size, and with many of those classmates not being specifically focused on finance.
From my humble perspective, it seems like Columbia MSOR can be a great choice on an absolute basis, but on a relative basis it seems to make less sense if you also hold an offer from Cornell MFE. If anyone has more knowledge (actual knowledge, not "internet knowledge"), please enlighten us.
Here's what I had posted:
I'm leaning heavily towards Cornell. Their placement stats seem similar to that of Columbia's MSFE program (source: the slide deck they showed to admitted students, with placements for 2013 and 2014), and possibly better than Columbia's MSOR program (?). They also have a smaller class size and the program is run by two former Wall Street practitioners. I spoke to a current or former student recently and they said the career team really works their ass off to place students, and they felt that probably no other program approaches the level of dedication Cornell has for its students' placements.
So it sounds like they have CMU-level placement help. Also, the program has been around since the mid-1990's, so I would imagine that the program's alumni network is quite extensive by this point.
My goal is to become a trader. For what it's worth, I managed to find a page on Columbia's MSOR site that showed that, of the graduates who went into finance, about 25% ended up in "sales, trading, and equities." But I just get an uneasy feeling about turning down a finance-specific program for a generalist program, with double or triple the class size, and with many of those classmates not being specifically focused on finance.
From my humble perspective, it seems like Columbia MSOR can be a great choice on an absolute basis, but on a relative basis it seems to make less sense if you also hold an offer from Cornell MFE. If anyone has more knowledge (actual knowledge, not "internet knowledge"), please enlighten us.
