Boston University Math Finance
Having read the experience a QN member had during his/her first semester at NYU, I feel compelled to share my experience at Boston University.
First, it seems the program admitted virtually anyone that applied. Sadly, there were students in the program who didn't know how to find eigenvalues, invert matrices and let alone solve an elementary differential equation. I am willing to bet that close to 95% of the students (if not greater) knew nothing of the field they were getting into.
We had 4 classes: Fundamentals of Finance, Probability,
C++, and Optimization. Probability was decent, thought it seem the professor spent too much time on combinatorics and not enough on the more crucial topics such as limit theorem and convergence of random variables. Personally, I would have prefered some exposure to analysis as a precursor to stochastic calculus - the closest we ever came was a brief discussion of the Banash-Tarski paradox.
Fundamentals of Finance was pretty much a waste of time. The professor was obsessed with Mathematica and everything in the class revolved around it. The course was entirely too theoretical - there was little to no attempt made at any actual applications. Sure, the class mentioned what it means to bootstrap the spot curve but I guarantee majority of the class has no clue how to do it and I'm even willing to bet a good number of the students don't know what LIBOR is. It almost felt as if I was taking a financial theory course from the Economics department. The 'hand-on' portion of the class consisted of being given all the necessary Mathematica code and seeing what happened to price of a call as volatility increased. Speaking of options, the discussion of the Greeks consisted of being given the formulas and being told what exposure each hedged. There was however absolutely no mention of how to implement a delta hedge.
C++ was also quite sad. The professor very disorganized - even with 2 TAs, homeworks were often returned late. The 1st homework was simply to install Visual
C++ Express. Most homeworks required little to no deep thought. Writing a simple date class was about as complicated as it got. The students cheated on the homeworks and exams like it was their job. I notified both the director and the professor, though nothing seem to come out of it. I especially enjoyed how the professor managed to cover finite difference methods, polymorphism, virtual function, abstract classes, and UML in a rather brief and hurried manner. The coverage of FDM consisted of taking everything from Wilmott's Mathematics of Financial Derivatives book and putting it on the board.
Optimization had the potential to be a great course, but unsurprisingly it fell miserably short. The course delved too much into the theory of convex analysis to the point where homeworks problems consisted of proofs involving elements of topology. Not to mention, the department decided to bring in a visiting professor from France to teach the course. The professor was clearly very intelligent but at the same time a terrible teacher. His English left much to be desired. Once again, the course revolved around Mathematica. We were almost always given all the necessary code and homeworks were a matter editing a few lines of code. Cheating in this class, both on homeworks and exams, was rampant.
Back when the IB Olympiads first started, I spoke to the director (also the finance professor) about the competition. I wanted to get his opinion on a few prospective strategies and such but he seemed very disinterested. Staring at his computer the entire time, he simply replied that I should keep activities outside the classroom to a minimum and concentrate on the coursework instead. At a later date, after reading of Doug's idea about the research paper discussion group, I approached the director in the hopes of doing something similar at BU but it was of no avail. I was greeted with much the same enthusiasm as before. Compared to what Dr. Stefanica does for his students, it seem the director at BU doesn't give a s*** about his students.
All of this paired with a ridiculous cost of over $45,000 makes the program pretty much useless. The courses devote too much time to theory and little to no attempt is made at applications of concepts. The few times that were was any semblance of application consisted of "here is the price of call - find the value of the corresponding put" or "here is duration of a zero, find its convexity." I can keep going about the merits of the program but in the interest of brevity I've kept this (somewhat) short.
Unfortunately, I can't get back the 3.5 months wasted at BU. I am however looking forward to spending the next 1.5 years as a part of the Baruch MFE family.
EDIT:
Over on the GD website, I discouraged a student from applying to BU. Just today, I noticed someone had posted a reply defending the program. Given the way it is written, I have an inkling the post was made by the program coordinator or director.
http://www.global-derivatives.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=45&topic=5763.0
