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- 4/10/13
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Well the thread on Brauch vs Columbia MSOR went places where I have never seen it go on this forum. I am a current student of Columbia OR and if its not too irksome, I shall put in few of my words. I think there is no doubt that Baruch is one of the top FE programs around. Perhaps the credit should go to its director who, (if I am to believe the Baruch students and alumni here,) does an awesome job, something which I believe administrators at Columbia IEOR could never match upto. Also, from the description on the website the student cohort seems to be among the very best(though not the only best ones out there, as few of the Baruch students are inclined to believe). However, it does not help that few Baruch students pick on a program to claim that it offers 'inferior academic experience' . Like it or not, most of firms visit Columbia IEOR simply due to the huge reputation it carries in the quant finance domain and time and again they have been very satisfied with the quality of students. Moreover, for a firm which hires at Columbia IEOR, 99% of time, they do not distinguish between FE and OR students. What might tilt the balance in favor of FE students is prior experience and better understanding of the financial markets and not necessarily mathematical expertise and raw intelligence. From personal experience, a very big European bank came to IEOR to recruit interns and selected two- one a PhD holder MSFE student and the other being myself (from MSOR). Also, I currently have two offers from very big financial firms. My point was not to show off but a gentle request to know the facts before disregarding MSOR (or MSFE) as useless, second tier programs. My contention is not over placement (as there is no doubt that Baruch's is better but here too class size should be taken into account) but over claims of poor academic quality and generalizing on the lack of failure of few students.
To make few issues clear, MSOR is NOT a Financial Engineering degree. It is however, an excellent quantitative program, which can help you develop quantitative skills which could also be applied to the financial industry. Most of students who struggle or fail to get a job is due to the fact that most are fresh graduates from school ( and very smart too) but they assume a Columbia name and few courses on capital markets or derivatives pricing would get you a job as a quant. If you are coming to MSOR with the sole aim of being a trader or a quant, kindly get dispossessed of this notion. Understand your skillsets and the prior experience you bring with yourself and aim accordingly. The career service too, has improved significantly and there is sufficient support to get interviews and identify what is going wrong if you are not getting interviews or are unable to convert them. However, there is no individual spoon fed guarantee of a job or internship. Apart from the two positions I obtained above, I was interviewed for quant positions at firms like AQR, Blackrock (for both Portfolio Analytics group and the Financial Modeling group). Many of my classmates have obtained similar excellent positions which is not necessarily confined to the financial industry, though it is the predominant one. So the bottom line is: If you are smart and doing things right (academics, networking etc) you will end up great. There is a certainly some randomness factor involved in the process of finding internships and jobs but in the long run, it smoothens. If you take the pain of doing some research, you will find out that the alumni from MSOR is doing as good as any and you find many of them at top positions in big financial firms.
PS. I do not intend to start any Baruch vs MSOR debate. This was supposed to be an informative post aimed particularly towards applicants who are deciding or planning for graduate study at Columbia msor.
To make few issues clear, MSOR is NOT a Financial Engineering degree. It is however, an excellent quantitative program, which can help you develop quantitative skills which could also be applied to the financial industry. Most of students who struggle or fail to get a job is due to the fact that most are fresh graduates from school ( and very smart too) but they assume a Columbia name and few courses on capital markets or derivatives pricing would get you a job as a quant. If you are coming to MSOR with the sole aim of being a trader or a quant, kindly get dispossessed of this notion. Understand your skillsets and the prior experience you bring with yourself and aim accordingly. The career service too, has improved significantly and there is sufficient support to get interviews and identify what is going wrong if you are not getting interviews or are unable to convert them. However, there is no individual spoon fed guarantee of a job or internship. Apart from the two positions I obtained above, I was interviewed for quant positions at firms like AQR, Blackrock (for both Portfolio Analytics group and the Financial Modeling group). Many of my classmates have obtained similar excellent positions which is not necessarily confined to the financial industry, though it is the predominant one. So the bottom line is: If you are smart and doing things right (academics, networking etc) you will end up great. There is a certainly some randomness factor involved in the process of finding internships and jobs but in the long run, it smoothens. If you take the pain of doing some research, you will find out that the alumni from MSOR is doing as good as any and you find many of them at top positions in big financial firms.
PS. I do not intend to start any Baruch vs MSOR debate. This was supposed to be an informative post aimed particularly towards applicants who are deciding or planning for graduate study at Columbia msor.
