Hi Joy Pathak,
I am living in Toronto right now, and I attended this event yesterday.
John Hull chaired a ~1.5 hour session with Davoudy, Avellaneda, Peter, and Chuang Yi.
Marco had a Blackberry message within the first 15 minutes of the panel discussion, and got up and left the room for the next 30 mins, so didn't participate much! Not even an acknowledging apology!
Topics addressed were:
Why each of them left their academic PhD careers to work for a short time in the industry and then returned to academia.
Questions from the audienec ranged from "Can you critique my resume? I am not getting interviews" (in a heavily Indian accent) to "Do I even bother getting a PhD"? In fact, for much of the discussion, the PhD being on trial was the central theme of the event.
During the discussion, none of the panelists breathed a syllable about their MathFin program at NYU.
Chuang Yi arrived at McMaster from China in 2003, to do a MSc and a PhD in financial mathematics at the Math Department. at a Chinese canadian community event, he was asked whether he wanted to interview for a couple of internships at RBC where they needed exactly what he was studying. He did 2 internships and then went there permanently.
After the discussion, I managed to chat for a few mins with Davoudy, as well as Peter.
I asked: "Maybe this is not a fair question, but how useful is the MathFin program at NYU? I graduated from MIT with a masters degree in geophysics in 2008, but I am having trouble being taken seriously for finance positions, and I thought the MathFin degree would prove that I am serious about it. I am hearing all sorts of things about the program--everything from being a cashcow from the gullible, to being a passport to the US for Indian and Chinese citizens. I am also having trouble finding statistics on placements."
Davoudy's answer: "The NYU program is respected in the industry. there is nothing called learning 'what you need to learn' to get a job, because what the industry needs changes from day-to-day. eg. Structured is dead these days...risk management is the new superstar."
Peter's answer: "NYU program is respected. We don't publish placement stats, but we give them out at our info sessions. We have 100% placement. The FE at Columbia (Emanuel Derman's) has 50-75% placement. Even that is good. The MathFin at columbia (Smirnov's) is a much smaller program...no idea about placement stats)."
My own observations: Marco and Peter all once worked in the industry, but are now academics. They didn't really seem to have direct links with the industry (maybe I'm wrong, maybe they were modest about all their personal connections in the industry which they use to place their students)....My gut instinct is that the COurant math department is run exactly like the MIT Math department. this is great for the faculty, who are rockstars and live life and run their careers on their own terms. Students, however, get little out of it other than the reputation of attending that school.
There were HR reps from Scotia Capital, TD Canada Trust, Bank of Montreal, Algorithmics, and R^2.
The wine was OK, canapes were OK.
What I got out of it:
I am still debating whether to attend NYU, Columbia MathFIn, or just screw this whole thing and continue searching for a finance position while staying on at my current job.
I didn't get the best impression of NYU---I don't think I'll get as much out of it as I thought. I am not attending there for sure.
MathFin seems more personal, but I still don't know enough.
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