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Princeton MFin Interview Tips for Princeton MFin

Lol man your social trust way too low. These are all very valid concerns raised. But let me give a detailed comparison: First of all, this idea that small class size helps for career development is wrong because even if MIT has four times the students, it just factually has a much larger team for career development. I wouldn't index to this smaller class size things--important if you want a rec from a professor for a PhD. On top of that, you are always competing with everyone from every school and every program (graduate or undergraduate) for these jobs, what employers think is important. Finally, Princeton is famous for having a very heavy undergraduate focus as a school and the same cannot be said for MIT, which has a much more developed pipeline. One other thing is MIT has more industry lecturers and this can translate directly to jobs.

Again, none of this is to say you can't get a good job from both schools, in fact if you look at job placements from this year, you see they are similar: At MIT you have Blackstone, Citadel, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, at Princeton you have Balyasny, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays. So for the top roles they are similar, but it is also just a fact that in terms of having a good reputation for being a very quantitative school in an engineering sense, MIT cannot be beat. Both schools have great ML courses. But I think that employers have some bias to the signal that MIT sends above almost any other school. Curriculum wise, look at the the core requirement for MIT Financial Mathematics or Adv Math Methods in Fin Engineering which is done in Matlab, Analytics of Finance, Advanced data analytics in Finance. Also, of course Princeton have well-designed CS courses--but it is also just a fact that the school has a more theoretical bent. It is an amazing school, but these things cannot be totally ignored since we are comparing two really top and similar programs.

What I say shouldn't be taken the wrong way. You cannot go wrong with either program. We are really all at the end of the day drawing at straws comparing two such elite places.
 
Lol man your social trust way too low. These are all very valid concerns raised. But let me give a detailed comparison: First of all, this idea that small class size helps for career development is wrong because even if MIT has four times the students, it just factually has a much larger team for career development. I wouldn't index to this smaller class size things--important if you want a rec from a professor for a PhD. On top of that, you are always competing with everyone from every school and every program (graduate or undergraduate) for these jobs, what employers think is important. Finally, Princeton is famous for having a very heavy undergraduate focus as a school and the same cannot be said for MIT, which has a much more developed pipeline. One other thing is MIT has more industry lecturers and this can translate directly to jobs.

Again, none of this is to say you can't get a good job from both schools, in fact if you look at job placements from this year, you see they are similar: At MIT you have Blackstone, Citadel, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, at Princeton you have Balyasny, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays. So for the top roles they are similar, but it is also just a fact that in terms of having a good reputation for being a very quantitative school in an engineering sense, MIT cannot be beat. Both schools have great ML courses. But I think that employers have some bias to the signal that MIT sends above almost any other school. Curriculum wise, look at the the core requirement for MIT Financial Mathematics or Adv Math Methods in Fin Engineering which is done in Matlab, Analytics of Finance, Advanced data analytics in Finance. Also, of course Princeton have well-designed CS courses--but it is also just a fact that the school has a more theoretical bent. It is an amazing school, but these things cannot be totally ignored since we are comparing two really top and similar programs.

What I say shouldn't be taken the wrong way. You cannot go wrong with either program. We are really all at the end of the day drawing at straws comparing two such elite places.
You basically are saying the job outcomes are the same...so how can you possibly say one is clearly better than the other?
 
I have actually spoken with alumni from both schools. At the end of the day, it depends on what you want and where you want to head to. If your dream job requires more corporate finance exposure(Asset management/PE/Financial modeling), then MIT should do the job. However, for quant finance roles, Princeton has a better reputation. Also, MIT is focused towards people without prior experience while Princeton does have a good number of experienced folks. However, IMO if you have a strong programming and math background then you can definitely get placed at the top companies even if you don't attend either of these programs. :) But Princeton does offer you the finest quantitative finance education and there's no doubt about that(and so does MIT for theoritical finance). Also, I believe the peer group at Princeton would be more experienced and stronger as the program is super selective. You should do well in life and career even if you attend MIT, so best of luck mate!
 
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Got my offer a few hours ago! I was on the waitlist and thought I would 99.99% be rejected since the April 15 deadline is very close. So excited!!
 
Anyone got any interview advice for the MFin?
Have my interview in a week
 
When did you receive the interview invite @MFinIB ? Can you share any details about what they mentioned, how many are they interviewing, etc.?
 
Hi all, did anyone receive a mail to plan an alumni interview ? I received a mail asking my CV and SOP after the first interview but no news since
 
Hi all, did anyone receive a mail to plan an alumni interview ? I received a mail asking my CV and SOP after the first interview but no news since
Nope I think you're actually an earlier batch. Btw do you mind sharing how round 1's interview experience was like for you?
 
I received an interview invite for the 1st of Feb. I’m currently freaking out because I can’t seem to remember if I selected the 1 or 2 year option during the application stage and I’m scared it will come up during my interview. Does anyone remember if there was the ability to select that during the application process and if so, how I can find out which option I selected? Thankss! 😅
 
I received an interview invite today, but on the same webpage, I couldn't seem to find any calendar to register. Did that happen to anyone?
 
I received an interview invite today, but on the same webpage, I couldn't seem to find any calendar to register. Did that happen to anyone?
Same thing happened to me yesterday. Today the calendar showed up but all time slots seem to be unavailable. Did you successfully register in the end?
 
I haven’t received the follow-up email we were supposed to get 24 hours before the interview and it’s now in less than 12 hours… anyone else have this?
 
Did anyone else receive a second invitation for an alumni interview? Got mine coming up this weekend.
 
Yeah, got mine this weekend too - interestingly they had apparently decided to send out the alumni interview invite (at least in my case) before I even had my first interview so take of that what you will. Assuming it’s gonna be more technical than the first interview based on previous years.
 
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