MFE Programs Transparency Project

[Andy Nguyen]

Many people have complained too often and for far too long that the programs do not publish the important information. Now, you have a chance to do something about it.

Quantnet and another non-profit organization are working together on a list of what information each MFE program should make public. Your input makes a big difference.

Admission stats
Number of applicants
Number of admits

Student profile
Average GRE, degree breakdown

Placement breakdown
Internship, FT job rate for graduation and 3 months after graduation
Starting salary
Employer type
Location

What else do you want to know about a program?

 

[bordin]

As a prospective international student, I would like to know the avg TOEFL or IELTS as well.

 

[Tsotne]

Proportion of international students would be a good information if every MFE had provided since we'd get clear understanding of the overall environment in terms of budget, roommates, location search, etc.

 

[sleekmover]

Age range (not just average)

 

[Tsotne]

Age range (not just average)

Exactly. That's what I forgot to mention above and wanted to ask some questions about the min-max ---most frequent ages on MFE. It'd be ok if we had such disclosed info not only for MFE, but other programs as well. I'm particularly interested in PhD age range in different universities.

 

[rishab dhar]

1) Number of years of work-ex, with finance and non-finance work-ex breakdown.

2) Also, number (more accurately proportion/percentage) of International students who got placed in US. For most of the students, in my opinion, the main motive is to work in the US, after graduating.

3) Average salary by country. Not just US and non-US, because many of those non-US postings could have been in London/Hong Kong, causing average salary to bump-up. I would like average salary of those placed in India and China, for instance. I bet these countries will have average salaries nowhere close to $100k. This is the biggest dilemma for applicants from developing countries ( more accurately very poor countries), as not everyone can get sponsored for a job in London/HK or even Singapore.

4) Further average starting salary by years of work-ex. Again, I want starting salary for people with finance and non-finance work-ex to be separate, as many of the applicants are in a dilemma whether changing careers will lead to better earnings. After all, they are spending close to $100k on most programs. What good is it if you start at a lower salary than your current, with $100k in debt and 1 year of lost earnings.

5) Proportion/Percentage of candidates/applicants with advanced degrees accepted (along with the majors) . This will show us whether doing a masters or PhD in a particular field helps in admission.

6) Similarly, proportion of applicants with CFA (all 3 levels) accepted.

 

[Byron]

Placement breakdown
Internship, FT job rate for graduation and 3 months after graduation
Starting salary
Employer type
Location

What else do you want to know about a program?

Job roles/profiles? (Front office, trade support, IT, operations or whether they're Analyst/Associate)

 

[Joy Pathak]

It should also be taken into consideration that many programs do not collect most of this data so we will have to wait atleast at minimum till next year or the year after to be able to make any good judgement.
I think getting specific like (Countries/avg salary) and so on might be a bit too much, but job roles(above post) would be a nice addition to what Andy had initially. Or maybe they can be given as optional criteria to the programs and some of others which can be easily collected as mandatory.

 

[sleekmover]

Shared Information should be like a mini skirt: long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting ...
I think we should classify information as Must Have, Should Have, Could have. Give this list to programs, assign weights accordingly and rank them later on on Transparency of information based on the information they provide and the score they get.

 

[sleekmover]

another one to the list considering "affirmitave discrimination": How many international students were already working/studying/based in US before entering the program

 

[Andy Nguyen]

This comes directly from IAFE, the umbrella non-profit organization that works with most, if not all MFE programs in the country.

The IAFE Education Committee recommends that students who are serious about investigating their options take the time to talk to faculty at various programs about these questions and request to be put in touch with alumni of the programs to get their perspectives as well.

* Curriculum: does the curriculum offer a broad selection of topics in mathematics, computing and finance that will form a solid foundation for career in financial engineering?
* Practical versus theoretical training: does the curriculum offer the right blend of exposure to theoretical concepts and practitioner-based "real world" ideas?
* Faculty: what is the quality of the faculty and what is the level of contact between the faculty and the community of practitioners of financial mathematics/financial engineering?
* Resources and facilities: what sorts of resources does the program have (e.g. financial data, software, computer labs, trading labs, etc)?
* Placement: what is the placement record of the program and, more specifically, what sorts of jobs do graduates of the program get upon graduation and what sorts of jobs do former graduates hold today?

http://iafe.org/html/resources_faq.php

 

[boneil]

Breakdown of demographics (country, age)

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I need a list of MFE programs that do not release admission/placement stats and those that you want to see.

 

[Lyosha]

Columbia (MFE and MSOR), Stanford, NYU (Poly and non-Poly), Princeton, GA Tech (actually some of these may release data, but I just haven't checked...), Berkley

 

[vivekj]

Columbia (MFE and MSOR), Stanford, NYU (Poly and non-Poly), Princeton, GA Tech (actually some of these may release data, but I just haven't checked...), Berkley

I'm not sure about others but Berkeley provides details of placements and students.
http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement2010.html

Similarly Princeton provides data to some extent regarding the recruiting companies but there is no detailed break up of salary as such.

http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/graduate/placement/

@ Alexei, Please refrain from guessing names of the institute as it just creates more confusion.

@ Andy: U of T though has good reputation, but not much information about placement details are provided. Also institutes in Asia like NTU and NUS. Data is very hard to get for these institutes.

 

[Lyosha]

I'm not guessing names of institutes - those are the institutes for which I would like to see confirmed placement stats.

Berkley has, in the past, come under criticism for allegedly faking its placement numbers... if you search this forum you will find a thread about it... so I'd like to know how factual they are.

 

[vivekj]

I'm not guessing names of institutes - those are the institutes for which I would like to see confirmed placement stats.

I thought you were trying to say that Berkeley and others did not provide info on placement. My bad.

Berkley has, in the past, come under criticism for allegedly faking its placement numbers... if you search this forum you will find a thread about it... so I'd like to know how factual they are.

If this is the reason you included Berkeley, by the same standards you should have included Baruch as well in the potential list of institutes.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

What we want is a uniform/standard reporting format that every program adheres to. There is no way for two programs to report 100% placement, one reporting X/X graduates with jobs after 3 months and the other derives 100% from the number of its survey's responses after 6 months. This is happening and it is not particularly useful.

 

[euroazn]

So... how are you going to get non-biased input again?

Quantnet isn't exactly a simple-random-sample. You'd have to go on-campus or something...

Anyhow, Andy, as always, I applaud your efforts! Hopefully this will provide the data students need to make better decisions.

 

[DominiConnor]

I hate pretty much all of Andy's list
Number of applicants
I don't give a toss, this is a function of the marketing ability of the university not the quality of the course.

Number of admits
My tosslessness increases:
I'm one of the billion people who learned the ABC from Sesame Street, doesn't mean it's bad because it's open to many.
Fordham has a small entry, so being small doesn't mean good either.
Student profile
Average GRE, degree breakdown
Mildly interesting maybe one of my interns will be delegated to do the tiny amount of caring necessary.

Placement breakdown
Internship
That's the bit I don't hate
FT job rate for graduation
Surprisingly small spread, not sure there is enough signal to make good decisions.

and 3 months after graduation
Nope ,that's shit to make the alumni office's life easier. What you want is at least 18 months and preferable 2-3 years.
Yes, it's work.

Employer type
Good, but the lazy sods in the alumni offices won't do this. You want to buy serious beers for a serious headhunter and he might explain transition matrices. Do you equate Barclays product control with front office developer at Merrills ?

Location
More work for the intern whose job it is to care.

Harder reasons why this is bollocks.

First up does the school have a rigid and brutal test for grasp of English ?
Next what is the experience profile of people before they joined, far too few share this data making any comparison meaningless
What sort of jobs do people get 1,2,3,4 years after ?

But let's be honest with ourselves here...
You people don't care about any of this do you ?

What you want is an opinion poll on which schools are "liked" by big banks.
You simply don't want to learn, add value to your skills and prove to others you can do smart things.

Go look at the questions here and elsewhere.
Try to find one example of a prospective student asking things like "is the guy that teaches econometrics good at school X".

But you will find hundreds of people asking "has this school got a good reputation".

It's not a rational market, but to pervert a trading cliche "you can stay unemployed for just as long as the employment market remains irrational".