COMPARE MSMF at IIT, Polytechnic NY, or FSU

[Francis]

Does anyone know if any of these program are difficult to get into? These schools are ranked 10-20 something on Global Derivatives website, will a MSMF degree from any of these schools have the possibility to lead to a wall st job? I've read in some places that to get a job at Wall St for Quants you need to attend a top 10-12 school, is this necessarily true?

 

[Yuriy]

I don't think they are difficult to get into. Polytech NY is almost open enrollment (i.e., admit almost everyone), but you have to pay high tuition. And yes, there are cases when people have found jobs on Wall Street after Polytech. I don't know much about the other two.

 

[Francis]

I don't think they are difficult to get into. Polytech NY is almost open enrollment (i.e., admit almost everyone), but you have to pay high tuition. And yes, there are cases when people have found jobs on Wall Street after Polytech. I don't know much about the other two.

hmm... I see. I guess IIT would be the same because their deadline is only couple weeks before the start of the semesters.

Do you know if Polytechnic is a decent program?

 

[Yuriy]

It depends on what you call decent. There used to be almost no Stochastic Calculus or C++ in the program, but they have made a few changes. They will teach you something but I'm not sure how much real knowledge you will gain. Go there only if you get rejected everywhere else, at least it is in NY.

 

[Carl]

I don't think they are difficult to get into. Polytech NY is almost open enrollment (i.e., admit almost everyone), but you have to pay high tuition. And yes, there are cases when people have found jobs on Wall Street after Polytech. I don't know much about the other two.

It is true that "open enrollment" is basically the reality at Poly. I applied to enter this Fall '08 and was accepted a few weeks later. I forgot to decline their offer, so I just received an email (3 months after my acceptance) asking me to notify grad-admissions as to whether I will be attending the FE program or not. They did not BCC the email. There were 267 addresses on it.

I think it is inaccurate to say that the tuition is high. I would say it is average when compared to other NYC schools, as it is about 36k total for the program. However, they seem to hand out scholarships worth about 9k-13.5k pretty regularly where the only strings are maintaining a decent GPA. In other words, if you can't get into Baruch, NYU, Columbia, or CMU, you may still get into Poly with a scholarship. If you want more details about this, then PM me.

Information about Poly is difficult to come by. It takes effort, but you can turn up posts by former and current students on other forums. If you email Poly professors individually they will write back to you. However, I could not get any responses from their "go to" person, Program Director Juliette Acker. After my acceptance, I called and emailed her many times without response.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Does anyone know if any of these program are difficult to get into? These schools are ranked 10-20 something on Global Derivatives website

The ranking on GD is a joke. If you use any kind of ranking to guide your future, you are going into a maze.
I have NEVER come across anyone/any post saying they got rejected by IIT, Polytech. Not one. All the posts indicate that they (at least IIT) seem to accept about everyone. I also read many posts about scholarships given out by these two programs. So much that it seems they use scholarships to attract students or fill seats.
It's getting very competitive and programs you mentioned have no choice but to offer tuition waiver as so-called scholarships to fill their classroom. In a few years, you may get free tuition from some of the many also-run programs.
I don't know about FSU as Quantnet is mostly NYC focused but in short, yes, IIT and Poly are not difficult to get in relative to other programs.

will a MSMF degree from any of these schools have the possibility to lead to a wall st job? I've read in some places that to get a job at Wall St for Quants you need to attend a top 10-12 school, is this necessarily true?

What kind of Wall St job are we talking about?
Junior analyst at some small firm doing nothing relevant? Sure, any of these programs can get you there. The best indicator would be to look at the list of positions their previous graduates obtained. And where they end up working.
Wall St quant is a vague description that covers plenty of things. Going to a program that does not teach you any kind of programming would not prepare you for a role as a modeling quant.

 

[Prateek Bhatia]

Just to add to the current discussion, I also got into the poly and IIT programs, with the 50% tuition waivers from both. I too have not yet come across anyone with a reject from these schools. I have been regularly reading GD and forums and they are full of people with accepts from these programs. So it does look as if its open admission into these schools. But I guess if you can be reasonably assured that you will be taught well you can attend these schools.

 

[barbara]

To my knowledge, the department did not even look at the applications of those who scored below a 750 on the GRE Math this past year, so I do not think that what you are saying is quite accurate. At the same time, I know that CMU only accepts people around 790, so there is a difference. Beyond that, I am not sure what the application procedure is.

I know that the new department head has been restructuring and a lot of that is starting to make a big difference. Any school is a decision that you need to research, and Poly is definitely geared more towards the blend of qualitative and quantitative thinking, so those of you who are looking for a ton of C++ will be disappointed. That said, there is a lot of exposure to stochastic calculus if you take the computational track.

It's just a shame that no one from Poly is really on this website to defend it. I just don't have time, but whenever I make it on here, I find that the department is grossly misrepresented. The alumni who are disappointed with their experience have a fair argument, as I have heard that it has had an unstable history, but the department is actively reworking the program and hopefully it will start to integrate the alumni into activities and alter their perception. If you are a Polytechnic Alumni, please let me know your information and I would enjoy speaking with you further.