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COMPARE NYU Math in Finance vs Columbia MFE

Joined
2/16/19
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Hi everybody, I am writing to ask for some suggestions on NYU Math in Finance vs Columbia MFE. I received admissions from both programs recently, but I have not decided which one to go. Could you please share some views on the courses, career service, internships&job placements of both programs.

Thank you so much. Wish everyone have a dream offer~
p.s. My BG some of you might be interested in: Cambridge Math Part iii, GRE 328, some quant internships
 
Well one big thing to consider is the Nyu has night classes while Columbia has day classes. For me I perform better I the morning and prefer that over staying in school till 9. Overall it won’t make to much of a difference where you go it’s just some small preferences. For example Nyu has a smaller class size then Columbia so that might be something to look into. So look at some of the smaller stuff and you’ll be good no matter where you go.
 
Well one big thing to consider is the Nyu has night classes while Columbia has day classes. For me I perform better I the morning and prefer that over staying in school till 9. Overall it won’t make to much of a difference where you go it’s just some small preferences. For example Nyu has a smaller class size then Columbia so that might be something to look into. So look at some of the smaller stuff and you’ll be good no matter where you go.
Thanks. I think night class is ok for me:D
 
I would do a LinkedIn search as well such as Columbia mfe LinkedIn or columbia masters in financial engineering LinkedIn. And you could add a company name next to it and look at where graduates are going
 
Hi everybody, I am writing to ask for some suggestions on NYU Math in Finance vs Columbia MFE. I received admissions from both programs recently, but I have not decided which one to go. Could you please share some views on the courses, career service, internships&job placements of both programs.

Thank you so much. Wish everyone have a dream offer~
p.s. My BG some of you might be interested in: Cambridge Math Part iii, GRE 328, some quant internships
Would you mind sharing your timeline? i.e. submission date, interview invitation data, admission date. Also, did you receive an email to ask you to check for status or you login into the website? Congrats!
 
Are people ( who received interview invites ) also getting rejections? Just curious how long it will take to know the exact status ( whatever it might be ).
 
Would you mind sharing your timeline? i.e. submission date, interview invitation data, admission date. Also, did you receive an email to ask you to check for status or you login into the website? Congrats!
For NYU Courant: submitted on Jan 20th, received decision on Feb 20th; for Columbia: submitted on Jan 1st, interviewed on Feb 4th, received an email and checked status online on Feb 28th.
 
Hi everybody, I am writing to ask for some suggestions on NYU Math in Finance vs Columbia MFE. I received admissions from both programs recently, but I have not decided which one to go. Could you please share some views on the courses, career service, internships&job placements of both programs.

Thank you so much. Wish everyone have a dream offer~
p.s. My BG some of you might be interested in: Cambridge Math Part iii, GRE 328, some quant internships
Hi Alice, have you decided yet? I am leaning toward NYU but I found that 28 students out of 41 in NYU courant were still looking for 2019 summer internship (Class of 2019, probably NYU does not update this website very often). I will send an email to NYU on Monday and ask for the latest statistics if available. For Columbia, one major concern is that the class size is increasing every year. Using the information on Quantnet, class size is 80+ in 2017, 100+ in 2018 and 120+ in 2019.
 
Congrats! I personally prefer NYU cause I'm a math person, and Courant Institute is my dream. NYU has a smaller class size. But Columbia's name is very attractive, plus it's Ivy league. They are both top programs. You can check their coursework and see which one attracts you more.
 
Hi Alice, have you decided yet? I am leaning toward NYU but I found that 28 students out of 41 in NYU courant were still looking for 2019 summer internship (Class of 2019, probably NYU does not update this website very often). I will send an email to NYU on Monday and ask for the latest statistics if available. For Columbia, one major concern is that the class size is increasing every year. Using the information on Quantnet, class size is 80+ in 2017, 100+ in 2018 and 120+ in 2019.
Did they send you the latest statistics? On their website it's still 28 out of 41 looking for internships
 
The key to every choice is your preference combined with hardcore conditions. In general, Columbia MFE and NYU MathFin are in the same tier. But once you list out their features, you could choose with your personal preference.

NYU MathFin:
*Course: Very math, very theoretical
*Class size: 40, small class
*Career service: At least better than Columbia MFE

Columbia MFE:
**big name as Ivy.
**Good Alumni Resource
**High base salary.
**Class Size: 120, very big class, very competitive.

It's only a matter of your preference. If you care very much about name and alumni network, you should go ahead with Columbia MFE without doubt. But if you pursue a academic experience with a higher quality, I believe NYU MathFin is a good way to go.
 
The key to every choice is your preference combined with hardcore conditions. In general, Columbia MFE and NYU MathFin are in the same tier. But once you list out their features, you could choose with your personal preference.

NYU MathFin:
*Course: Very math, very theoretical
*Class size: 40, small class
*Career service: At least better than Columbia MFE

Columbia MFE:
**big name as Ivy.
**Good Alumni Resource
**High base salary.
**Class Size: 120, very big class, very competitive.

It's only a matter of your preference. If you care very much about name and alumni network, you should go ahead with Columbia MFE without doubt. But if you pursue a academic experience with a higher quality, I believe NYU MathFin is a good way to go.
One thing I would add is that NYU requires you to do a Master thesis which would prevent you from taking other classes. Besides this (which is kind of a big thing for me), I do prefer NYU.
 
In terms of placement, they probably place about the same. My heavily-opinionated observations below, so please take with a grain of salt...

A handful of better business communicators, kids who interview well, will land summer internship offers from the large sell-side firms and a couple big-name buy-side firms before Christmas. The quantity of these positions is not that large (probably <100 positions spread across the banks, hedge funds, prop trading firms, other asset managers targeting financial engineering students), so the top students in Columbia/NYU/MSCF/Princeton/MIT/Berkeley get offers during this time.

The rest (probably 60-70%) will end up looking throughout Jan-Apr, going through a bunch of interviews for smaller sellside/buyside firms, or mutual fund/pension fund-like asset managers, or fintech firms like Bloomberg, Reuters for positions that often don't need financial engineering. One thing students don't seem to realize is that aside from risk or derivatives-pricing quant roles (which there are few), most roles aren't really heavy math/quant. Many are more data science-like now, so you're not only competing against MFE, IOER, MAFN, Finance students, but also Data Science (Machine Learning), Computer Science, and Statistics students. It's not even limited to graduate school competition. At the end of the day, an entry level role requires a lot of investment and training from the firm, and if a kid from a decent undergrad with a good GPA and decent dataset-wrangling experience can do the job, with no need for work visa sponsorship, that kid will be preferred for the internship and subsequent full-time position. Lower salary, better business communication, no work sponsorship risk with this administration. The pool of competition seems rather tough right now given the size of all the university's many quant or statistics-related programs. Every student sitting in a machine learning or data structures and algorithms, or even a statistics course with a smidgeon of interest in finance is vying for the same quant-related roles.

Placement comes down to you individually -- are you good at interviewing? If you're shy and/or have poor spoken/written English, you'll probably still be looking for internships come March.
 
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Did they send you the latest statistics? On their website it's still 28 out of 41 looking for internships
They told me that the statistics online was not updated and they were still collecting info from recent grads. As NYU provides a full list of their students, I searched their names on Linkedin and found that probably Courant's website was updated before Dec 2018 as some students' Linkedin profiles (among those 28 students) indicated that they found a summer internship in Dec. I also found that a few students in previous classes had perfect academic performance (GPA 3.9+) but limited or even no finance or quant related experience before joining NYU Courant. I believe this could be one of the reasons that they are still looking for internship/full-time positions. Also, I heard that the target class size for 2019 Fall Columbia MFE program is only 80.
 
They told me that the statistics online was not updated and they were still collecting info from recent grads. As NYU provides a full list of their students, I searched their names on Linkedin and found that probably Courant's website was updated before Dec 2018 as some students' Linkedin profiles (among those 28 students) indicated that they found a summer internship in Dec. I also found that a few students in previous classes had perfect academic performance (GPA 3.9+) but limited or even no finance or quant related experience before joining NYU Courant. I believe this could be one of the reasons that they are still looking for internship/full-time positions. Also, I heard that the target class size for 2019 Fall Columbia MFE program is only 80.
Could you please give me a rough number of the students who have found their internships but still display their resume on the official website?
Stuck with the problem now.
 
They told me that the statistics online was not updated and they were still collecting info from recent grads. As NYU provides a full list of their students, I searched their names on Linkedin and found that probably Courant's website was updated before Dec 2018 as some students' Linkedin profiles (among those 28 students) indicated that they found a summer internship in Dec. I also found that a few students in previous classes had perfect academic performance (GPA 3.9+) but limited or even no finance or quant related experience before joining NYU Courant. I believe this could be one of the reasons that they are still looking for internship/full-time positions. Also, I heard that the target class size for 2019 Fall Columbia MFE program is only 80.

From where did you hear that their target class size is 80?
 
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