Princeton MFin Princeton MFin Admission Discussion

[anonym]

has anyone made a group chat yet?

 

[josephron]

is acceptance off the waitlist very unlikely?

 

[needtoscore]

I just got my rejection ! Cheers to all who got selected

 

[ridedeboat]

I just got my rejection ! Cheers to all who got selected

Same here. I'll try again next year

 

[josephron]

got waitlisted but dont know if people usually get off of it

 

[Zelong Qiu]

May be it worth to help future applicants to collect some data points. Have those admits/rejects taken the math assessment? Do you think that affect the final decision? I took one and I think I did well in that.

 

[iamhuman]

Same here - I also got waitlisted. Congratulations to those who got in!

 

[iamhuman]

Same here - I also got waitlisted. Congratulations to those who got in!

 

[iamhuman]

May be it worth to help future applicants to collect some data points. Have those admits/rejects taken the math assessment? Do you think that affect the final decision? I took one and I think I did well in that.

(Waitlisted) No math assessment, no second round alumni interview

 

[Jason Lim]

I got accepted as well. Had 2 rounds of interview and did not take a math assessment.

 

[josephron]

To those admitted: When does Princeton ask you to accept the offer by?

 

[Zelong Qiu]

To those admitted: When does Princeton ask you to accept the offer by?

04/15 as most of the graduate schools do

 

[Jondoiever]

waitlisted as well

 

[Jason Lim]

Hey, just want to ask you all for your thoughts between MIT MFin and Princeton MFin

 

[steventhird]

Hey, just want to ask you all for your thoughts between MIT MFin and Princeton MFin

Both are clearly really good in terms of their brand names and have purchase at any job (sell side or buy side). Historically MIT has had better dedicated career services than Princeton and the career services at MIT are often a big selling point for many prospective students since it helps for jobs a lot. On top of that, Princeton generally has a more theoretical bent as a school (more mathematical and rigorous) compared to MIT which has a more practical bent (also quantitative but focused on building skills for the job). Of course, which philosophy of teaching you like is a matter of your taste. If your goal is to maximize your job prospects, you need to optimize for 1. skills learned and 2. name (all top programs have a good name). On 2, these two are pretty equal. On 1, MIT seems better. Just for reference, a good friend just finished the Princeton Mfin and says even the coding courses there can be somewhat more theoretical.

 

[anonym]

Both are clearly really good in terms of their brand names and have purchase at any job (sell side or buy side). Historically MIT has had better dedicated career services than Princeton and the career services at MIT are often a big selling point for many prospective students since it helps for jobs a lot. On top of that, Princeton generally has a more theoretical bent as a school (more mathematical and rigorous) compared to MIT which has a more practical bent (also quantitative but focused on building skills for the job). Of course, which philosophy of teaching you like is a matter of your taste. If your goal is to maximize your job prospects, you need to optimize for 1. skills learned and 2. name (all top programs have a good name). On 2, these two are pretty equal. On 1, MIT seems better. Just for reference, a good friend just finished the Princeton Mfin and says even the coding courses there can be somewhat more theoretical.

Where are you getting this info from? I don’t think it’s very accurate.

MIT MFin students have had trouble competing with MIT MBA students and undergrad students for jobs, and their large class size does not help. Meanwhile, Princeton has a much smaller class size and dedicated career services, so I would say Princeton is better in that sense.

Additionally, Princeton’s curriculum is much more quantitative whereas MIT’s has a stronger focus on traditional finance. So if your goal is to become a quant, Princeton would be a better fit.

 

[dbzgoku]

Well, I am not sure how you're inferring your opinion about career services. Just looking at the career report says otherwise. Also, it's counterintuitive that the program with 120+ people has better career support than a program with barely 30 students. Secondly, about the skills learned, what exactly are the skills you're referring to? Could you be more objective in stating what additional skills you would learn at MIT and not at Princeton? About programming being theoretical seems like a distorted fact. I've seen their curriculum and spoken with their alumni, the CS courses MFin students take at Princeton are well designed and the ML courses are from CSML(CS Dep).
Not to belittle your opinions, but is it a coincidence that you created your account just to post this answer? Apologies, I don't intend to question your authenticity but it's difficult to trust what people say online especially when their account is a freshly created one.
PS. I have offers from both and I'm just looking for objective facts to make my decision.

 

[steventhird]

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.

 

[josephron]

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?

 

[steventhird]

You basically are saying the job outcomes are the same...so how can you possibly say one is clearly better than the other?

You should read what I wrote.