I'm a little surprised by how little consensus there is in this debate. Clearly, as in any of these discussions, there is room for preferences. You might take MIT if you assign a higher weighting to Sloan, Cambridge, MIT's math and engineering prowess, faculty members associated with the program (Merton), etc. But as alain is calling for, let's look at the reasons for why Princeton is the clear objective choice, some of which have been mentioned above:
-Higher selectivity (about 3x harder but there is surely a composition effect too). This leads to a stronger cohort.
-Higher mean & median starting salary.
-Higher placement rate at arguably more selective employers.
-More resources for each student. Princeton has the largest per capita endowment of any school in the world, so this makes sense.
-Lower tuition (depending on whether you are admitted into the 1 year or 2 year program)
-Colleagues with experience in the financial industry. Princeton has a great placement record partly because it takes students who have already worked at great places. MIT will take many students direct from undergrad with little work experience.
-More established program, started under Bernanke's tenure.
-More reputed and respected program on Wall Street and around the world (although this may change as MIT becomes established too).
-Close, intense, collaboration between students due to the smaller classes and smaller cohort size. Quality of alumni (i.e., strength of relationships) can be just as important as how many alumni there are.
-Sims just won the Nobel prize (with Kahneman, Krugman, Scheinkman, Shin, Blinder, and the wunderkinderen Brunnermeier, Xiong, and Hong, it's no wonder Princeton is at the forefront of financial economics).
Again, Princeton's MFin also has a more interdisciplinary mission statement, so if you don't value that too much, then that will feed into preferences. Overall, you may argue with some of the individual points, but together, I think they should paint a clear picture.
-Higher selectivity (about 3x harder but there is surely a composition effect too). This leads to a stronger cohort.
-Higher mean & median starting salary.
-Higher placement rate at arguably more selective employers.
-More resources for each student. Princeton has the largest per capita endowment of any school in the world, so this makes sense.
-Lower tuition (depending on whether you are admitted into the 1 year or 2 year program)
-Colleagues with experience in the financial industry. Princeton has a great placement record partly because it takes students who have already worked at great places. MIT will take many students direct from undergrad with little work experience.
-More established program, started under Bernanke's tenure.
-More reputed and respected program on Wall Street and around the world (although this may change as MIT becomes established too).
-Close, intense, collaboration between students due to the smaller classes and smaller cohort size. Quality of alumni (i.e., strength of relationships) can be just as important as how many alumni there are.
-Sims just won the Nobel prize (with Kahneman, Krugman, Scheinkman, Shin, Blinder, and the wunderkinderen Brunnermeier, Xiong, and Hong, it's no wonder Princeton is at the forefront of financial economics).
Again, Princeton's MFin also has a more interdisciplinary mission statement, so if you don't value that too much, then that will feed into preferences. Overall, you may argue with some of the individual points, but together, I think they should paint a clear picture.
