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COMPARE Princeton or MIT for Master in Finance?

I'm not against the herd, I'm against the WRONG herd. I'm against the average opinion of the applicants, not the average opinion of the people doing the hiring. Those are very different crowds.

BTW, if QN is any indication, the average applicant doesn't think too rationally when it comes to their own future. They value an ideal more than reality. There is plenty of history on this site. Take a look at the past threads. The common theme is the idealism of future students. There is nothing wrong to be an idealist but they tend to be disconnected from reality.

This field is very small and people tend to know each other and speak to each other in a lot of circumstances and ocassions. I've seen how the average person doing the hiring in this field thinks and I have spoken with a lot of them. In general, there is a tendency to agree with what I said.

I'm older than most of the people that comes to this forum so I speak from my own experience.

Well, the fact is that not everyone share your experience, so it's incredibly difficult for them to accept that going to school A vs going to school B don't make a difference. But I do agree with that.... once you've gone to a school good enough to have resumes forward to the people who do the actual hiring, not much else matters. And charlesc, don't make this personal...

When it comes to program selection, try looking through the course offering list. Arguably, Princeton has a lot more experience since the MIT program just opened, but MIT has A LOT of undergrad engineering kids in the Wall St scene (or so I've heard) and an outstanding MBA program (both good and bad.) It's also been said that the MIT curriculum is closer to the CFA, and they are directly competing with the MBA kids. On the other hand, Princeton has both undergrad and PhD students in their FE department, so things aren't much better. Nevertheless, both seem to have decent placement record, so academically/professionally they are probably similar.

I don't have much contact from MIT, but Princeton is very very academician-like... it's very suburb whereas MIT is... not. I think there's just a lot more "space" around Princeton, and that might mean something to you...
 
I'm not against the herd, I'm against the WRONG herd. I'm against the average opinion of the applicants, not the average opinion of the people doing the hiring. Those are very different crowds.

BTW, if QN is any indication, the average applicant doesn't think too rationally when it comes to their own future. They value an ideal more than reality. There is plenty of history on this site. Take a look at the past threads. The common theme is the idealism of future students. There is nothing wrong to be an idealist but they tend to be disconnected from reality.

This field is very small and people tend to know each other and speak to each other in a lot of circumstances and ocassions. I've seen how the average person doing the hiring in this field thinks and I have spoken with a lot of them. In general, there is a tendency to agree with what I said.

I'm older than most of the people that comes to this forum so I speak from my own experience.

Ok... you have a point, though this makes it hard to accept and explain how the "herd" so often pick Princeton over MIT. They are supposed to be intelligent people (and those who go to Princeton typically have remarkable industry experience). In general, I am just not as ready as you to tag collective tendency as irrationally motivated (due to either muddled thinking or misinformation).
 
I've heard, There are lots of rich kids in Princeton. They established fraternity which only allows selective group of people and stuff like that. Is that true? do those still exist?
If I am wrong, please correct me.
 
I've heard, There are lots of rich kids in Princeton. They established fraternity which only allows selective group of people and stuff like that. Is that true? do those still exist?
If I am wrong, please correct me.
Those are called eating clubs and they are only for undergrads. Grad students have the basement of the graduate college, instead.

I think Harvard has fraternities. Yale has secret societies (CIA and Washington politician feeder school- go figure). Princeton has the eating clubs.

Well, the fact is that not everyone share your experience, so it's incredibly difficult for them to accept that going to school A vs going to school B don't make a difference. But I do agree with that.... once you've gone to a school good enough to have resumes forward to the people who do the actual hiring, not much else matters. And charlesc, don't make this personal...

I 100% back alain's view on this for strictly quantitative roles. Between college kids and seasoned professionals, this is more than just a matter of perspectives. Smart money knows that about 3/4 of the country's brilliant people never set foot inside a top 20 school, and that technical skill is technical skill wherever you find it.

However, I would also note that the rules change if you want to be in a role where you interact with clients more. It is all about holding your fork the right way, remembering peoples' birthdays, which school you went to, and your golf handicap. Technical competence still matters, but other things also come into play.

Princeton in general has always had a client-facing brand that beat everything on the field except maybe Harvard. MIT is an incredible engineering school, but if you want to do finance, Princeton's general brand will always give you a bit of an edge.
 
Princeton in general has always had a client-facing brand that beat everything on the field except maybe Harvard. MIT is an incredible engineering school, but if you want to do finance, Princeton's general brand will always give you a bit of an edge.

MIT has by far the strongest history in finance out of any universities. Just look at Nobel Prizes in finance (Samuelson, Modigliani, Black, Scholes...) and its current faculty (Merton, Ross, Lo, Myers...). I believe that MIT's program is more flexible in terms of focus of study, whereas Princeton seems like a MFE. Furthermore, location, and duration are more favorable for MIT.
 
Hi Guys! I am in the same situation: MIT vs Princeton. I believe that two considerations are key here: 1) Whether or not an internship might benefit you considerably (i.e., if you don't have full time work experience it may be extremely beneficial); 2) While the placement rate at MIT is high (nearly 90%), Princeton boasts a 100% placement rate!

Any thoughts ?

Thanks
 
I was accepted to MIT with the 25K dean fellowship, Berkeley MFE, and to Princeton as well. If you're interested in getting the strongest placement possible then Princeton should be an easy choice. The opportunity for internship and the strength of the career services combined with its small class size gives Princeton a significant advantage in placements. You can compare for yourself:
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cdo/employment-reports/current-reports-mfin.php
http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/graduate/placement/

The average base salary for MIT is 76K and the last reported average salary for Princeton was 140K.

The advantage that MIT offers is that you'll be done in one year but you will have to begin recruiting for full time positions almost immediately. The only thing major thing different on your resume during full time recruiting compared to now will be the MIT name on your resume and a few courses from the summer. Whether or not this difference is worth 70K is up to you. At Princeton, you will have 3 semesters of coursework and a summer internship by the time you do full time recruiting. After getting in to Berkeley and Princeton, I was not even considering MIT. I will be picking Princeton in the fall.
 
Hi jetforceminix and thanks for your response. I'm in your EXACT same position and I agree with your analysis. Yet, I just wanted to hear what people on this forum think. As for the average base salary at Princeton, it is indeed higher but not 140k for someone without prior work experience (the average is considerably increased by the fact that there are more people with more prior work experience at Princeton).
 
I think even ignoring the salaries and just looking at the roles themselves, it is clear that Princeton places a significant portion of their class at top places ( AQR, GS,Citadel, Bridgewater, JPM,etc.). Also at Princeton, you can get free housing your second year as a grad RA and you can earn $9200 per class as a TA. Additionally, I was offered a 1/4 tuition fellowship for the first year when I said tuition costs were a concern.
 
Goldman hires plenty of MFins. If you like consulting (I don't), you've also got Bain, McKinsey, BCG hiring from MIT. There are a lot of Boston based hedge funds and asset management companies that hire MFins, too.

Maybe I'm in this business for the wrong reasons, but working at an investment bank sounds absolutely miserable to me. If you look at the MIT 2013 employment report, I'm the "High" for US citizens. I almost certainly work less hard than most of the people who make less than me, and a lot of that comes from not working at a "top" company.
 
MIT is a great school but Princeton gets a great deal of buy side placements (Blackstone, AQR, Citadel, Kepos, Bridgewater) that MIT struggles with a little more. Some of these buyside placements go to people without prior work experience. The list at MIT also includes the F500 and the big four, IIRC.

My take is that they are both great schools and that the difference between the two programs isn't enough to defeat a strong cultural preference for one campus or the other. But there is a bit of a difference and Princeton gets better placements. The program is a little more selective, teaches a little more graduate math and statistics, and the two-year students get an internship.

There are a lot of people at MIT who will have better finance careers than me, but if I didn't have a strong preference on programs I would lean toward Princeton. (Disclosure: I am a biased Princeton MFin)
 
just fyi: in 2013 Mckinsey, Bain, and BCG each only hired 1 analyst from MIT MFin out of a class of 124. I don't have the numbers for 2013 but in 2012 and 2011, only 1 was hired each year at GS out of a class of around 70.

2013: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cdo/employment-reports/current-reports-mfin.php
2012: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/pdf/Class_of_2012-MFin_employment_report.pdf
2011:http://mitsloan.mit.edu/pdf/Class_of_2011_Master_of_Finance_Employment_Report.pdf
We're not all trying to get into Goldman. I never applied, and I would never work there, so drop that class size to 123 for sampling. I also turned down an offer from SAC Capital, so consider them on the list.
 
We're not all trying to get into Goldman. I never applied, and I would never work there, so drop that class size to 123 for sampling. I also turned down an offer from SAC Capital, so consider them on the list.
I was responding to your quote that "Goldman hires plenty of MFins... you've also got Bain, McKinsey, BCG hiring from MIT."
Each of those companies only hires about 1 MFin a year.
 
I would also just point out that there is probably a little bias going on here, at least speaking for myself. Since I graduated undergrad, I've always played for Team Illinois (see username). I got into arguments with HR and MDs about why we weren't recruiting programmers from #5 UIUC when we were perfectly happy to recruit from #30 Harvard. Today, I also play for Team Princeton in addition to Team Illinois.

My hope is that we keep the discussion respectful. There are good reasons to go to MIT and there are good reasons to go to Princeton. For me to make any claim other than Princeton might be *marginally* better would be disrespectful to all of the MIT students who will go on to have better careers in finance than I will. (One of these people may be my younger brother, whom I'm certain will be more successful than me.) My prior view is that Princeton is the stronger school based on selectivity, publications, and placements, but this is very subjective. And people who've survived 2008 and have spent 5 years as a non-target on Wall Street understand that life is better and it's easier for everyone to stay civil when winners are gracious and people speak with nuance about schools (or other aspects of peoples' histories).

My advice to Pat is to visit both campuses. I would specifically advise Pat to hang out with grad students when visiting Princeton, because that's the culture of the MFin program. Princeton's grad students are a bit lower key than the undergrads. The elite ivy league culture, for better or for worse, is a little more moderate with us than with the undergrads. Get perspectives on placements from Princeton MFins and MIT MFins. At Princeton, make sure you focus on placement for people with no prior work experience- 30-40% of the people in my year have a few years of work experience, and to be fair, they will get a better placement on average than an undergrad.

Try not to ask people to compare themselves against the other school. Just ask them what they think a good but not amazing (top 50% but not top 15%) placement or outcome out of their program looks like and then quietly compare those, yourself. Both of us will bias a little better (Team Princeton/Team MIT), but the biases will roughly be the same and you can expect us to be reasonably honest. Especially if you ask two or three of us at the same time.

By the end of both visits, your brain and your heart will have had a chance to start moving in certain directions about their decision. Placement isn't everything; the kind of person that you want to become and the campus that you want to spend 1-2% of your life on also matters a great deal, and that comes down to your heart. If your brain's view is a little bit nuanced about the situation (as I suspect it will be), it's OK to listen to your heart, and see if its views are a lot stronger.

If any admits want to set up a campus visit at Princeton, feel free to PM me. We are on spring break for the next week, but I may be able to scrounge up a few MFins to grab coffee and/or beer with you.
 
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I agree to the fullest extent that they are both great and proud schools and that in general people should be moderate in expressing their view regarding a school. As for me, I can only be grateful to both schools for admitting me. Regarding my personal choice, I have already made it and I just wanted to hear the opinion of the people on this forum. Indeed, I am very interested in the buy side and this has been one of the reasons why I chose one over the other. Also, I am currently a senior in college so I would truly benefit from an internship.
 
I think it is probably even more important to carefully review the courses and professors you are going to get.
 
Beyond any doubt. Yet, both have great professors and a great variety of electives to choose from. Obviously, studying for two years rather than one allows you to delve more deeply into your area of interest. Also, my take is that, on average, MIT students are a bit more inclined towards corporate finance than Princeton students are (which is quite clear when you look at the placement).
 
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