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Student reviewers of MFE programs

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen

Joined
5/2/06
Messages
11,764
Points
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We are looking for recent or soon to be graduates from various MFE programs to write a review of their program. These will appear in upcoming web and print version of Quantnet guides to MFE programs.

You can choose to contribute anonymously but we will contact you privately to verify the identity and program association.

The form is now online at httt://www.quantnet.com/submit-review/

Thank you.
 
This was long awaited.

Is there a limit on the number of reviews per school or it will pile up as more and more students sign up to write reviews for their schools?
 
Fair question.
My first goal would be to generate seed reviews for enough programs. There will be no limit on how many reviews one program can receive. Obviously, the most popular programs will receive the bulk of the review so it's important that we reach out to the other less well known programs as well.

5 minutes after the review form is online, we received the first review. It's pretty cool and informative.

I'm interested in opinion whether anything important the question form needs.
 
So, where is the link to access these reviews? I am really interested in seeing what people have to say about their program.
 
In other words, even if you took courses in the programs but were never explicitly in them, you're DQ'd.

I guess that disqualifies me from reviewing both Lehigh's and Rutgers's, even though I have explicitly taken courses in both of their quant masters programs.
 
What about adding a question about pre - program courses? Many schools do offer them and it would be nice to know it's worth.
 
If you talk to people like Linda or Christina at UCB MFE, and similar people at other schools, I think they would be happy to pass on this link to their students. I am sure there are many students who are not aware of this forum yet and would definitely benefit both themselves and us by being part of it.
 
As a teaser, I'll post an excerpt from one of the NYU Math Finance reviews

Career service
The program is three semesters long - so students are encouraged/required to do an internship over the summer. Finding an internship was a challenge, mostly due to the uncertain economic climate. Recruiting for internships, though, picked up a lot in late April and early May. Finding a full-time job was much easier.

We have access to all of NYU's career services (except for the business school MBA recruiting), which are pretty comprehensive. A lot of companies recruit on campus for analyst positions, and they are more than happy to interview MS students. Some post jobs through NYU's career portal. A handful of places come on campus specifically to recruit Math Finance finance students. The program is well connected, and we frequently get notified of job openings at various places which we can apply to, as well as sending around a resume book from which some students have gotten jobs and internships.

The program runs a career workshop that meets every week for a several hours during the first few weeks of the program. In it, he goes over making a resume, networking, and preparing for quantitative and behavioral interviews.
Click to expand...

This is just the answer to one of our more than 30 questions in the survey form. The complete review promises to provide plenty of insight and useful info.
 
Excerpt from the review of BU Math Finance program from a FT student who graduated recently
Career service
The program was going through a few changes. But we got assistance with few career fairs and were kept posted about the companies visiting BU. Apart from this, a third party called EUSA was available to us find internships(CPT)
Click to expand...
Programming component of the program
Decent amount of programming done for Monte Carlo simulations, Statistical analysis of financial data. C++ was the main language. Also packages like R. Personally I used Matlab and Stata as well.
Click to expand...
 
The name of your program
SUNY - University at Buffalo, MS (Finance)

Did you study the program full-time or part-time
Full-time

When did you start and finish?
9/2007-9/2008

Can you tell us a bit about your background
PhD in Management Science and Information Systems - University of Texas at Austin. Lots of Economics and Finance and Operations Management courses. GPA 3.8. GMAT 760 - 99 percentile in 2006. Previously I had done my BTech in Computer Science from IIT-Mumbai and MBA from IIM-Bangalore.
5 years programming experience as a developer (SQL, Oracle, C++, OO). Life sucked. Got bored of programming. Some of my classmates from PhD program were earning $400K+ on Wall Street.

Did you get admitted to other programs?
Yes. Got admitted to others. Would prefer not to list.

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
Liked the course content. Nice set of courses offered. Subjects which I wanted to cover. $10K tuition seemed to be a real bargain.

Tell us about the application process at this program
Applied. 6 weeks later got an email to pay $500 admission deposit.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like
Math Finance I & II (Hull + Luenberger).
Numerical Analysis I & II (Matlab).
Portfolio Theory.
Fixed Income Securities.
Complex Financial Instruments (Wilmott).
Financial Modeling (EViews).
Investments (Bodie).
International Finance.
Supervised Research - Citibank Yield Book.

Other courses which were available but which I did not take:
Management of Financial Institutions.
Financial Policies and Strategy.
Mergeres & Acquisitions.
Financial Statement Analysis

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the flexibility of the curriculum?
7

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Quality of teaching was very good. Did not bother to contact the TA for anything. Most of the students study in groups, so you really need to find 3 or 4 people whom you feel comfortable studying with.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
9

Materials used in the program
Hull.
Investments, by Zvi Bodies, Alex Kane, and Alan Marcus
Investment Science, by D. G. Luenberger
Analysis of Econometric Data, Second Edition, by Gary Koop
Wilmott introduces quantitative finance by Paul Wilmott
Lots of Course Packets - I think there was a course packet of 200-300 pages for each and every course.

Programming component of the program
Matlab.
EViews.
Citibank Yield Book.

Projects
One individual project in Supervised Research (Yield Book).
Group projects were there in every course.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the practicality of the curriculum?
8

Career service
Few companies come to campus. Most of the students move to New York City after graduating and start interviewing. They normally get jobs within 3 months of graduation.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
2

What do you like about the program?
Liked the course content and quality of teaching.
The $10K tuition was fantastic.

What DON'T you like about the program?
The placement assistance could have been better. Citibank hires a few people every year in their Buffalo office. M&T Bank hires a few. BoA has got the Mortgage division in Buffalo. Most students have to move to NYC to find jobs.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
Not much really. The program as such was great. The placement is the only thing that sucks.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
9

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Still spend most of my time programming. Some of my PhD classmates are now earning $600K+. Can't figure out how or why. Want to do quant work and earn big $.

Other comments
The students are really smart and very cooperative. Really liked the program. Unfortunately my GPA dropped from 3.8 in PhD to 3.6 in MFE. Don't know why. Put in my best effort.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
8

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
9

On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
9
 
CGU MFE

The name of your program
CGU MFE

Did you study the program full-time or part-time
Full-time

When did you start and finish?
9/2007-08/2009

Can you tell us a bit about your background
PhD student in Economics, SUNY-Albany 09/2005-05/2007
M.A. in Economics, Wuhan University, China 09/2002-05/2005

Equity Analyst, CITICS in Wuhan, China 08/2001-08/2002

Did you get admitted to other programs?
No

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
. It has a flexible course arrangement and a better balance between Mathematics and Management.
. A 40% tuition cut is affordable
. Southern Calif. is a better place to live.

Tell us about the application process at this program
1) Deadline is Feb 1.
2) Applied
3) Receive ad and fellowship 6 weeks later.
4) about 400 deposit.

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like
Management Part:
Financial Accounting
Corporate Finance
Asset Management Practium (An excellent project with a real money Fund)
Financial derivatives (a professor with experience in practical market)

Math Part:
Stochastic Process
Math Finance
Numerical Method for Finance
Credit risk
Financial Time Series
Aysmptotic Method
Simulation
Math Clinic (A applied math project with industry)

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Several Lab classes were arranged in each course, including math course. And homework is plentiful but acceptable.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the quality of teaching?
8

Materials used in the program
. Hull
. Derivative Markets by Mcdonald
. Stochastic Calculus (I&II) by Steven E. Shreve
. Portfolio Construction, Management, &Protection by Strong
. An intorduction to credit risk modeling by Christian bluhm

Programming component of the program
VBA/R/Matlab/C++

Projects
Group projects were there in every course. And there is a special project in Asset Management that a real &300,000 fund was conducted by the this course students. You can test your strategies in the real market. Awesome.

Career service
Career center really work hard to help you, but seems it doesn't work well in the bad market. Before 2008, many students had chance to do Intern or full time job in TCW and Countrywide. But it was difficult now.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the career service for internship and full-time job?
3

What do you like about the program?
flexible courses and high quality professors.

What DON'T you like about the program?
. no special course or seminar for programming. And there was just a discussion group by students.
. placement is not good.

Suggestions for the program to make it better
. more programming seminar because most students were not come from computer science major.
. construct a better alumni network.

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
I graduated on Aug. 2009 and am looking for a job in New York City now.
I really hope that I can work in the quantitative field. Not easy. I am trying.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
6

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
Most India students got their jobs with the help of their social network.
 
Just wondering how and when the comprehensive student reviews of the MFE programs will be released
 
How: they will be released online at quantnet.com first in a Review category. Unlike many hotel/restaurant/book reviews done by people who never visited/ate/read what they review, we will verify each and every review submitted by our members to make sure they are done by graduates of such program.

We may publish a magazine with these user reviews. We'll see where 2010 takes us.

When: as soon as we can. Work is being done around the clock behind the scene to ...well, we'll keep it a big surprise for our members.
 
The name of your program
CUNY Baruch College, Master of Applied Math for Finance <-- Editor's note: The Baruch MFE was previously called Applied Math for Finance from 2002 until 2007.

Did you study the program full-time or part-time
Full-time

When did you start and finish?
9/2005 - 5/2007

Can you tell us a bit about your background
MBA; 3 year working experience (2 non-us; 1 us)

Why did you choose this program (over others, if applicable)?
1) faculties are easy to access
2) working knowledge oriented
3) cost and benifit consideration
4) location
5) director was pushing very hard so that graduates can get a job (even before graduation)

Tell us about the application process at this program
1) send in all materials
2) schedule a meeting with the director
Initially the situation was tense due to it's competitive nature, but then it turns out to be a very pleasant experience

Tell us about the courses selection in this program. Any special courses you like
Calibration taught by Salih Neftci in 2006 fall.
Numerical linear algrbra I and II taught by Mayo in 2005 fall and 2006 spring.
Stochastic calculus.

Tell us about the quality of teaching
Theoretical side is a bit weak. but the practical side (computing numbers) is strong
The instructors are always reachable for all kinds of matters. No need for looking for TA.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the accessibility of the faculty and staff?
10

Materials used in the program
Besides some must-buy "big name" text books in the field, papers and notes (published or un-published) from other practioners are used as well. I would say the techniques in the papers are much more helpful in terms of interviewing for a job (provided that you are already 80% comfortable with the material covered in the text books)

Programming component of the program
C/C++ required.
VBA/mathematica if you are interested.
Long in short, i suffered while i was in the program. But I am now happy that i was suffered.

Projects
Implementing/computing projects (option pricer, sensitivities, CDO, VaR, etc) done in C/C++/EXCEL/Mathematica

Career service
The director basically asked (haunt) you about the status every time he saw you. He also hooks up a lot of opportunities for you.

What do you like about the program?
I spent 20k on tuition (and roughly another 20k on living expense). I got a lot more than those back first year at work.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade the value of the program for the price tag?
10

What DON'T you like about the program?
none

Suggestions for the program to make it better
I would have done nothing different.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you grade your experience in the program?
10

Can you comment on the social interaction between students of different ethnics, nationalities in the program?
Groups get assigned by director based on different background (good chance to practice on how to get along with others even if you dont like them in the real working environment).

Programs like Baruch MFE, UCB MFE have refresher courses for incoming students. Does this program offer such courses? How useful was it?
I took only C++ in 2005 summer. (they offered probabilities and calculus as well).
I didn't know how to write "hello world" before I went to the refresher course. After the refresher course, I can write basic application such as curve bootstrapping, matrix solver, etc.
No doubt that refresher course taught only entry level programming skills, but for people(like myslef) who didn't aim at those hard-core programming type of jobs, the material is enough for someone who wants to descide their career path later (programming- or analytic-oriented type of work)

On a scale of 0-10, how would you grade the usefulness of these refresher courses?
10

What are your current job status? What are you looking for?
Working in a major financial institution as a senior quantitative analyst.
At current stage, i am happy about where i am.


On a scale of 1-10, would you recommend this program to others?
10
 
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