What resources you use to learn about MFE programs

[Andy Nguyen]

I'm curious to hear the answer to this. Obviously, you are here so you have used Quantnet.

Here are the logical steps that I imagine prospective students do

1) The program website
Then they google some more, which leads to
2) Quantnet
3) Global-Derivatives
4) Wilmott, etc?

It would be nice to see if someone go to step 5,6,7, etc. but I suspect most will stop after step 1).

 

[KaiRu]

5. Linkedin can be useful to track the career path of former students or contact the current students/look at their background.

 

[Penglu]

I'm curious to hear the answer to this. Obviously, you are here so you have used Quantnet.

Here are the logical steps that I imagine prospective students do

1) The program website
Then they google some more, which leads to
2) Quantnet
3) Global-Derivatives
4) Wilmott, etc?

It would be nice to see if someone go to step 5,6,7, etc. but I suspect most will stop after step 1).

I approached my professor, contacted those current students in the program. You can always find those students' contact information on the school career website.

 

[latency]

yep, thats the first thing i do, use linkedin to look at profiles and where students have been placed

 

[roni]

Current employees who are financial engineers or work closely to them.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

LinkedIn is great. Almost everyone in any professional capacity has one these days. I wish there was something like that back in 2006 when I researched for school.

Keep in mind sample bias. How many current and past students of a program would you reach out to before you are certain that you can get a complete picture?

When I reached out to alumni of various programs so they can contribute a review of their program, I have to trash many reviews because the alumni did not put enough effort into it, making their reviews less than review worthy. So that's something to keep in mind as well.

For example, when you ask one person what they think of the program which they just paid 100K for, all you could get is "yeah, I liked it. It's not that bad". How much insight can you get from something like that?

 

[KaiRu]

For example, when you ask one person what they think of the program which they just paid 100K for, all you could get is "yeah, I liked it. It's not that bad". How much insight can you get from something like that?

If one has general quesion, then he should not complain about general answer. It's very hard to provide description of program in general because different people have different priorities - one is very interested in scholarships while another just doesn't care, one is interested in placement while another wants more programming/stochastic calculus, one wants refreshment courses and another person does not and the list goes on.

The more specific would be a question, the better answer one can expect.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I see what you said, Kairu. That's why our review form asks a wide range of questions.
What I meant is that in many cases, you can summarize a review in that short sentence. Not that often that you can find an alum who would enthusiastically answer questions from prospective students. And that's in itself is telling.

 

[DominiConnor]

LinkedIn data does have survivorship bias.
If your education does not lead to your desired line of work then that very important data will be missing.

Also it is only backward looking, you can say that a lot of poeple who did suvject X at Y are traders now, but that's not quite the same as predicting the labour market.
Also many finance courses aren't old enough to have depth in the time series.

A big lost factor is the "value add". If someone is smart and hard working then they will probably get into a good school, so is the school a causal factor here, or a signal that predicts their career ?

But it is still good data, and is both far more objective than any output from someone trying to sell you a course.
So you should look at it.

Just for a laugh I searched
trader baruch and got 439 people

and then
trader courant
and got 65

Maybe that means something ?

 

[Yike Lu]

Baruch is much much larger than just Courant...

Remember a search for Baruch includes the undergrad, MFE, and MBA programs. On the other hand, "Courant" by definition limits the search to NYU's graduate math dept.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Now my next question is about the harder to find information such as placement stats, internship, admission, etc

Since there are only a handful of the top people at each program knows about this, what do you guys (prospective students) do to find out about it?

 

[latency]

how many people have graduated from the Baruch's mfe program since its inception? I am not sure its greater than 400.

 

[dstefan]

Yike is right, "trader Baruch" would return results much wider than just the Baruch MFE. We have about 170 graduates since the beginning of the program, including the current graduating class.

 

[darth]

Trader Baruch returns the result of MBA zicklin as well and many traders have their surname as baruch... this explains

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The program's website is the first and most visited by prospective students. Would the impression by the website (its design, its density and quality of information) affect your perception about the quality of the program?