As a recent graduate from NCSU, I have to say this program has a horrible attitude towards its student.
It is a professional master degree, but the professors and the program directors spent very little time to help you find a job. Instead, they low your GPA, delay your graduation time and basically try their best to stop you from getting a good offer. For example, MA547 is a core class in this program and everyone has to take it and B is the minimum passing grade. Last year, Dr. Pang failed 1/3 of the student in the class so they have to take a 4th semester to finish the program while you normally only need 3 semesters to graduate. This year, 12 out of 29 people in this class get their GPA hammered and are forced to take a fourth semester to graduate. If you want the students to get a job, stop give the majority of the class B and delay their graduation.
The program director, Dr. Jeff Scroggs either doesn’t understand anything about the current job market or couldn’t care less about the future of the students. There is no company conducting campus recruitment for this program and no real alumni network. You are on your own to get jobs. So family connections are the most common way people land an internship/job. This year, only three people received summer internship in United States. With such a program director, it is not surprising that this program has horrible job placement. It used to be among the top 20 programs in Financial Engineering but now it’s in the middle of nowhere.
Overall, I don’t recommend this program to anyone who wishes to find a good job in US. The faculties don’t put student’s benefit as their priority and ignore much of the students’ need. Instead of treating students as their current customers and the future donors, they still believe that they are the professors so they can do whatever they want. Unless they change the program director, I don’t see how this program will get better in the future.
