NYU Tandon School of Engineering - MS in Financial Engineering

NYU FRE has the best career service! The program is somehow designed for preparing for work, which I really need.

During the Bootcamp, we work on technique interview related questions with professors. And we are asked to attend career workshop before the first semester, which is highly helpful for international students to understand how to find a job in US.

Sara, our career advisor, is super professional and sweet. Whenever I have career related question that bothers me for a long time, she can always help me out! Also, we have proficient resources for job hunting, including mock interview (both behavioral with Sara and technique with alumnus) , career workshops, templates of CV/cover letter/thank you letter. She also organized us to prepare for interview questions for share. I was impressed by the time when I made a mock interview appointment on Friday, and I was reached out by an alumni in only several hours. So efficient! Our alumnus are also super helpful and they are willing to share!

Feel proud of FRE!

I am a current first year student in the program and so far my experience with the program has been bad (being generous). The thing which the program advertises the most is large cohort, small class sizes, industry profs and large number of courses to choose from.
1. Large cohort and small class sizes: the obvious problem with this is that if there is a course which is high in demand, only 30 (or 20 in some cases) people will get it. There maybe multiple sections to the course but the content will vary vastly from one prof to another with one prof ending the course at risk neutral pricing and the other doing stochastic modelling. The course syllabus given is mainly for reference and most of the professors just mention what some approach or model is rather than going through the mechanics and helping us build intuition. You can google 10 different topic names and read the first page of the topic and be done with the course. In addition, the admissions criteria for the program is set very low and people with little to no background in either math or finance end up in the program which drives the stats lower. The cohort would be the most average cohort you can get.
2. Industry profs: the thing about industry profs is that most of them are very disconnected from how one should teach and structure the course. Most of the courses taken by them are 1.5 unit course (half semester) and the courses are very rushed with majority of them not completing the syllabus. A few of the profs don’t even have a syllabus but would teach topics what they feel like teaching. I am enrolling in the program to learn the concepts and build a toolkit, teaching some tips and tricks for on the job work will not help me clear interviews and every firm has different code base so majority of what you are teaching might not even be relevant. (Although there are some very good profs like prof. Tang, Adams, Mandel)
3. Large number of courses: Most of the courses are overlapping with each other and when asked for recommendation on what to take from the department the usual answer is choose what you want. In addition, as I pointed out earlier that majority of the courses are half semester courses, you just end up learning the jargon of the courses without building any skills. I am in my second semester with 12 credits remaining and can hardly fill it with 6 credits of acceptable courses for the next year.
The career service of the department is also bare minimum. There are no networking events organized and very few job postings (although LinkedIn has much more). I have gained much more valuable information by following Ashley Cross on LinkedIn (CMU’s career advisor) than my career department.
Advice to incoming students: Select your courses carefully and take advice from seniors on what courses to take. Start networking and preparing for interview from the day you receive admit. And lastly hope that we get a new program director who is decisive and can improve the program.

I would like to share a few things for incoming or prospective NYU MFE students!

1. We have a large number of courses you can choose from for each semester, like machine learning, derivatives pricing, risk, quantitative trading, portfolio management... I want make it more specific, for machine learning, we have different courses like Machine Learning for Finance, Advanced Machine Learning, News Analysis.... If you like trading, we have Algorithmic and High Frequency Trading, Active Portfolio Management, Fixed Income Quantitative Trading, Quantitative Trading Strategies, Quantitative Equity Investment, and etc. I believe you will find the courses you like! These courses are all taught by professors from industry with senior title.

2. We have two Career Websites. One is by NYU, the other one is by MFE department. Most of the time, we use our department career net. Our career replacement director, Sara, is the most helpful career director I have ever met. She organizes many on-campus recruiting events for our students, post many "only for NYU MFE student" jobs, provides helps from resume to interviews, literally, everything. She is not only helping you with job findings, but also "pushing" you to find a job. If you do not apply jobs through MFE career net, she would send you an email to understand why and she would be more than willing to help you with any problems! She even contacted many international companies, like securities company and funds in China to give more opportunities to students who want to work outside US.

3. The third one is for students who would like to apply for PhD in the future. As we all know, most of students get a MFE degree and then go to the industry. But it is not uncommon that MFE students in our department decide to pursue a PhD. We have capstone research projects, thesis, industry research opportunities, and other research opportunities which can equip you with a strong research ability. I really appreciate Professor Carr's time and helps! It was an honor to be his student! He helped me with everything regarding my PhD application. For this semester, he is working with 4 students who apply for PhD. We all got offers, like Johns Hopkins University, NYU Courant, University of California, Santa Barbara, Boston University, and University of Utah. Without Professor Carr's help, we could not even make this happen! So I would say, our department is not only helping students get into industry, but also providing numerous helps to students who want to get a PhD!

I would like to share my experience not as a NYU MS FRE student but as a NYU Tandon School of Engineering international grad MS student from another program. Last 2017 Spring semester I took Corporate Finance at the FRE Department, it was a really great course that I highly recommend, the Professor is a master on the topic and with tons of practical experience of real cases and advisory experience to financial institutions around the world, he taught us how to really apply financial thinking and tools to real cases and CFO's challenges.
I believe important to share this really positive experience, as a student who is trying to pursue a career on investment banking and project finance, I am convinced that through the practical expertise taught at the NYU FRE Department students are really wining what we should be looking from our graduate experience, real world tools and skills in order to succeed on our future careers.

It's so funny that everyone wants Peter Carr to carry the whole department. Everyone has only one answer to all the problems - "we have Peter Carr". Also, it is so obvious from the reviews getting deleted that there's something seriously wrong with the department. It's a scam running for past couple of years under the name of NYU. Don't try to make a fool out of everyone by writing fake reviews. Peter himself knows the truth. Below is a detailed review -

1. If you want to be honest and work hard - you'll fail terribly because most of the students will cheat off their exams and get good grades.
2. Some professors do not really want to teach and it seems they're doing a favour by coming to the school.
3. No career help from anyone here are at the department. Believe me it's a scam.
4. This program is not for anyone who aspires to become a quant.

And lastly why are all the good reviews coming up now? Good marketing campaign. Mixing up education and money. Job well done.

This is the third edition of my comment. Try to be more objective.
1. In response to some comments below, I appreciate some of their ideas, which helps me to suggest Peter on how to improve our program.
2. For others, I have to say that any program will never guarantee you any job placement. It’s not like you paid the department 60k USD and a red carpet will appear automatically to lead you to Wall Street. You have to work hard. Some people have already land great jobs in quant or other fields. If you don’t know any of them, then it is your problem. If any jobs other than a quant is not “placement”, then there will be far less employment records in other programs as well.
3. To the so-called “professor”, I wish you can present any evidence, or simple pay us to create “evidence”.
4. To the guy who claimed that many recruiters refuse to take our resumes, please name them, or their companies so you claim will be more compelling, and we can save time avoiding these teams. Please. Please.

True, the department is collecting students’ reviews to bring more changes to the program, but it is not a marketing campaign trying to furnish our reputation. I have sat with Peter and spent a few hours to discuss my experience so far in this program, and how he can improve it.

I’m here to express my own opinion, not to flatter, not to slander. I appreciate what the program has brought to me (quant skills, access to great resources, scholarships, etc.), and I dislike some other aspect (some professors’ accent and attitude, delays in some daily operations). That’s why I’m sharing my experience and giving 4 stars instead of 5, while I know some guys genuinely want to contribute nothing other than 0 stars (but sadly, they can’t give 0).

The program is rising from mediocre, with the help of some talented and determined people. This summer (2017) the incoming students are taking an online boot camp. I’m sure they will be better prepared for internship application and interviews. I’m very happy that in less than a month Peter have put what we have discussed into action. He loves this program.

My thoughts are presented as follows:

What were your favorite courses and instructors?

I regard Prof. Jerzy Pawlowski (R and Algorithmic Portfolio Management), Prof. Tang (Financial Computing and Big Data Analytics), Professor Mandel (Fixed income quant trading) as the best instructors of this program. Be sure not to miss their courses.

What courses are missing?

For courses, I would like to have Python, machine learning course (Peter had a new professor and he will open this course in Fall), maybe deep learning. It will be great if we can organize our students to test strategies on open platforms like Quantopia.

What would you improve in the program?

Some advice from faculty members are very helpful, like joining meetups. We can make the advice into 0 credit courses to push students into learning things.

How would you improve the job placement process?

The job placement process is hard to take off quickly. We had an awesome director, but she will not provide job offers to all of us outright. We need to focus on two parts: job application and interview. She is working very hard at the job application side, and we need to improve the interview side, like using Financial club to organize interview training/peer interview sessions.

At the very end, I would like to notice anyone who will be reading this review: all reviews are subject to everybody’s very own experience. As time passed by, and as the situation changes, some of these reviews may not be valid anymore. Take our words with care.

Currently student here. Someone asks to name some students who go to bb. Here is the situation. We have Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Moore Capital, JPM. That's just what i have known so far.

About the courses, i would say some of them are great and some of them are easy.
Programming: Financial Computing(C++), great course taught by great professor. Algo Portfolio Management, which requires high level R language and relevant portfolio knowledge. Fixed Income Quantitative Trading, use python to write trading strategy.
Math: Stochastic, Continuous time finance are really great and important course for quant.(btw, CTF is taught by Peter)

This program is definitely in progress since peter came here and we got a lot of opportunities in career. And recently Sarah was invited to be our career mentor who was responsible for campus recruiting at Morgan Stanley.

I would say it's a great program overall.

I graduated from this program in May 2016 and right now work in Susquehanna International Group after I left Soc Gen.

The overall experience in the program is positive.

I am quite disappointed by those 1 star/ harsh reviews below. Especially the people who blame this department did not place them with a job. My suggestion is that If you really want a job, then go talk to people, go networking, go prep for the interviews, go find internship, read more books at home. No such program is going to spoon fed you and make sure you have a job right after you graduate.


Pro:
Recommendation of professors:

1. Professor Hoff (commodity ) : super nice and knowledgeable, his lecture is divided into 2 part, first half is industry insight and second half is the Math.
2. Professor Pawlowski (R, Algo portfolio) : everything you need to know in R related to Finance and quant trading. His lecture is really useful, I share it with my colleague and having traders and quant using this as template of our code.
3. Professor Mandel: Cover fixed income in solid and practical, it is the kind of knowledge you need before you join a fixed income trading desk.
4. Professor Tang: C++, great teacher, teach the material well. A good refresh for student who already know basic data structure and fundamental object oriented programming.


Overall the courses are great except Accounting(useful for Credit trading and Equity trading) but now accounting has been cancel which is a good thing.

Since this program has so many courses to choose from, it would be helpful that you ask yourself what you plan to get out of it after 2 years right from the beginning and build your profile and chose courses according to that goal. (Technology, Quant strategist, market risk management or quant trading)

Great location, just being in New York is a big plus for such program like Financial Engineering. This mean lot more job opportunity and the classes are more practical.

Small Class size, even the program is big but the student in each class is around 20

Lots of industry professors, so you have a good idea of what is going on in the street.

With Peter Carr being our new Department Chair, he restructure this program and already brought in talented industry professors from the street and initiated industry projects with companies. Also, Sara new Career Placement Director and she did a great job in reaching out to company and alumni to assist with placement.


Con:
1.5 credit course( 7 lecture) seems too short. Could restricted such that 2 professor teach one topic like in Courant.

Need one python classes. You can learn at home, but would be a great idea to structure the class around Python or R.

More courses on fundamental Statistic, probability theory, and Stochastic Calculus, even it is listed as requirement but students come from different background.

Cheating in the class should be punished more severely.

I am a Fall 2016 student in NYU Tandon's FRE program. Overall, my experience has been pretty good... academics (including the coursework, professors) are good. Yes, few professors/courses might need some tune up, but there in multiple course offerings by different professors which can be pursued.

The career cell at NYU performs satisfactorily however it can do better. Sarah, the new placement director at FRE is doing the best she can considering the uncertainty in the job market (especially for International students, which is 99%+ of the enrolled students)

If you build your profile well, take the right courses (according to your interests), put effort in your academic projects, I don't think there is a downfall to the experience.

Recommendations for Negative Reviewers:
1) Don't expect to be spoon fed all the way through the program. No one can cover 100% of the stuff in class. I have seen people crib that they could not correctly answer a question in an interview and blame that it was not covered in class. (Thats just total BS). If you are gonna blame someone ....blame yourself for not cracking the interview.

2) No program will promise you a job at graduation. If you want a job you will need to get go out and get it....Applying through portals only gets you upto a certain point...

3) Most skills are picked up in Finance are OTJ. If you are looking for an entry level job, the chances are you will be interviewed on your academics (mostly basics). If you know your stuff, you will sail through..... There is difference between academic knowledge and industry practice.... you will know it once you enter the industry.


Recommendations for the Program:
1) Scrap the 1.5 credit courses: I don't think there should be any course with 1.5 credits.... You can make the syllabus more detailed and make them 3 credits. Personally, I don't think 1.5 credits does justice to any subject.
2) The program size is too big: I mean 150+ students (you must be kidding me). Most programs on an average have 60-80 students graduating each year. Its difficult to place that many students in a year (no matter how high the quality of students you have... which is not the best anyways).
3) Faculty: Please review the faculty, ...I have personally not faced any issues like any of the comments below but I guess they are far too many to be ignored.

Overall, the program can be a home run or a strike out but it depends more on the student and less on the academic program/department/faculty... yes they are always to guide and help you out in case of questions. The program is undergoing major changes in terms of coursework as well as the faculty, Peter Carr is making changes which I feel will move the program in the right direction.

I recently graduated from NYU Tandon, so I would like to share my opinions about this program.

Pros:
1. Although we have more than 100 students in this program, the size of classes is small. The limit of the class is 30 students, which means we have more classes. The classes are diversified enough to cover the most business that investment bankings are doing. 80 percentage of the classes are offered both in spring semester and fall semester.
2. There are some financial classes offered. If you are not familiar with finance, it is a good chance to choose them. Otherwise, you will be able to waive them.
3. NYU has a powerful career service. NYU CareerNet is a very convenient and useful website to apply for internships and jobs. Many students got their internships and full-time jobs through that. Besides, Sara, the new placement director has provided us a lot of information since she went to our program in Feb. As far as I know, some students got full-time quant or risk jobs at J.P Morgan, Societe Generale, RBC Capital Markets, Citi Group. Some students interned at J.P Morgan, Barclays, Goldman Sachs.
4. New department chair Peter Carr tried to improve the program. He hires a lot of professors working in the street. New courses such as Machine Learning, will be introduced in the next semester.

Cons:
1. The final exams of some courses are kind of too easy, so some students can get relatively high scores by merely practicing the sample exam even if they may not have a thorough understanding of the courses.
2. Most of the professors are not as famous as professors teaching at Courant's Mathematics in Finance Program.

I am recently graduated from NYU Tandon, and I would like to share some point of views.
Pros of the program:
1. The program has four tracks, and the curriculum is well diversified, so you are free to choose the classes and areas you are interested in. Mostly, I took courses related to quantitative finance, covering area like stochastic calculus, numeric methods, asset pricing, programming labs, etc. And they are adding some new courses each semester.
2. There are many great professors in the program. I took classes from Agnes Tourin, Andrew Papanicolaou, Song Tang and so on. Their lessons covered useful knowledge needed in quantitative finance. Also, they are very responsible and kind to help and answer my questions.
3. The program has a new placement director Sara Tomeo before I graduated. She is very resourceful and experienced. She shares many information and opportunities about internship and full-time jobs.
Cons of the program:
1. Since the program has four tracks, and the curriculum is diversified, it might not be enough if you want to focus on a specific area. Also, there are not many math courses, so you have to choose from other departments.
In conclusion, I think the program is improving.

I am May2016 graduate. It is very positive for me to take this program. The full-time prof.s are responsible for their students, not to mention being kind. I was very thankful to get every response from my every question via email. I chose my courses depending on my capability and interest. Therefore, they were effective and efficient for me to learn. Since there are ample supplies of knowledge in each course, being highly motivated is helpful. Or I would like to say "being interested". Prof.s' notes are extremely useful for understanding new concepts and for exams. The more I read, the better gist I got. On the other hand, part-time prof.s have different styles. Some would give presentations on class and some focus more on practice. I gained a lot from those courses. They trained me to be a qualified financial engineer. For some minor points, there might some culture shocks among students, which challenged us in every aspect of study and career. There were four tracks to choose and we could also customise our own depending on what kind of job we want to do. The new department chair has arrived after I graduate. I truly want to take one or two courses of him or other new interesting courses. I feel thankful for taking such great program in my life.

I am a currently enrolled student. I would like to share some views.
Pros.
1, Ever since Peter Carr came to Tandon, he keeps inviting people with industry experience came to teach lessons, like Edith Mandel, Pierre-Yves Guillo etc.
2, New placement director Sara is resourceful and experienced. She keeps us informed with multiple internship / full time job opportunities which is hard to find in internet. Many students have found internship this year with the help of Sara.
3, Some professors have amazing teaching skills which explain widely regarded complex knowledge in a very understandable way. Especially Prof. Tang’s C++ class.
4, Classmates are talented. Again, since Peter Carr joined us, the admission becomes more selective. Most students from China are from ‘985’ or ‘211’ university with background like mathematic, physics, computer science, etc. Students from Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan and SJTU are common seen here.
Cons.
1, Like most programs, there are some curriculums which are too theoretical.
2, It’s a traditional MFE program with traditional curriculums. Personally speaking, it would be better if more Data-Science related courses were added. Like Hadoop, Storm and Spark etc.

In conclusion, the program is rising. Welcome aboard.

I recently graduated from Tandon. From what I know, a lot of students can get bb interview, Tandon’s name is definitely not a problem like the review below mine described.
The program offers tracks besides quantitative finance, so courses are much diversified, and that is probably why some people think some courses are not helpful for quant interview. Most of professors here are responsible. If you do some research, you can surely find great and challenging quantitative courses. There are a few courses not as useful, the department is collecting student’s opinion and restructuring these courses. So I think the situation will get better soon.
Finally, I don’t think it is fair to say there is no one really to help find quant jobs. Professor Peter Carr has brought many job opportunities for students. We have a very professional career placement director to help students with job search and interview. We are also building our program career resources and opportunities.

I wish I could give a zero star rating but sadly quantnet doesn't allow do so. This program sucks to the core. There's not even a single aspect where this program excels or at least doing justice to it. Can someone from this program give me just one reason why this program is good or why should anyone pursue FE from this school? You have my email ID - if you have the answer, please feel free to write an email to me. The number of students who got quant jobs after graduation speaks for the quality of the program. Please stay away from this program. If you already have experience/job, then this can be your ticket to USA, else it will prove to be a disaster for you. Waste of 60k. There's a saying amongst the students and I quote - If you want to get interview calls, don't mention Tandon on your resume. And I rest my case.

Came to NYU in Fall 2015. Graduated in Fall 2016. I was unable to find job after getting degree from NYU. This very frustrating since I traveled from China to study at University and spent $60,000 to study here. Job prospects not good. No one really to help find quant jobs and most companies do not call back cause NYU FRE school not recruited by major bulge bracket banks. Reviews before are true & this school does not help in finance. Many of my friends from other programs got jobs and I was forced to go back to China.

I agree with the most recent reviews of the NYU Tandon Finance and Risk Engineering department. However, there were some one star reviews that were deleted, they are trying to scrub the internet for bad reviews. Good tactic to better market the school, but this is not helping anyone.

If you look at other schools and compare Tier 1 schools to this, what I would consider, a Tier 3 school, there is more emphasis on learning and getting students ready for the finance industry for the former.

Some background on myself: I'm currently a second year student in the NYU Tandon FRE department, and as some students have already stated, this program is sub-par. Now, I'll reiterate the fact that the two new professors for News Analytics and Hedge Fund Strategies, the NYU Finance and Risk Engineering department has added are not industry professionals. Although they look great on paper, we know how far that gets you in the real world. I've sat in on these classes, and there was one student who really knew more than both of these professors, I believe he's an American student with some industry experience, I'm not really sure. The student knows a lot more than the professor for the Hedge Fund strategies classes and really directed the professor in the right direction. This professor does not really teach proper hedge fund strategies, and I'm really disappointed as I had to drop the class to save my money.

The department is not all that bad. There are some really good professors, such as Andrew Papanicolaou, Nassim Taleb and Peter Carr. However, three good professors cannot carry one whole department full of amateurs.

If you want to go to a school where you're forced to cheat just to keep up with the other cheaters, then by all means come to this school. If you want to learn and actually compete with the brightest minds in the world, you're better off buying 50 books related to math, computer science and finance. That'll run you around $5K to $10K, and you'll save a lot of time and money. In my honest opinion, this department seems like it's trying, to a certain degree, but here's the real kicker: the department has been burning a lot of cash hiring new professors, who are really not all that qualified to teach.

If you want some advice from a student who's been through what you have been through, the answer is: "Do not spend your money to come to NYU FRE." Tuition costs are only going to rise, and you may end up paying a lot more soon for an education that's not helpful at all. Given this information, you should consider it. The old street saying goes: "Success breeds success." If you come here your subject to the opposite of that, barring a few good professors who are of great help. When your around students who cheat and professors who allow it, this school is all about "Failure breeds failure." Please save your money cause I'm talking from experience here.

The most recent reviews below mine, are sadly, all facts. Sebastien Galy does not teach anything, and it was a complete waste of money. However, I still believe Corporate Finance and Accounting are needed. Albeit, the accounting course should make you review companies and be able to sniff out their accounting practices.

I completely agree that they currently do not have any good coding courses to get you ready for the real world, minus Financial Computing and Numerical Simulations. It's very true, I have friends in the industry and they never heard of Tandon and believe it's not even in the top 30. In terms of cost, it's way too expensive for courses that will not teach you anything. Reiterating what the student below said, there are no python, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and optimization courses. The department is full of broken promises. The newest additions to the faculty are bad as well, from what I've heard. I'm currently a second semester student, and I've heard really bad things about Kosrow Dehnad is a self-proclaimed data miner and statistician. From what I've heard, he's making students use poor statistical practices in his News Analytics class and does not even teach you how to decipher news or SEC Filings.

In addition, I'm enrolled in Hedge Fund Strategies, and the professor cancelled three lectures in a row, and is only teaching 5 lectures. I should get a full refund for this course because I did not get what I paid for and the number of lectures I was promised. Also, now I have to work under his schedule and go to class now. This should be the other way around, the professor should work around the students' schedules. He does not even teach any strategies, there was one student that actually corrected this professor multiple times in the first two lectures...and this student didn't seem like he was paying attention at all. He was busy typing on his computer and still corrected a professor that has "worked" in the industry for so long. I think that student would've been a better professor than Sudeep Gupta.

Cheating is also a big thing in this department. It's unfair to the students that actually study for hours on end and have jobs. The TAs outright send you solutions and don't even explain you the thought process behind it. I never ask for solutions, I ask for explanations because I want to learn this. There should be indifferent proctors for the exam, those that are not afraid to throw a student out of the school for cheating. I see students take out their phones, look up answers, go to the bathroom for 10 minutes (not even one student at once, but multiple students). Make this a project based school with no exams, that's how you combat this cheating. The real world does not make you take exams, the real world makes you work on projects. The department should be ashamed of giving such a poor representation of NYU. How does this school claim to bridge theory and practice, when in practice there are no exams and barely any cheaters. The students are left with no education and no skills. There are some very bright students, but they learn everything on their own and the professors can't even answer their questions.

In conclusion, you should save your money and not come to this school. I know from experience already the level their operating at is more like a high school. There are some good classes, but overall, it's not worth it to spend over $50,000 just to get a degree and take five good classes. This department is full of broken promises, they're selling students the dream, and this is by far the worst decision I've made in life, to travel thousands of miles to NYC to get what is the equivalent of a high school degree. Professors letting students cheat without a care just shows you what type of professors they're getting. Low quality. There are some good professors there, but they should all leave and go to a better school to teach.

I am a fall 2016 graduate from NYU Tandon, and the program failed to meet expectations. Sespite what these reviews have said, courses and the professors fail to get you ready for the real world. I've spent countless nights studying for courses of no use and were not practical at all. There are a few good courses, such as the course Dr. Taleb teaches.

In my honest opinion, this school is not worth the price tag whatsoever. The emphasis has been on improving and providing students with practical knowledge, but the school has been stuck in the theory aspect. Schools such as CMU, Columbia, UChicago or NYU Courant would be a better choice. The school has not released its placement numbers at all, and it did not have any courses focused on Java or Python, which is what many companies are looking for. However, they do have courses in C++, Big Data and R. Additionally, I studied under the Algorithmic Finance Track, and did not learn any algorithms at all. The topics that were taught in these classes were of no help and do not properly get you ready for a career in algo trading. I've had to spend most of my time studying on my own, and not listening to the professors because some of the material they teach is just blatantly wrong.

Please, save your time and choose another school. I am speaking from experience and have not found a job yet, despite getting a 3.9 GPA. The school is also not fond of penalizing cheaters. I have seen countless students cheat on exams, and those professors did not say anything even after bringing it to their attention. If a few students cheat, it might as well be an open book exam. There needs to be drastic changes, from creating new courses and emphasis on more projects rather than exams to get students ready for the real world.

I am a fall 2016 MFE student.

Now we have Dr Peter Carr as the director. And the program is obviously improving now. He hired several noted professors from the industry. He is working on the placement, hiring the placement officer, inviting the guest speaker to the seminar.

Pros: the curriculum is well diversified. We could freely choose different tracks. The location is excellent. And the careernet of NYU is very useful for students.

Cons: There are some core courses that seem to be irrelevant to the financial engineering. Some professors are not dedicated to teaching.