2011-2012 Quantnet Ranking of Financial Engineering (MFE) Programs

[alain]

It's just hard for me to believe a program like Baruch could be ranked higher than MIT , STANFORD, Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia ??

I don't care a bit about the ranking but this way of thinking reveals something totally different.

 

[nesense]

You guys love to get off topic.

Sanket : Andy wrote "The only thing erroneous is how people may interpret the ranking without a proper understanding of the data and methodology. " which doesn't seem to me as someone who is relaxed and willing to recieve any opinions which differ from his regarding rankings/ methodology.

darth: Are you seriously telling me that you are comparing Baruch to Hershey's which is one of the best chocolate brands out there. A better analogy would have been if you compared Hershey's (MIT) to a lesser known regional brand (Baruch) making a crunch chocolate that the lesser known brand has been making for years and Hershey's just started making two years ago.

And remind me again Berkeley's program has been around for 10 years, Stanford - 10 years, not sure about cornell and columbia.

 

[darth]

You guys love to get off topic.

Sanket : Andy wrote "The only thing erroneous is how people may interpret the ranking without a proper understanding of the data and methodology. " which doesn't seem to me as someone who is relaxed and willing to recieve any opinions which differ from his regarding rankings/ methodology.

darth: Are you seriously telling me that you are comparing Baruch to Hershey's which is one of the best chocolate brands out there. A better analogy would have been if you compared Hershey's (MIT) to a lesser known regional brand (Baruch) making a crunch chocolate that the lesser known brand has been making for years and Hershey's just started making two years ago.

And remind me again Berkeley's program has been around for 10 years, Stanford - 10 years, not sure about cornell and columbia.

Well.. You may be having a better analogy than mine's but it's still possible that the new crunch chocolates that hershey has started producing still has not achieved the acceptance and quality of the lesser known regional brand which has a good if not great name in the field of producing crunch chocolates.

 

[Michelle]

Some people may have confused this ranking with a ranking of who are the most prestigious/well-known universities. If that is the case, the list will look totally different and Baruch is nowhere to be found there.
Ranking is fun. Some will always hate it but most will take it for what it is.

Didn't we have a few MFE rankings from other websites years ago? What happened to them?

 

[nesense]

darth - i'll give that to you that Baruch's program could be better than MITs because MIT just started their program, but, what about Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia?

Isn't the whole purpose of ranking - to compare universities?? And the ones that come out on top are then considered the most prestigious/well-known universities.

 

[Sanket Patel]

You guys love to get off topic.

Sanket : Andy wrote "The only thing erroneous is how people may interpret the ranking without a proper understanding of the data and methodology. " which doesn't seem to me as someone who is relaxed and willing to recieve any opinions which differ from his regarding rankings/ methodology.

darth: Are you seriously telling me that you are comparing Baruch to Hershey's which is one of the best chocolate brands out there. A better analogy would have been if you compared Hershey's (MIT) to a lesser known regional brand (Baruch) making a crunch chocolate that the lesser known brand has been making for years and Hershey's just started making two years ago.

And remind me again Berkeley's program has been around for 10 years, Stanford - 10 years, not sure about cornell and columbia.

Have your personally attended all the programs? Without doing so, how can you make such emphatic make claims that School A > School B > School C regardless of factors being considered? If prestige was the sole factor in rankings, I'm fairly certain the MITs and Stanfords of the world would unequivocally rank higher than Baruch.

By your logic, it's nothing short of blasphemy that Georgia State University's Public Finance & Budgeting program is ranked higher that of Harvard, Cal Tech, MIT, UPenn, Columbia, Berkley, and NYU. Or that Viginia Commonwealth University's Painting and Drawing program is ranked number #8 while Harvard, Cal Tech, MIT, UPenn, Columbia, Berkley, and NYU didn't even crack the top 10.

 

[darth]

darth - i'll give that to you that Baruch's program could be better than MITs because MIT just started their program, but, what about Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia?

Isn't the whole purpose of ranking - to compare universities?? And the ones that come out on top are then considered the most prestigious/well-known universities.

You have a very valid viewpoint here.
This ranking has been developed on the basis of a set of criteria , which has also been disclosed alongwith the rankings.
People have had very valid concerns and excellent viewpoints about the drawbacks of those criteria and they have been posted before.
Some people have even stated that the methodology has been such to favour a particular programme in the rankings.
I think there can't be a methodology or ranking which will fit everyone's viewpoints , but I do believe that the ranking lacks serious
disclosure of the conflict of interest , and things should be made transparent to everyone so that they can decide on their own how seriously to take these rankings.
Again to give an analogy , an analyst is not allowed to rate a company for which they are having dollars from Investment banking Activities.But if the company has been rated by that analyst , the least analyst could do is to provide a footnote disclosing all conflicts of interest. I hope I am making some sense

 

[nesense]

Sanket - You missed the point.

Georgia State University's Public Finance & Budgeting and Viginia Commonwealth University's Painting and Drawing program have been ranked by atleast 5 different independent companies...US News, Businessweek, etc.

Baruch is being ranked by a Baruch sponsored website. QN is full of Baruch ads, the person who published the rankings is a Baruch alumni.

I mean at the very least isn't that enough to question the validility of Baruch's rank , a university that doesn't appear anywhere in any rankings of the top 40 universities in the country EXCEPT on a Baruch sponsored website's ranking ????

Darth - I totally agree with you.

 

[atreides]

Sanket - You missed the point.

Georgia State University's Public Finance & Budgeting and Viginia Commonwealth University's Painting and Drawing program have been ranked by atleast 5 different independent companies...US News, Businessweek, etc.

Baruch is being ranked by a Baruch sponsored website. QN is full of Baruch ads, the person who published the rankings is a Baruch alumni.

I mean at the very least isn't that enough to question the validility of Baruch's rank , a university that doesn't appear anywhere in any rankings of the top 40 universities in the country EXCEPT on a Baruch sponsored website's ranking ????

Darth - I totally agree with you.

This is an MFE ranking and not a general university ranking

 

[koupparis]

Sanket - You missed the point.
I mean at the very least isn't that enough to question the validility of Baruch's rank , a university that doesn't appear anywhere in any rankings of the top 40 universities in the country EXCEPT on a Baruch sponsored website's ranking ????
Darth - I totally agree with you.

Baruch houses one of the oldest business schools in the world.[64] It is situated a short subway ride from both midtown Manhattan and Wall Street. Baruch was ranked as a Top Public #3 University, and Top #21 Regional(North) University by 2012 US News & World Report|US News, #22 Most Desirable Large School by Newsweek, and Best College Buy by Forbes Magazine.[5] Baruch tied at #2 withHarvard University for the number of graduates in "100 Most Influential People in Accounting Worldwide"[65] and ranked #1 nationwide for people with Advanced Degrees who pass the CPA exam. Baruch is ranked 25th among business schools in the United States by Social Science Research Network.[66] Baruch's MBA was ranked #1 in 'MBAs with Most Financial Value at Graduation' by US News.[67]

See a more complete and detailed list on wikipedia.

 

[koupparis]

The funny thing is, if a Haravrd alum published a ranking with Harvard in the top, no one would think twice about it. But because a smaller and obviously lesser-known school has a program that outranks (possibly) some of the Ivys etc, a lot of people are up in arms.

Sure there are valid objections to the ranking, just like there were in 2009. Was 2011 an improvement? You bet it was. Will the next one be a bigger improvement? I'm guessing so. So take what you want from the rankings, provide constructive criticism and leave your "personal beliefs" and cynicism out of the conversation.

 

[Lin]

Didn't we have a few MFE rankings from other websites years ago? What happened to them?

Global derivatives is dead, long live quantnet :p

 

[CN Chen]

Andy, it seems to me that most of the criticisms on the rankings are related to your ties with Baruch, specifically whether the factor weights are truly unbiased or if they have a pro-Baruch tilt. I think the only way to get rid of this conflict of interest issue is to hand some of the decision-making process off to other people with different or opposing viewpoints. Here's an idea for next year's rankings: form a committee of one student or alumni from each of the other top programs (CMU, NYU, Columbia, UCB, Stanford, Princeton, MIT - or some subset thereof). Together, sit down and decide what the best methodology and weightings should be. This won't satisfy everyone, but at least it will give the rankings a boost in credibility and would be a good step towards getting non-Baruch members of the QN community involved.

 

[TraderJoe]

Now you can see the benefit of having data which everyone can analyze and has been verified by the school directly.
This data is from the Business Week rankings.
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/full_time_mba_profiles/baruch.html
The data has been verified by Baruch Business school.
As you can see from the hard data which has been verified by the Baruch Business school itself, 40% of Baruch MBAs did not have a job within 3 months AFTER graduation. Also the salary was less than half of the salary of the Top 20 Business schools.
Now you can clearly see the benefit of having hard data which is openly disclosed to the public and accessible by anyone and which has been verified by the school itself. No one will argue that this data has been fabricated because the school itself has verified this data.

• 
  Job Offers for 2010 graduates
  
  • Received first job offer by graduation: 47 %
  • Received first job offer in three months following graduation: 13 %
  • Received first job offer more than 3 months after graduation: 0 %
  • Did not report having received a job offer: 40 %
  • Accepted first job offer by graduation: 44 %
  • Accepted first job offer in three months following graduation: 16 %
  • Accepted first job offer more than 3 months after graduation: 0 %
  • Did not report having accepted a job offer: 40 %
• • Job-accepting graduates who received a signing bonus: 31 %
• 
  Base salary, signing bonuses and other compensation for most recent employed graduates:
  
  • Mean base salary: $68,295.00
  • Median base salary: $63,500.00

 

[TraderJoe]

• It is probably best if you do not check the Business Week salary data for Haas (Berkeley). You may be surprised how high Haas is ranked and the salary which the Berkeley MBAs get.

 

[Sanket Patel]

• It is probably best if you do not check the Business Week salary data for Haas (Berkeley). You may be surprised how high Haas is ranked and the salary which the Berkeley MBAs get.

The difference here is we are discussing the MFE programs...the business school rankings were brought up to disprove an erroneous claim.

 

[Sanket Patel]

The funny thing is, if a Haravrd alum published a ranking with Harvard in the top, no one would think twice about it. But because a smaller and obviously lesser-known school has a program that outranks (possibly) some of the Ivys etc, a lot of people are up in arms.

TraderJoe and nesense,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

For anyone that has read Dune, this reminded of the following:

"The Padishah Emperor turned against House Atreides because the Duke's Warmasters Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho had trained a fighting force - a small fighting force - to within a hair as good as the Sardaukar. Some of them were even better. And the Duke was in a position to enlarge his force, and make it every bit as strong as the Emperor's"

 

[atreides]

TraderJoe and nesense,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

For anyone that has read Dune, this reminded of the following:

Sanket, I have been searching for fellow Frank Herbert fans

 

[bigbadwolf]

Has anyone read the Dune prequels that flesh out the story a bit? My favorite character is Baron Harkonnen's twisted mentat (Piter de Vries).

 

[nesense]

TraderJoe and nesense,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

.

Sanket - First of all a Harvard grad would not need to publish a ranking that lists Harvard in the top. There are enough websites already doing it for him. Quantnet is the only place where I have seen student/alumni - published rankings. Like I mean, why is it so hard for you guys to see the obvious conflict of interest.

Secondly, if I did see a Harvard grad listing some rankings, in which he claims their med school is better than John Hopkins, I'd obviously question it (if i wanted to go to med school/ was a John Hopkins graduate)

Koupparis - are you kidding me - Baruch is ranked 25th among business schools in the United States by Social Science Research Network ..... what's the social science research network doing ranking B-schools ??..next you're going to say Baruch was also ranked #2 for the most number of homecoming queens who made it to Miss teen USA.

I think Baruch students are blowing this out of proportion and taking this as a personal attack on your school