2013-2014 QuantNet Ranking of Financial Engineering (MFE) Programs

[Barry Chen]

How many MFE program or degree in the World? some one can helping me list it? and all the information for International student?? GRE score or GMAT.....etc

 

[Jet Cheng]

Just a heads up that in this year rankings, when you hover the rank box, it will show the Total score of programs on a scale of 100.

hey Andy, i have some questions about the fsrm program recently held by Rutgers...really curious about how it is, compared to msmf and mqf.....grateful for your advice.....

 

[Andy Nguyen]

How many MFE program or degree in the World? some one can helping me list it? and all the information for International student?? GRE score or GMAT.....etc

You can find the list of all programs worldwide on our QuantNet Guide

 

[Sanket Patel]

One small suggestion to the methodology .
for starting salary part, I suggest to use the salary adjusted by living expense index rather than absolute salary.
we know $100k in New York city is certainly different from earning of $100k in Houston .

I disagree. This introduces far too many variables, not to mention it introduces preferences into the methodology. What one person considers a 'suitable' lifestyle may be vastly different from another. And preferences, as we know, don't jive well with risk-neutrality

 

[red entor]

Interesting ranking.

I wonder who would choose CMU over Princeton or Baruch over Berkeley or Columbia over MIT.

 

[mhy]

Interesting ranking.

I wonder who would choose CMU over Princeton or Baruch over Berkeley or Columbia over MIT.

CMU is M.S. Computational Finance and Princeton is MFin, so I think they are differently oriented. Although I would imagine a lot of people perceive Princeton to be more prestigious (especially in Asia--Ivy League is a big deal)

I believe Columbia's MFE program is more established than MIT's.

 

[Yike Lu]

@Andy Nguyen, I remember seeing a version where a numerical score was reported -- is that still around?

Honestly, I think that's more interesting than the ranks specifically. Rankings are for bragging rights; the score and deriving tiers/clusters based on that score are what should really matter for prospective applicants.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@Andy Nguyen, I remember seeing a version where a numerical score was reported -- is that still around?

I'm working to find a way to show the score more prominently but for now, you can hover over the rank box and it will show the score for each program.
Edit: the overall score should be in red box under the ranking number now.

 

[JesseLevermore]

Interesting ranking.

I wonder who would choose CMU over Princeton or Baruch over Berkeley or Columbia over MIT.

How about anyone who was more interested in getting a job/learning over going for the dumb man's "prestige"?

As a result I would hope any man of logic would never blindly choose any school over another without putting serious thought into the real impact it will have on his life.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I suspect most applicants will consider various criteria/personal preferences and constraints when they select a program to apply/join. Our ranking is just one factor among many. I hope that is the case.
Don't forget that you can read first hand reviews from current students and recent graduates on the Resources page which may give you a lot more insight.

 

[englehas]

I don't think it's dumb man's prestige. Princeton offers a phenomenal education and job prospects, pretty likely the best of any school by far so I don't know how CMU beats it. I also think Berkeley is under-ranked. Surprised that UChicago is not top 8 considering they offer a great education or at least better than other schools ranked ahead of it, particularly Cornell, GIT, UCLA, Rutgers, Toronto, and BU. It is hard to really measure how good the education at each school is because it's so subjective and a lot of times is dependent on the experience of individual students who may or may not be proactive and take responsibility for the fantastic education that is offered to them on a silver platter. These are the reasons I question this ranking. I think the ranking is either very inaccurate or very unclear at what it's measuring. Is the data used to come up with the ranking robust in measuring what it purports to measure?

And a note on job prospects I think everyone should consider. Job prospects at each school are skewed by the types of students that are offered admission. Take the example of a school that is on the heavier side of the math-intensity scale that also admits many people who are brilliant in math but have no or little work experience; that school is going to look like it has bad career services and job prospects. In reality, it might simply be the student population that is to blame whereas the school gets the blame for admitting that type of student (who was lucky to be admitted in the first place). Take another student in that same program who has work experience or internships and the job-prospects could potentially look the best out of any school. Something I have never seen someone mention is that Quant-related jobs in finance are not and, in my opinion, should not be entry level jobs. This is my experience having 5 years of work experience and then starting in a masters program. Expectations for jobs become excessive and then students blame the school and dilute the value of the education they received when they have themselves to blame.

 

[mhy]

In defense of CMU: It's a school that has specialized excellence. Computational Finance is one of them. The School of Computer Science is another--it's on par with Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT CS. I would say CMU MSCF is on the same level as Princeton MFin (in terms of quality and reputation in the industry) although it's really an apples/oranges comparison. You have to look at individual programs and not just the school. As far as brand name, Princeton has the edge there.

 

[JesseLevermore]

I don't think it's dumb man's prestige. Princeton offers a phenomenal education and job prospects, pretty likely the best of any school by far so I don't know how CMU beats it. I also think Berkeley is under-ranked. Surprised that UChicago is not top 8 considering they offer a great education or at least better than other schools ranked ahead of it, particularly Cornell, GIT, UCLA, Rutgers, Toronto, and BU. It is hard to really measure how good the education at each school is because it's so subjective and a lot of times is dependent on the experience of individual students who may or may not be proactive and take responsibility for the fantastic education that is offered to them on a silver platter. These are the reasons I question this ranking. I think the ranking is either very inaccurate or very unclear at what it's measuring. Is the data used to come up with the ranking robust in measuring what it purports to measure?

And a note on job prospects I think everyone should consider. Job prospects at each school are skewed by the types of students that are offered admission. Take the example of a school that is on the heavier side of the math-intensity scale that also admits many people who are brilliant in math but have no or little work experience; that school is going to look like it has bad career services and job prospects. In reality, it might simply be the student population that is to blame whereas the school gets the blame for admitting that type of student (who was lucky to be admitted in the first place). Take another student in that same program who has work experience or internships and the job-prospects could potentially look the best out of any school. Something I have never seen someone mention is that Quant-related jobs in finance are not and, in my opinion, should not be entry level jobs. This is my experience having 5 years of work experience and then starting in a masters program. Expectations for jobs become excessive and then students blame the school and dilute the value of the education they received when they have themselves to blame.

This is comically bad logic. You blame a site that uses and defines strict criteria for its ranking by saying that its methodology is weak and present an argument based on pure fluff.

Are we supposed to take your word on what schools are better? The ranking does what it was supposed to do: take a number of very different programs and compare them at the intersection of what most would define a good MFE to be. Princeton is a great program if you want to move on to a PhD, it is not anywhere clear to me that princeton would be better for someone with the aim of getting a strong computational footing.

I can tell you have done no research on these masters programs and are reverting to toddler reasoning when you arbitrarily make a statement like Chicago "offers a great education". What in the world does that mean? Are you implying that Gtech does not? Numerous students complained that Chicago was admitting large numbers of foreigners who could barely speak English and pumping them out like a cheap factory.

Get your facts straight, right now you don't seem to be standing on any.

 

[liuming]

reputational thinking is definately not used in this ranking methodology

 

[diegosanaz]

It should not be used. It's all about the concrete data

 

[gongzhike.david]

Glad to see Fordham MSQF and UW CompFin finally listed in the rank.

The graduates of Fordham University lie in a weak position in employment market in NYC compared with graduates of NYU or Columbia University?

 

[RobotBodies]

reputational thinking is definately not used in this ranking methodology

It should not be used. It's all about the concrete data

School reputation/prestige is certainly an implicit aspect of the ranking. The ranking methodology appears to be quantitative, but that data is influenced by reputation. In fact, according to the methodology, it's an implicit factor in at least 70% of the score.

25% of the ranking score is based upon surveys from hiring professions. Though real experience when interviewing recent graduates is probably most influential in their personal rankings, reputation of a school is unavoidably an implicit factor in their scoring of schools.

25% is based upon placement, and among other factors, school (and program) reputation influences who gets interviews.

20% is based upon starting salary, which is definitely influenced by school reputation. A student from a highly reputable school is considered more competitive on the job market, which influences how much a company is willing to pay for that student.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.573177989385522.1073741836.159678434068815&type=1

 

[Jayanthan]

Is there anyway to find out raw data? For eg:how the starting salary of MIT compare to Baruch and etc

 

[dillshau]

Would also like to see the raw scores of each school, within each section. Think this is the 4th time the question has been asked now, but still no answer from @Andy Nguyen ???