Forced because they couldn't get a job anywhere else! Obviously, they wont say it straight to you. No one joins a MFE program wanting to go into data science and analytics roles. They should have gone for CS and analytics program. they joined MFE because they got rejected from everywhere. Thus, I said "bad student quality". Do not take this as personal insult. It is just the truth!
Happy finals!
Rankings are subjective based on what metrics you feel are important. I think the most important metric of a program is its reputation in the view of reputable hedge funds/banks. I'm not too sure about banks as I didn't apply to any for full time but based on some internal documents of certain hedge funds + some inside info I hear from students across the 'top 5' programs, this is the ranking based on industry reputation:Hey yall future quants! CMU MSCF continues to drop on QN ranking. Is MSCF now really a tier 2 program (behind Baruch, Princeton and UCB)? What are yall thoughts? Or is QN ranking not as accurate as before? Curious on how yall think about it.
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The employment rate 3 months after graduation being equal to the US only employment rate 3 months after graduation is also highly suspicious, especially in comparison to Columbia MAFN where it is implied 42% of that graduates are going to work internationally.
I am a current UCB MFE student. Personally, I received two big bank sell-side internship offers and two small "startup" hedge funds internship offers. I chose to go to one of the small "startups".
And oh man now we're talking high 300s to over half a mill new grad offers for basically all the big brand buy side firms. I don't think many people would be turning these down for startups
Well, if their "upper tail" is that fabulous but their average compensation is still 30k+ less than UCB, doesn't that just tell you how mediocre their "lower tail" is?
Variety of factors, QN average comp doesn't consider internships, and definitely not internships this cycle. Different MFEs have different standards for reporting the salaries, CMU/NYU Courant is known for super truthful reporting, Columbia was known to be a litttle bit sketchy with their reporting, not too sure of Berkeley's reporting standards. (there's no central rules of how a MFE has to report their salaries so I always take them with a grain of salt, the offers I see are the offers I believe)
Yeah this is why rankings are fairly subjective - the best choice of a program depends on the person applying. If the person thinks they're going to be top 5 in the program and has the mentality "whats the place that would maximize my chances to get Citadel" for example, they would probably be more interested in the upper tail than the mean (CMU MSCF has the most representation in Cit Sec compared to other MFEs I believe). CMU and Princeton also generally have the best reputation among the big name buy side firms
Yes, they interview alot more than the top 5 and the emphasis is definitely on the interview performance but there's still a high correlation between the top academic performers and those who get in. When I did a linkedin search on the Cit Sec QRs, the most common theme I observed was like top in province in china + ridicuously high MSCF/MFE grades (I think all were 4.1+)
Well, just like you said. Top candidates have the "I have to win no matter what" attitude, so they learn whatever is needed to be accepted. A 1-year/1.5-year MFE program will never be enough for teaching students those things that they are looking for. Thus, these top students achieved such "excellence" very often due to their own efforts than what the program taught them.
I can verify that all the ranking data is coming from the programs' directors and staff directly. I have double checked with Columbia MFE as well as other programs to confirm the accuracy of their data after the submission.
Interestingly enough, I know quite a few students that ended up getting the best job placements who actually got rejected from Princeton (I can even admit I didn't even get an interview to Princeton but got into Berkeley in the early rounds back then where Linda called me with the sales pitch).
I partially agree but then the same reasoning detracts from Princeton (and Baruch). Princeton only takes the 25-30 people that the admissions office determines to have the best chances of getting the best placements (and similiarily with Baruch which has probably the highest concentration of top in province Chinese undergrads), compared to Columbia/CMU/Berkeley which are all much more lenient in granting admissions. By the same reasoning, one can claim "Princeton and Baruch don't have the most credit because they already take the most excellent students in - of course they'll naturally get great compensation stats, several Princeton MFins already interned for the best firms prior to the program!" It can be argued that a better way to compare to Princeton/Baruch is to just take the top 25 people from each program, and the average salary conditioned on top 25 would most likely show 1) Princeton 2) CMU and then harder to guess from there.
Yes, I agree passing the interviews and getting the job is ultimately almost entirely based on the individual, and the top 5 programs do a similiar enough job in providing enough of a name to get past the resume screens. That's why in my personal subjective rankings I don't even consider curriculum (although they're probably similar enough anyways) - I personally just care about the program's buy side industry rep (I have seen some documents from a firm that have the most recruitment quota for Princeton/Baruch, and then much less for the programs outside the top 5) as well as how chill the program is so more time to prepare for interviews (the most successful interview prep strategy I seen work is to actually interview for the smaller hedge funds just for fun and build up experience but this is very very time consuming and so I personally think a program should be light in coursework like Columbia/MIT/Princeton)
It's hard to imagine what kind of job you do for a living to be able to have all the "insider" information to touch upon all these internal confidential documents from both the top schools and all these top firms who are competing against each other without any real evidence. In my opinion, you look more like a keyboard warrior defending your loving school by making things up.
Hmm maybe someone in a top school who landed one or several of these firms for internship/full time whos friends in undergrad went to other top schools and also landed internships/full time at several of these firms. Or yeah I can be completely bsing, you don't have to believe me - alot of what I said I prefaced with "in my opinion" or "personal subjective rankings." Didn't say confidential documents from all these top firms - I only had access to the documents of one firm (the one that gave most quota to Princeton/Baruch), the other firms was just from my interview experience (where the interviewers came from) + a rough linkedin frequency count of how many buyside QRs came from each MFE program.
I mean I said good things about Princeton (said it was the #1), Baruch (said one of highest concentration of talents although recent placements in top buysides seem to be lagging), CMU (overall great but too much work), Columbia AND MIT (and also did place berkeley top 5 in my subjective rankings) so what school am I even defending again.
I didn't say ALL top chinese international students went to Princeton/CMU/Baruch - I said top chinese international talent is biased towards Baruch (Baruch has a very very strong international Chinese alumni network). You have no idea how much gossip we have on wechat and 1point3acres to have a general feel for these type of things.
"QuantNet" as in a net for quants.... I never claimed to know what all students are thinking or what all firms are thinking, I said theres a general preference of buyside firms towards 1) Princeton 2) CMU... of course some other firms might have a different preference. Okay, if you want objective evidence of what I mean by upper tail:
