Avoid this U of Toronto MMF program: SCAM

[Yike Lu]

Plus the instructors are not trying to shoehorn the whole of Lang (algebra) or Goldstein (mechanics) into thirteen lectures. Can't be done.

That's funny. We used Goldstein my year in Ph106. We covered Classical Mechanics in 10 weeks. Granted it wasn't the whole book.

 

[bigbadwolf]

That's funny. We used Goldstein my year in Ph106. We covered Classical Mechanics in 10 weeks. Granted it wasn't the whole book.

What you mean is the book was assigned as reference and you had a week (or three lectures) devoted to Lagrangian dynamics, and the same one week for each of Hamiltonian dynamics, Hamilton-Jacobi theory, rigid body dynamics and so on.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

What you mean is the book was assigned as reference and you had a week (or three lectures) devoted to Lagrangian dynamics, and the same one week for each of Hamiltonian dynamics, Hamilton-Jacobi theory, rigid body dynamics and so on.

In my time we had ~21 lectures in year1 and ~21 lectures in year 2 on Mechanics and Dynamics. 141 and 241

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/prospective/course.php#p-cd

 

[MiloRambaldi]

Another bum program exposed.

Not just any program, the one affiliated with Canada's most prestigious university which also has a high world ranking. Image if the program at MIT or Harvard was exposed as a scam.

 

[bigbadwolf]

In my time we had ~21 lectures in year1 and ~21 lectures in year 2 on Mechanics and Dynamics. 141 and 241

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/prospective/course.php#p-cd

Mechanics is one of the high points of Western civilisation, the ur-science par excellence. It grieves me to see it handled in mercenary fashion at American universities. But I digress: the point is the way in which serious subjects -- including stochastic calculus and coding -- are handled in slipshod and hasty manner in quant courses.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Indeed, the Golden Age of Lagrange, Laplace and Hamilton are a closed book. And all the applications in optimisation and control theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman_equation

 

[okmijn]

Here was the info session last month.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPdE8CN4BKZWNZDIzRd3Dw

 

[C S]

Not just any program, the one affiliated with Canada's most prestigious university which also has a high world ranking. Image if the program at MIT or Harvard was exposed as a scam.

Let's not make exaggerated comparisons. UoT is nowhere near as prestigious as MIT or Harvard. Indeed, according to the above ranking system, it's very similar in ranking to a well-respected but middling American university, the University of Washington, which incidentally also has a quant program. I can't imagine though that if UDub were "exposed", as UoT supposedly has been, that people would be wringing their hands, crying, "What if MIT is next?"

 

[Canuck]

FYI I'm a student at MMF.
Well dunno who OP is, but I'm ok with the program so far.
The first semester is absolutely brutal, but you have a cool group of people to complete it with and the material is stimulating.
I mean in terms of internships everyone got one, and they're all pretty cool (model vettting, desk quant, deloitte consulting), also a couple people already have full times lined up.

 

[fzchen]

To the OP, it's a Masters program, of course you'd be kicked out if you failed a course TWICE (silly); just because you paid the tuition fee doesn't mean you're entitled to the degree without doing any work. As for the teaching quality, it follows the same principle as any university program, you're going to have some professors who are better at teaching than others. However, the responsibility isn't the professors' that the student learns the material, it's the student's.

Seriously, do you think it's going to be better in the job market when you need to learn something (and you're definitely going to be required to learn new things)? The fact that you have an outline for all your courses already makes it easier; once you're in the workforce, nobody is going to guide you to the right answer, it's your responsibility to figure out what the problem is and how to solve it because that's why you get a salary.

For the matter of being "forced" to accept your first internship offer, I agree it is a bit unreasonable and sure there may be a better approach, but I can also understand from the program's point of view. Most of the internships are not exclusive to that one program because...it's obvious; this is the real world measure (couldn't help it). The goal of the program is to have everyone placed in an internship and get work experience. By having a student quickly accept their first offer, this ensures that they are out of the applicant pool faster so that the remaining students have more time and opportunities since they're all applying to the same internships. However, in the email by Shari, she clearly stated that this is if you only had ONE job offer and you can choose between offers if you had received more at the same time.

P.s. Yes I am an MMF student and proud of it!

 

[maxton]

To OP, although you did address some of the issues of MMF, calling it a "scam" and that UT is a "fake" school is a stretch. Please do not project your own failures to the program and the school. "Lies" and "ruined lives"... come on really? I am part of the recent graduate class and would be happy to clear up some of these issues.

I'll start by agreeing with you on certain points. MMF does not cover the fundamentals of many courses and expects you to know them already. However, they were pretty clear about the prerequisites needed to be successful in the program. 13 lecutres to cover stochastic calculus is definitely not enough. But you should have known before applying to the program that it is an accelerated, professional program and not your traditional academic masters. IMO, the idea is to make you fluent enough in the topics to further learn the details or be literate in a quantitative finance enviornment.

In regards to the the internship placement, it was 100% in my year. They encourage you to accept the first offer to ensure the 100% placement, but they are flexible if you explain your situation. For full-time, I was one of the last to be employed and was successful at 3 months, although I was holding off for a certain kind of job. Most people were employed within 1 month to my knowledge, many employed before graduating. I believe the general concensus of my class after the program was a year very well spent.

 

[omgnoobdk]

I am a current student of mmf program. Whoever started this post is a loser who failed the same course twice "almost surely". lol

1. You fail course twice and you're expel, bye to your 40k.
2. The job placement and internship stat are lie, people doing paper a "successful" placement. Job placement stats of "all placed after 3.5 months" is lie, talked to mmf grads from last year at winter reception many still looking for job.
3. Teaching quality REALLY low (Jaimungal ok thougt).
4. Incoming students getting worse and worse, so far two profs called class "weakest class in history of program."
5. No wonder no one do review for program, everyone regret coming here.

UofT fake school, don't come here you'll regret forever.

1. If you fail the same course twice, you DESERVE to be expelled period.

2. Based on what I heard, everybody from last year received job offers. But some chose to not accept them (e.g. one guy is so obsessed to become a trader, so he turned down the quantitative risk management offer. So, yes, technically he is still looking for a job).

3. I don't quite get what you meant by "teaching quality is REALLY low". I personally found the material interesting and the delivering method clear, provided I was paying attention to the lecture of course.

If this is because you have a problem finishing the Stoch Calc in 13 lectures, I'd say get your shit together and study harder - being a quant is supposed to be challenging.

4. Even if this is true, keep in mind that the program always admits the best 30 students out of 500. So it is NOT the program's fault that the quality of students degenerate.

5. Yes, it all makes sense now. No wonder no one did review for the program, because anyone did well in the program was busy studying instead of crying and blaming his own failure to the program on the internet.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@Mike S @fzchen @omgnoobdk @maxton
I suppose now we can get at least 4 reviews for the Toronto MMF program so let hope to get some objective views of the program, what is good/bad/can be better.

Just rate it from 1-5 stars and write a review
https://www.quantnet.com/resources/university-of-toronto-mathematical-finance-program.4/

 

[Ken Abbott]

@Mike S @fzchen @omgnoobdk @maxton
I suppose now we can get at least 4 reviews for the Toronto MMF program so let hope to get some objective views of the program, what is good/bad/can be better.

Just rate it from 1-5 stars and write a review
https://www.quantnet.com/resources/university-of-toronto-mathematical-finance-program.4/

Andy is right. The OP's opinion might be considered a bit hyperbolic. See if you can get some people to write reviews.

 

[Canuck]

We've had quite a large discussion about this thread on our facebook group, and a lot of us want to post reviews. But I for one want to remain unbiased as possible and post a review after the end of the program, after all you don't review a restaurant after the appetizer and a first bite of the entree.

 

[JulianT]

I think getting expelled after failing the same course twice is the norm in all Canadian universities. That type of information would never be part of a program website, as it is part of the university regulations, you would have been aware of if you had read the academic regulations of your school. This is, as has been mentioned multiple times, a very good thing.

 

[MiloRambaldi]

I think getting expelled after failing the same course twice is the norm in all Canadian universities. That type of information would never be part of a program website, as it is part of the university regulations, you would have been aware of if you had read the academic regulations of your school. This is, as has been mentioned multiple times, a very good thing.

Wrong.

At UFT, the School of Graduate Studies mandates that all academic departments very clearly inform graduate students of appeal procedures in the event of failing certain examinations (definitely PhD comprehensive examination, I forget exactly what the scope is). It is the department's responsibility to make this information known to the students. One of the reasons is that graduate coordinators have been known to lie to graduate students and tell them there is no possibility of appeal.

Whether is it is a "very good thing" is not clear. The problem is that examinations are not necessarily graded in a fair manner.

Oops: I misread the post. I thought this was about failing an examination twice. Still, I think what I said is quite relevant.

 

[Bleu Noir]

I do not intend to reply to this thread but as a graduate of this program, I want to set some facts straight here. Firstly, the program is very rigorous in nature, and everyone who went to U of T knows how hard it is to complete a Master degree at this university, you have to seriously put in the effort and they do fail people. In my class, nobody failed because they did select a class such that everyone has sufficient background in quant either in mathematics or programming skills. But I have heard recently the program has been random in selecting students and the quality of students dropped a lot, which may explain why there are so many who came in the program without proper preparation, suffered and feel shocked. There are also international students who have very high expectation when they came to Canada and ended up feeling disappointed because the jobs they may get are not what they expected. Some people think coming to the program they are guaranteed a job after graduation, that is completely wrong, this may be true only for the internship because the companies are sponsoring the program and they took the students in and remit part of the tuition fee to the MMF program, no other allowance or salary is given to the students. When it comes to full time jobs, it is another story, you are more or less on your own and you have to compete with PhD students or MBA students with Quant background, many of them have tons of certifications such as CFA, FRM... Most MMF students get jobs at "Analyst" level, which means that they are getting the job at the same level of an undergrad without any experience, it is rarely that someone get a job at Associate level unless they have tons of work experience before joining the MMF. In my batch, most people get a job after graduation or even before graduation, but the quality of the jobs are not that great, and the pay is not higher than undergraduate jobs. Most employers also do not advertise jobs at Associate level to MMF program, they'd rather hire from MBA students at Rotman. However, many students think that MMF is a "Masters degree" and they tend to compare the jobs they get with MBA and then feel that they are inferior, I think the program should set a realistic view on this, this program is for undergrad who wants to learn a bit more about finance and brush up their quant skills a bit so that they can get a job, and the jobs they will get are the same for a mathematics or computer science undergrad. So perhaps it is arguable to say, if you have a maths or CS or stat degree, do the CFA or FRM will be a much cheaper way to get to the same destination.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@Bleu Noir
Nice post. How would you rate the program from 1-5 stars?
It's much more helpful to put your post as a formal review as they are more "official", so to speak.
https://www.quantnet.com/resources/university-of-toronto-mathematical-finance-program.4/

 

[Bleu Noir]

I would rate it a 3/5, one thing I want to add is that the program should change its name to Master of Risk Management, most students, if not all get nothing other than Risk jobs, if someone wants a job in Sales and Trading/IB/Research etc... this is the wrong place to go. And beware that the job market in Toronto is terrible and getting worst each year. There were lots of jobs in Risk before but it seems like the field is saturated in Toronto now, there are some students that went to IT or Ops because they cannot even get a job in Risk, international students would take any job because they have only 1 year work permit since the program is less than 2 years, some found jobs in HK or China too but again it is hard to pay back their tuition and living expenses they paid in Toronto. However, I feel the program already did its best to secure such a placement rate, even if the number maybe massaged a bit, it is still better compared to other programs in Ontario/Canada. @Andy I will write a formal review later, I need to prepare for it a bit