Lonely - You are laughably incorrect. This idea that the top schools are far and beyond above the rest regarding education is just wrong. The difference is really in networking and resources. If you are outgoing at any good school, you'll be fine; if not, you'll have trouble regardless of what name brand school you are at. I went to undergraduate at Georgia Tech, I went to Citadel immediately afterwards, I've received offers from the top FE programs and hedge funds. What have you done? What research have you performed and where have you worked? You get yourself the jobs, not your school. Last year Georgia Tech sent 3 students from this program to Citadel from a small class, and many more to the Chicago-based trading houses (think Spot Trading and the like), banks, and hedge funds. As a great example of how laughably incorrect you are, seeing as you mention PE/IB type stuff, one of the schools most represented at HBS is Georgia Tech? Why? Because the school creates students, both in grad and undergrad, that know to look at facts before they speak.
Before you go out and insult a school and its students, do your research.
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Nikhil - To answer your questions, yes, I just heard from them on Tuesday, I believe. I received a significant ~70% decrease in my tuition (I'm out-of-state now) and a graduate research assistantship. So, net net, the whole tuition will only be about $6k. Not bad bang for the buck at all. I've visited the program before, sat in on classes, and spoken with the program directors and professors. I think it's quite a good program, but in some ways in its infancy. It's part of the best industrial engineering program in the US, so the math/financial engineering portion is quite good, but I think the weakness might be in the economics/business portion of the education. That said, they seem to be really focused on growing the program and making it better. When I spoke with them around Thanksgiving 2009 they were about to do a "program audit" with members from Morgan Stanley and a few other hedge funds/banks of whom I was never given the names. The whole idea was that these industry professionals do a deep review of all nuances of the program and recommend what they can change. The only thing that turned me off was that there is no person dedicated to recruitment for the program. Is that a reason to reject it? Probably not, but I suppose it depends on your attitude towards this. I also got into Princeton and the Georgia Tech offer is still quite appealing.
