MFE at Nanyang (NTU) verses MFE at UCLA

[pprachi]

I have recently secured admission to both programs. Aside from choosing which country to study and work in, can anyone provide a comparison of both schools- wrt employability, post-grad salaries, academic rigor and overall reputation?

 

[noether-skolem]

As someone who studied and is currently working in Singapore, and also going to study in the US later this year, this feels like an apple vs bicycle comparison. It's hard to put aside which country you want to study/work in when comparing two programs halfway around the planet away from each other. Have you actually lived in either Singapore or the US in the past?

There are several important points to compare between the two programs/places. Even putting aside the food/culture/climate differences, it'd be difficult to compare salaries due to differences in living costs and taxation. Someone earning USD100k/year in NYC would be paying somewhere in the ballpark of USD30k of Federal/State/City taxes (that's like 30%), whereas someone earning a similar amount (let's round it a bit) of SGD140k/year in Singapore would be paying around SGD11k of income tax (that's like 8%). Living expenses would be trickier, rent and food would be somewhat cheaper in Singapore compared to in big cities in the US (you can look up some figures online), but if you like cars and enjoy driving, that'd be pretty darn expensive in Singapore.

Next, what kind of jobs are you looking at? If you're looking into risk roles, you might be fine in Singapore as most of the major banks seem to recruit for risk roles there as well, but if you're looking into quant research roles in hedge funds, that'd be a completely different ball game. You can count the number of large quant hedge funds in Singapore using your fingers, and in some cases you'd even be competing against people who studied at Princeton/CMU/Columbia and returned/moved to Singapore, on top of the local university graduates (I recall NTU has MFE, NUS has both MQF and MFE, SMU has MQF - I might have forgotten some others).

On the other hand, UCLA MFE isn't exactly among the very top programs in the US. Location-wise, it might not be very convenient if you want to meet people working in NYC banks/funds, and living cost in California seemed to be quite high compared to other non-NYC cities (not 100% sure about that, I've never lived there, only visited my relative for like two weeks). The UCLA MFE program is also likely going to cost you significantly more than NTU MFE, unless you got some financial aid.

Overall reputation would likely depend on where you want to work after graduating. If you want to work in the US, NTU probably wouldn't carry as much weight over there as in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, UCLA is pretty well-known even around this part of the world, but I'm fairly certain most people in Singapore also know that while UCLA is a very good school, it's no Harvard/MIT. I think NTU MFE also has some sort of collaboration with CMU, so you'd be able to put some sort of CMU certificate on your resume/linkedin, but I'm not sure how much value that'd bring.

I don't think NTU MFE publishes any career placement statistics so I can't say anything about that. If you've been admitted maybe you can try dropping them an email asking about past batches' career placement data?

 

[perspolis]

Not sure about NTU, but it seems to me that the curriculum of UCLA MFE is not very quantitatively focused, but they are getting better though - at least it seems that they have removed corporate finance from the course schedule.

 

[perspolis]

As someone who studied and is currently working in Singapore, and also going to study in the US later this year, this feels like an apple vs bicycle comparison. It's hard to put aside which country you want to study/work in when comparing two programs halfway around the planet away from each other. Have you actually lived in either Singapore or the US in the past?

There are several important points to compare between the two programs/places. Even putting aside the food/culture/climate differences, it'd be difficult to compare salaries due to differences in living costs and taxation. Someone earning USD100k/year in NYC would be paying somewhere in the ballpark of USD30k of Federal/State/City taxes (that's like 30%), whereas someone earning a similar amount (let's round it a bit) of SGD140k/year in Singapore would be paying around SGD11k of income tax (that's like 8%). Living expenses would be trickier, rent and food would be somewhat cheaper in Singapore compared to in big cities in the US (you can look up some figures online), but if you like cars and enjoy driving, that'd be pretty darn expensive in Singapore.

Next, what kind of jobs are you looking at? If you're looking into risk roles, you might be fine in Singapore as most of the major banks seem to recruit for risk roles there as well, but if you're looking into quant research roles in hedge funds, that'd be a completely different ball game. You can count the number of large quant hedge funds in Singapore using your fingers, and in some cases you'd even be competing against people who studied at Princeton/CMU/Columbia and returned/moved to Singapore, on top of the local university graduates (I recall NTU has MFE, NUS has both MQF and MFE, SMU has MQF - I might have forgotten some others).

On the other hand, UCLA MFE isn't exactly among the very top programs in the US. Location-wise, it might not be very convenient if you want to meet people working in NYC banks/funds, and living cost in California seemed to be quite high compared to other non-NYC cities (not 100% sure about that, I've never lived there, only visited my relative for like two weeks). The UCLA MFE program is also likely going to cost you significantly more than NTU MFE, unless you got some financial aid.

Overall reputation would likely depend on where you want to work after graduating. If you want to work in the US, NTU probably wouldn't carry as much weight over there as in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, UCLA is pretty well-known even around this part of the world, but I'm fairly certain most people in Singapore also know that while UCLA is a very good school, it's no Harvard/MIT. I think NTU MFE also has some sort of collaboration with CMU, so you'd be able to put some sort of CMU certificate on your resume/linkedin, but I'm not sure how much value that'd bring.

I don't think NTU MFE publishes any career placement statistics so I can't say anything about that. If you've been admitted maybe you can try dropping them an email asking about past batches' career placement data?

Wow, I didn't know the tax rate in Singapore is that low. Do you think people earning 100K USD at the US could expect to find a job that pays a similar amount in Singapore? Thanks

 

[noether-skolem]

Wow, I didn't know the tax rate in Singapore is that low. Do you think people earning 100K USD at the US could expect to find a job that pays a similar amount in Singapore? Thanks

I don't have enough experience to answer that, but I imagine not. You can probably look up some salary statistics for similar roles (standard roles like big 4 accounting firms or IB analysts might be easier to compare).

 

[Zimo. T]

a NTU undergraduate here! I have no info about the UCLA MFE program. I did have a consultation hour with one committee member from NTU MFE program.

First, if you wanna do quant in Singapore upon graduation, the chance is slim as there is few real quant position in Singapore. Moreover, the post-employability is somehow linked to your undergraduate education background. It seems to me that employers in Singapore prefer to hire people with a local undergraduate degree (say, BUS/ENG) rather than international students with SG MFE master degree. However, if you graduate from a well-known university and have outstanding ability, that would be a different story.

Second, in terms of the curriculum, the curriculum is well-designed (c++/java before, they may change the language). I did take two courses with MFE faculty. Both profs are nice but I heard from seniors that some are not good at teaching. The biggest plus point would be the 7-week studying in CMU.

Last but not least, the overall reputation is in fact quite decent as it is under one of the top business schools in Asia. I did hear people saying it was the best MFE program in SG one year back. (The selection process is more stringent than NUS MFE that has no interview step).

Probably, you could drop an email to request for past-year job placement info or you can look through Linkedin to find some portfolios from previous batches.

I hope that helps!

 

[VPoneday]

I have also been admitted to UCLA! We may be classmates!
But I am also undecided because the tuition fees are so expensive. I have a lot of other offers at cheaper schools