MIT MFin Oversubscribed, MIT MFin offers admitted students $8K to defer

[DominiConnor]

It's not easy for me to see why anyone would take this offer (this is British understatement, not sarcasm, I believe the American equivalent would involve monkeys flying out of my anus)

Most people doing the course will be quite far along the process so deferring would be tricky.

Also $8K is a pathetic amount of money compared to the cost of the program + lost wages + living expenses, etc.

The reason you do an MFE is to increase earning potential so if a year of lost increase is only going to be $8K, why are you bothering ?

Plus your risk goes up since the changes in the course might make it worse

Plus, there is a chance that not enough people take this offer, so they might up the price, this looks quite like the prisoners dilemma in game theory. My suspicion is increased by the way they say "the first 10" and the date parameter, classic ways of getting people to make decisions they might later regret.

Plus I might get to hear you took this option and suspect you are too naive to be considered for a top job.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Most students in US MSF programs are undergrads who couldn't find full time work in the area of finance they want.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The number in MIT MFin AdMIT today is 74 (down from 84 when the deferral offer was made) so it appears a few people have taken the offer. A few more people will go elsewhere to the final class size this year will be around 70.

 

[Katrina]

8K to postpone your admission for one year.... what are they kidding ? There might be an 8K tuition hike the following year, for their MSF program

 

[menovive]

I don't think you will get 8K cash. You will get a discount next year. I assume people at MIT are smart about that!!!

What if they increase the Tuition by another 4K and give 8K discount !! Loss !! I think those who defer should also get written statement about continuation of same fee..!!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

It is not confirmed but I heard from one of the current students that the MIT MFin program may plan to extend their 1-year program into 3-semester program with a bigger class size. I'm not sure how the logistics will work out yet.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

It is confirmed that MIT MFin plans to expand to a class size of 120 in 2012

We are aggressively expanding the Program. In its first two years, we more than doubled the program size from 26 to 59 students. With 73 students enrolled this year, we plan to continue our growth trajectory to reach a critical mass of 120 students in 2012.

http://mitsloanexperts.com/2011/11/...inance-program-confronting-global-challenges/

 

[Freakonometrics]

I'm not sure whether we should be thrilled about their agressive expansion. I for one feel that as class size increases it's harder to socialize with everyone.

 

[ICQuant]

What about their placement records? If they are not being able to place 60 students, how are they gonna deal with 120? with this market conditions?
What about expanding the program into 3 semesters Andy? No news?

 

[bansalmohit]

I have heard that the applications have increased substantially this year. Why not get the most amount of money with same fixed costs

 

[Andy Nguyen]

MIT MFin 2010 placement report was released in Dec 22 last year so it's probably around the same time this year for the 2011 report.
I heard about expanding to 3-semester but I have not seen any official info.
MIT received close to 1000 applicants for each of last 2 years and it's not done with this year yet so I don't know how the numbers will be. As more people know about it, I would not be surprised if they have more applicants this year and in the foreseeable future.
This is MIT so they can do a lot of things other universities can't, such as getting close to 1,000 applications in the second year for a $100K+ one year program.

 

[DominiConnor]

At the risk of saying "I told you so", some time ago I did point out that as cash cows MFE programs would come under pressure to increase their size to help the general budget of their universities.

Doubling student numbers without compromising quality is not that hard to do, many resources like lecture rooms and lecturers are rarely anywhere near their capacity. Some extra staff and some library resource and you are mostly there.

However...
The point of the exercise is to make more money and the temptation and pressure will be to be "more efficient", ie keep the level of resources at much the same level.

The question is whether anyone reading this will care ?
Again something I've seen is how people often choose their MFE on the branding so quality of teaching etc don't matter so much.
Would you rather a badly taught MFE from MIT or a better taught one from Fordham ?

Also it will do unintuitive things to their applicant/acceptance ratio.
At first glance one might think that is must halve it, and since a depression % of MFE applicants see that as a mark of quality, may hurt the program.

But...
One if the many reasons the ratio is a bogus indicator is that people self-select; they think to themselves that they can't get into MIT because they're not in the top X%. But if X doubles, then they may well think they can do it and so will lots of others, it is not a linear relationship, doubling the number of places may more than double the number of applicants, possibly, all I really know is that it's non-linear, no one will know the reality yet.