Cornell FE Strength of Cornell placements

[Raghunath]

Hi All

I was accepted into Cornell's Financial Engg program for Fall 2008. I looked at the placements & salary stats on their website and they mean & median are around 70k. Doesn't this seem way too low? I'm working as a software engineer at the moment and make that much now.

I don't expect FE to be a magic entry to world of riches but figured a salary of 80-90k would be common (as CMU's stats say). Any reason Cornell's could be so much lower. Another worrisome aspect is that I see very few hedge funds or trading firms listed on their site - all the placements seem to be in Credit Card of Financial Analyst positions - not with Banks or trading firms.

Can anyone give me some advice or share about the strength of Cornell's program esp. regd placements.

thanks!

 

[MikeK]

I wasn't able to find that information on their website, perhaps you can post the link? As for the 70k, that definitely seems low. Kent State, for example, claims to have average salary of $65k (up to $150k with bonuses). I would expect that Cornell is higher, though not as high as programs like CMU, NYU or Baruch. I'd think Cornell would be closer to $90k. But I really have no basis for that--I'm just putting together some information I remember seeing.

That being said, the market is apparently so tough for many grads that any average salary over 0 might be good..

 

[Yuriy]

I agree with Mike, any salary > $0 is good these days and it seems to me (from the first post) that graduates don't have many options to choose from. You don't need to be a Financial Engineer to work with credit cards.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I wasn't able to find that information on their website, perhaps you can post the link?

It was in a survey in the career service website
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/...er-services/statistics/upload/ORIE-GRAD06.pdf

The stat is for 2006 graduates and the market was hot for FE graduates then. If that's the median salary then, I wouldn't say the number for 2007-08 will get any better. One reason I can think of is the location. Cornell in Ithaca isn't exactly within short distance of Wall Street. Plenty of them end up working in VA, PA, NJ.
The closer you get to Wall Street, the more opportunities you get.

 

[bloodynri]

The 70k figure includes salaries of graduates from non-FE concentrations in ORIE. I'm under the impression that FE's would earn more. The third semester which includes the project course is in Manhattan not Ithaca.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The Manhattan semester would not happen until Fall 2008 right ?
I think it's a move to compensate for their location disadvantage.
Does anyone notice that CMU, Cornell, Poly all have their NYC location at 55 Broad Street. They all share the same building and each calls it their campus