Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Master of Finance

The good: Brand name, Faculty, Curriculum
- MIT reputation and brand name
- Access to main campus classes (if you're interested in CS/Math) and HBS
- Best diversity of students amongst other financial engineering programs (with the possible exception of Princeton), even with the large Chinese population, there's amazing people from all over the world here.
- Very flexible curriculum (if 18 month) and great choices of classes, with stellar faculty who are the most accomplished in finance

The bad: OCR & Accessibility to Prof's
- On campus recruiting is a goddamn mess, nobody seems interested in MFins, few to none dedicated setup of coffee chats with companies tailored to resume/backgrounds. For the amount this program costs, Emily and Laura (CDO advisors) should personally take my resume and hand it to companies that are a tailored fit to my background (See Linda Kreitzman, Berkeley).
- Professors are hard to know outside of class- they're always busy with PhD students/projects, most interactions out of classroom with TA only. Office hours are mostly with TA's.
- Scholarships/Fellowships seem to be awarded really weirdly/randomly, it's supposedly based on "diversity" but I know a lot of really accomplished and smart individuals who add so much diversity to the program yet never got a single $.

The ugly: Class Size and Sloan Brand Dilution
- I believe the new class size is as large as >140, which is a 25% increase from the previous class size of 116, which by itself was massive. The way the adcoms are diluting the class sizes is tanking the program's reputation and ratings.
- Recruiting is an awful slobbery mess, and the dilution of Sloan's brand and introduction of a new micromasters program makes the whole thing NPV negative. Honestly, there's little to suggest this program is anything but a cash cow if it weren't for the stellar faculty and piggybacking on MIT's reputation.

Program is OK but plenty of room for improvement

++ Program is big - there are around 150 MFins on campus in the fall - challenging on a lot of levels - probably toughest is that it's harder to get to know the professors, make a good impression

++High cost - given above

++A lot less recruiting on campus than expected - MBAs still getting the best treatment from employers - I guess that's the way it is

++Tough to get to know your classmates - students seem to fall into social groups by country pretty early on - not sure if the school can do much about this

Pluses:
fellow students are very sharp academically, you will learn a lot from them - sometimes a bit intimidating! but many are super generous sharing what they know.

good teaching, especially from the course assistants / grad students - very accessible and helpful especially coming up to midterms and finals - they really try hard to teach you every thing you need

MIT reputation :0

Very good location / Boston is a great college town, able to meet so many young people from other schools too


Minuses:
Size of program - it's really big! can feel very hard to make an impression especially on professors - can be a little easy to get lost

On campus recruiting is really weak for such a large program. Career office tries hard, but typical 'recruiting' for MFins is a meet-and-greet event with a dozen students surrounding someone from a firm - meanwhile the MBA students have targeted recruiting presentations from employers visiting sloan with many staff members, dedicated interview schedules just for them, actual employers coming to interview them - the difference is kinda shocking. you're a lot more 'on your own' for your job search than you'd think.

Cost - $100k for the 18mo program just seems so high, before all your living costs - with all the students attending, and not a whole lot of financial aid, kinda felt a bit like a money grab...

Group Work Free Riders - big emphasis on group work throughout sloan, but not a lot of interest in preventing 'free riders' slacking off - school seems to want to push that task back on the students - so it happens a lot more than it should. Try to get to know the folk you're going to be in teams with, especially for longer / intense courses.

Solid academics - fellow students very smart - but it's hard to make relationships with professors - a lot of teaching done by grad students - not a huge surprise generally but not what I expected for a program that cost this much.

Very very few recruiters come to campus for MFins - kinda crazy considering how large the program is - seems like almost all recruiting activity is for MBA students.

Hard to mix with other students - MBAs do their own thing, and MFins tend to socialize by country / continent - not as social as I thought it would be.

Good to be in Boston - great college town.

Overall, not a bad program, but a lot of room to improve I guess, especially with getting recruiters on campus.

Professors: Solid, though several no longer doing cutting-edge work

Curriculum: Liked the flexibility, but had to spend more time explaining courses to employers

Cost: High. It's one of the more expensive programs, with one of the larger classes - up to 150 MFINs in the fall now - not sure why still so expensive

Jobs: A lot fewer companies coming to MIT Sloan recruiting for MFINs than I expected - you often find yourself going up against MIT undergrads.

Students: Very smart. Hard to 'bond' with such a big class - lots of 'clicks' esp by ethnic group

Location: Amazing, great to be in Boston / Cambridge area

Overall, a solid program, but feels very costly relative to many of its competition, hard to stand out as a student to employers in such a big class.