I am a recent Columbia MFE alumni and I'd like to bring some more insights into this.
First of all the above arguments are quite flawed. Let me explain why:
1) Benefit of being in NYC: this is a 'benefit' shared by another thousands of students at Columbia,
CMU, Baruch, NYU and all other programs in NY location, so it's not really a benefit at all. What's not that beneficial, however, is that it will add significant cost to your living expenses compared to other cities.
2) Getting a brand-name: Probably the most overrated thing. This brand name 'benefit' is shared among people from MFE, MSOR, Mfin, Business School, CS, Data Science, and all other programs with people that are in some extent going to compete with you for jobs. It's not really a benefit much, more like a necessity. And compared to
CMU, NYU, MIT, Princeton, it's not a benefit at all, it just puts you on the same starting line as those other universities also give you a brand name.
3) Having a seminar delivered by industry folks: Sounds great, right? In reality, most of these are not beneficial and most students attend just because it's compulsory (there's a reason why they are compulsory...). Won't help you with job search at all.
4) Possibly having practitioners as lecturers: In general, the courses taught by practitioners are significantly worse than those taught by full time faculty. So the benefit definitely doesn't lie here. The only possible benefit might be that if you can network with those people, they can potentially hook you up with some interview opportunity, but it's definitely not a rule, more like an exception.
5) Salary: $100k median salary and $40k sign on are way off. It heavily depends on your previous experience. I don't have the full data, but I'd say not many people reach $40k bonus and if so, they have like 2-3 years of experience (of course there are rare cases where people get Associate without previous work exp). The $93k mean is probably skewed upwards, as most people don't have previous work exp and start out as Analysts for $80-90k starting salary in NYC and $10-15k sign on, whether those experienced usually get Associate for $115k and around $20-40k sign on.
Another few things I'd like to mention are:
1) The cost really is more like $120k if you decide to graduate in December (which is definitely the most reasonable option) due to living expenses. Also don't forget that even though in the past all people got full time job within 3 months of graduation, 3 months after graduation actually means end of May. So you might still be looking for a job in April, which will eat up another 4-5 months of living expenses in NYC on top of the $120k.
2) Don't forget that $100k in NYC is more like $60-65k after tax. Factor in living expenses and you'll be lucky to save $10-20k a year from a salary (not considering bonuses as that's very volatile, depends on the job, position, firm, etc.).
3) The career service is what you make out of it. If you are persistent and try to work with the career officer consistently, it pays off and they help you push your resume to employers. However, that's pretty much it, everything else is up to you.
Having said that, the career officer for MSFE abruptly left a month ago due to having a child. She'll most probably be back for next year, but I've heard the folks looking for internships and full time jobs now have it pretty rough.
Sometimes professors might help with getting you and interview somewhere, as they have connections, but again, this is a rarity as you need to have a good relationship with the professor, the professor needs to know about a position and deem that you'd do good there. They are putting their name on the table too.
4) Regarding the hiring statistics, it is true most people find internships (or actually I don't know anyone who didn't), but what you don't see in the statistics is that not all of them are the coveted ones at GS, MS, JPM, etc. I'd say the extremes are on both sides of the spectrum - people got extremely good internship and also not so good internships... But in general getting an internship is quite random in the sense that the correlation between getting a good internship and how good you actually are is not 1, more like 0.5. And it depends heavily on your previous work experience.
Also, last year was quite shitty in the job market, so things might be better this year and on. But that's something you also need to take into account - you are in an industry where the job market is extremely dependent on what's going on in the markets and economy. You could come in a good year and you'll get great internship paying a lot of money with relatively low effort, or you come in a bad year and you'll have troubles getting even mediocre paying job with tons of effort.
The picture I've painted might not look good, but all in all I'd say the program is solid. Big benefit of Columbia is that you can take pretty much any subject you wish from other departments and schools, so you can focus on e.g. Business School stuff, or Data Science stuff, or you can take a time series/bayesian statistics/numerical methods course, and so on.
My answer to your question as it is stated is no. I don't think the program is worth $120k.
However, I think you shouldn't be asking this in an absolute sense, but relatively compared to other programs - Is $120k for Columbia MFE worth it compared to $xyz for ABC program at KLM uni? To that question, my answer would be yes.
Good luck.
