COMPARE Boston MSMF or NYU-Poly Financial Engineering?

[Nav]

Hi guys,

I have an admit from BU and NYU Poly. Also received a scholarship of 9000$ from NYU Poly. I need to reply to NYU Poly by May 1st and pay an initial deposit as well. Although I'm leaning more towards BU, can anyone (current students and alumni from these colleges will really help) throw some light on which program is better, considering the following points:

1. The faculty at both the schools and the level of education.
2. The placements - both internships and jobs.
3. Number of people getting into Quant roles or Algo trading positions from these two schools over the last 3 years.
4. On-campus employment opportunities.
5. Finally, the cost of living when you compare Boston and NYC.

 

[diegosanaz]

Here is BU employment report. Don´t know much about NYU-Poly.
http://management.bu.edu/files/2013/01/Class-of-2012-Employment-Report.pdf

My guess is that your decision should also depend on your interests. BU has a more mathematical (stoch calculus and such) curriculum.

 

[Lamer Chrystle]

Here is BU employment report. Don´t know much about NYU-Poly.
http://management.bu.edu/files/2013/01/Class-of-2012-Employment-Report.pdf

My guess is that your decision should also depend on your interests. BU has a more mathematical (stoch calculus and such) curriculum.

FYI,
Looking at the employment report, it doesn't state if all offers are originated from U.S. For example, HQ for ST Asset Management is in Singapore. So if 71% or 95% employment rate within the United States, that is awesome rate. But if it is including international employment, well.... (I am not saying international employment is bad, but I believe all of MFE students in the United States want to get a job within the United States.)

and my impression toward curriculum for NYU-Poly's MFE program is that you can make your curriculum heavily mathematically (they also have stochastic calculus...also you can take rigorous mathematical courses from Courant, although it is very hard to get in), while you can just graduate easily by taking lots of easy application courses.

 

[diegosanaz]

Yeah, NYU-Poly has a great variety of electives, so you can focus them depending what you want to do upon graduation. That is a flaw of BU: no electives. Besides, I feel that the curriculum is more focused on derivatives pricing than on trading.

What would you like to be doing after completing the program??

By the way, I will be joining the BU program

 

[Lamer Chrystle]

I still have not decided which field I want to be. I would like to be in the junction between computational finance and algorithmic finance. I am still looking for job role that fits my desire.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Some programs recently offer separate different tracks within their degree to appeal to a wider audience but it is your responsibility to know which specialized track to take.
In a sense, it's much harder and riskier for people with no relevant experience to decide. On the other hand, if you are experienced and know exactly what you want to learn, they will allow you to skip many irrelevant courses.

 

[Lyosha]

One of my friends went to NYU-Poly. He had a job going in and went to basically get a raise and some extra skills, which NYU Poly provided. He was aware it wasn't CMU/Columbia/etc. and he didn't want that b/c he had a wife and newborn kid. He was very happy with the experience from what I understand. But with the sheer size of it, and without a job to begin with, I would be scared senseless going there. Especially if you are in different shoes than him...

BU doesn't appear to have "the top" jobs for its graduates, but at least they appear to be mostly uniformly employed... that's a huge plus!

Also the program size is much smaller. That's actually a very underrated plus in my opinion.

 

[Nav]

Thanks Lyosha, thats really helpful. I heard that many students from BU interned at trading firms in Chicago and some interned at NYC and Boston.

How high is BU's MSMF regarded on Wall Street among the employers?

And yes the curriculum at BU is pretty much rigid but covers all the essentials topics that are required and gives you an overall perspective.

 

[Lyosha]

How high is BU's MSMF regarded on Wall Street among the employers?

As far as I can tell, there's no recognition for it (i.e. no "brand name" like CMU or NYU or Columbia MFE). That's not to say that you will never work on Wall Street, just that I don't think that the degree will directly open those doors for you. Get a first job, a few years of experience and then work/move your way up to the position you want.

 

[Nav]

Thank you Lyosha!!

 

[Jay YK Kim]

Andy has the point. Poly has great variety of electives. That's good. But that also means that you might end up with nothing after graduation. There are many students who are planning to graduate the program with the MSFE degree but without FE knowledge.

And I would also point that curriculum of Poly right now is rather unstable. There is great enthusiasm and effort from faculty to make the program better, but I personally feel that it's unstable for now.

One last thing, I assume that Poly is about to complete its merge with NYU since students are starting to use 'nyu.edu' email instead of 'poly.students.edu'.