COMPARE Columbia MAFN vs NYU MSMF

[scarface]

Hi,

I have been admitted into Columbia MAFN and NYU MSMF for full-time but will be changing to part-time as I want to continue to work in the field I am currently in (high-frequency trading/statistical arbitrage trading)

At this point, I am not sure which program will better suit me. Below are my rough thoughts on those programs.

NYU pro:

-Working in the field, I found out that most of major quant trading shops only hire phds from top schools(MIT/Princeton/UCB/Stanford) unless you have a strategy that makes multi-millions. However, I also noticed that Courant has the brand power that could cope with phd graduates from top schools (I may biased by my co-workers and quant traders I am around.) So, it may be better to have Courant on my resume if I want to continue to compete with these phd quants.
-It has 4 specific courses that I can benefit from. (Active Port Mgmt, Time Series & Statistical Arb, Algo Trading & Quant Strat, Risk & Port mgmt)
-I will have chance to work with top math-finance professors. (Marco Avellaneda)

Columbia pro:

-Since I already broke into the field, school names do not mean much. What matters most are my quant research experiences and owning a strategy with good sharpe. Thus, if you have to go school, you would just rather to go with ivy league name/cheaper tuition/less course work.
-Most of techniques/methods used in the research in this field are stemmed from statistics. So, it would be better to go Columbia and take advanced statistics courses under statistics dept or take machine learning courses in engineering dept as electives.

Please chime in your opinion and help me make a good decision!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ken Abbott]

I have lectured at many quant finance programs. The NYU students I've seen are consistently among the best.

 

[Advait]

I vote for NYU too.

 

[Will D]

I researched both programs quite extensively. I ended up focusing on UK degrees (for me, it seems that London is the place to pursue a derivatives career these days).

Both programs have excellent faculty (e.g. NYU: Carr, Avellaneda, Columbia: Karatzas, Protter). Quant trading staff at investment banks and hedge funds appear to be well-represented among part time students at both. The course content at NYU is great but the Columbia math program offers more flexibility to take classes in other departments (like machine learning in CS).

If you are looking to change functions, it probably makes sense to go full-time. Placement has traditionally been strong at both (however, for non-French, I would say NYU has the edge here). I also think that NYU cares more about its students' job search than Columbia, which offers fairly little support. That said, the Columbia name is definitely very prestigious on Wall Street.

Either way, you can't go wrong, congratulations!