COMPARE Cornell University MFE vs Columbia University MSOR

[alain]

@alain , Having in mind all that research I have done it will be a "loaded" coin :D

If you have done research and you have a "loaded" coin, you are just looking for confirmation of your decision. Just make it and live with it. You won't be disappointed.

 

[Paul Mithouard]

@roni , I think I am more interested in a front office job so I find Cornell a good destination.
@alain , Having in mind all that research I have done it will be a "loaded" coin :D

If I had to make a choice, I would defintely go to Cornell ---> It is really a FE program and hosted by an outstanding Engineering College, and moreover with great career services.
It is as known as Columbia as far as school reputaiton is concerned.

 

[Sherlock]

Yeah Yeah, I already chose Cornell. Thank you all for your input

 

[ICQuant]

Congrats Adt...

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I'm debating between Baruch and Cornell (crossed out Columbia MSOR right away). But, since I want Quant more than Trading, I'm probably going to choose Baruch.

How long have you been debating, going back and forth with this?
You are in Brooklyn, right? Take the subway and go to Baruch, sit in the class and feel out the environment there.
Take a bus to Ithaca and do the same thing.

It will ease your mind and make your decision much easier. You are fortunately enough to be able to do this. Many oversea students can't and have to take a leaf of faith.
You also can't make a decision on with input from "internet people" who may/may not know what they are talking about.

 

[roni]

How long have you been debating, going back and forth with this?
You are in Brooklyn, right? Take the subway and go to Baruch, sit in the class and feel out the environment there.
Take a bus to Ithaca and do the same thing.

It will ease your mind and make your decision much easier. You are fortunately enough to be able to do this. Many oversea students can't and have to take a leaf of faith.
You also can't make a decision on with input from "internet people" who may/may not know what they are talking about.

Well, sitting in classes of both programs is not what will help me make a decision.
On one hand, I have Baruch, a program with a very attractive curriculum(better chances of getting into quant finance). On the other hand, I have the brand name 'Cornell' but with a less attractive curriculum that most likely won't lead me to a quant position.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Many students have viewed MFE programs as a quick pathway to a “get rich quick” job on Wall Street. In fact, the number of universities opening up this type of programs has increased the past decade. This leads to a wide quality disparity among people coming out of these programs. What would you advise aspiring students who plan to join these MFE programs?
I would advise students to pay careful attention to the content of a masters program. The prestige that comes from being admitted to one of the top schools will get you through the first year or two but not necessarily further. A masters program offers the student a golden opportunity to build a solid basis for his future career; course content and quality of teaching are crucial.
http://www.quantnet.com/interview-with-jim-gatheral/

 

[gauravpuri]

I was going through the two programs at Rutger - MQF and MSMF

MQF - More of finance and programming related. Less focus on mathematics. - Offered by Rutger B-school

MSMF - offered by Rutger Mathematics department. Highly math oriented.


What does the wall street demand ? Math or Finance/programming?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Ken Abbott is in a good position to answer this as he teaches and sits on the advisory board of several quant master programs as well as is an employer.

 

[Ken Abbott]

There's no simple answer. There are probably more pure quants than there are jobs for them. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets - that's a different story. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets and who can communicate well - those are in demand and trade at a premium.

 

[financeguy]

I try very hard to come up with a good analogy for this MSOR/MFE question but the best I can come up with is someone who buys an old model of BMW and puts on new parts to make it looks like the 2010 model.
At the end, people may not notice the difference but underneath, it's not the same. I'm not going to sugarcoat this whole thing.

If you really want to study MFE, then apply to one. If you get referred to MSOR, obviously they deem you unqualified for their MFE program. You can try reapply next year.
MSOR is NOT designed as a clone of MFE program. It may have great overlap but it is really designed for people who are interested in a career in operation research.

Recently questions about Columbia MSOR program make it look like Columbia should eliminate their MSOR program and double the size of their MFE.

As a Columbia MSOR grad, I basically agree with this except for a couple points.. I don't think the program is designed for people interested in a career in operations research. Maybe at some point in the past it was. I honestly think it's now designed to be a catch all program for students who are interested in OR as well as finance. A very good question from there is, if you are interested in financial engineering specifically why do you want to be in a jack of all trades program instead of a MFE? There truly is no good reason you should do the MSOR if what you want is FE. That much should be readily apparent and you're rationalizing if you start thinking otherwise. But I would contend that many applicants to MFE programs don't actually want to be quants. They want to be quant savvy front office employees, but it's tough to find a program that suits. An MFE is likely overkill for these people and I would argue that the MSOR makes more sense in this case. Also the final point I contend here is that I think we're getting a bit extreme on the bearishness against Columbia's MSOR when we start talking about the possibility that Rutgers might be a stronger program. I think there are a ton of cases to be made as to why Columbia MSOR is not a good option for prospective financial engineers, and Andy and others have done a great job of making those cases and helping a lot of students to not make uninformed decisions, but we need to draw a line in the sand here - this one is a bit much.

 

[bullion]

Hahaha,its usually useless to get into a school war here. Let's see

The original question was "Cornell vs Columbia" - Cornell and Columbia are both Ivy Leagues, so name brands are arguably equal. While they are both masters in operational research, Cornell's program is at least "unique" from a degree dilution point of view. Columbia has 3 programs competing for the same job, And employers KNOW a great number of them probably got diverted from the MFE program. Cornell at least customized it's program and extended to 1.5 years with a satellite campus in NYC. For NYC, there are benefits to being so close to your school after graduation. But if you aren't the type that is good at socializing with alumni clubs, then I vote in favor of Cornell (Cornell also has the strongest engineering program among all Ivies ranked by USNews)

I'll treat any info out of the admissions and current students with skepticisms. Admissions has an interest in inflating their numbers, and students tend to have a bias in favor of their own or they'll completely trash their own program if they don't get what they want. So it's probably better to use logic and then test your conclusion with industry insider. There are many reasons why Columbia would decide to divert MFE applicants at the first place. But if they were to claim that MSOR are just as competitive, then what of compsci graduates who's taken a class or two on stochastic calculus and modeling (probability more useful.) I have no doubt MSOR end up in excellent positions with stellar compensation packages, but then the question is whether such success is due to the MSOR program itself or the general Columbia name.

Ken probably says it best. We have way too many academicians out there who compare classes, school names, and whatever people think make them more suitable to do the work. But what's stopping you from picking up a book on data cleaning and analysis on your own even if you didn't get to take the class? Everyone can follow a syllabus, how will you distinguish yourself? School name and program reputation will only make a differene in getting you an interview, and the difference between programs in the same school becomes quite marginal for MFE programs without exclusive career service staff like Columbia. Whatever it was first "designed" for, most grads (MFE, MSOR, COMPSCI, STAT, or any undergrad) are gonna compete for the same finance job with you anyways.

 

[financeguy]

The argument about people in different departments at Columbia competing against one another for the same jobs is one that I hear a lot on quantnet and think people really put too much emphasis on. Yes, obviously they are and that sucks, but it's not like Cornell grads aren't also competing with those same people. So let's say 5 Columbia MSFE students, 5 Columbia MSOR students, 5 Columbia comp sci students, and 1 Cornell MFE student are competing for the same job, I think people in this forum overestimate the power of that different Cornell name sticking out. Sure, it makes a difference but in most cases I'd think it was pretty marginal. I have looked through stacks of undergraduate resumes for applicants to summer analyst and full time analyst programs at my bank, and the vast majority come from the same schools. When a resume comes up that says a more unusual school, I don't give it special consideration unless I'm doing it subconsciously. And, yes, I'm talking about the more unusual schools which are on par with the usual ones (when a less strong unusual school comes up I need the rest of the resume to be even more impressive to make up for it). Granted this is not the same applicant pool nor the same sort of position looking to be filled, but this has been my experience when considering recommending resumes for interviews. I don't have quotas to fill for number of students to interview from each school. If I wanted to, I could in theory only choose applicants from one school.

What will make a difference as bullion said above is if there is a targeted career staff that is truly working its balls off to place its students. I did not feel as if we had that at Columbia for any of those programs. Obviously we had career services but I didn't feel as if they were bending over backwards for us. If a program truly has that sort of service, that would definitely be a differentiating factor.

Finally, and this is the more generic bit, I think it depends on what your goal is after you graduate. I'm sure there are positions for which the hiring managers look for particular things. For example, if you what you wanted was to be an equity derivatives quant specializing in developing new pricing models for structured products, I'd imagine most hiring managers will be looking for relevant coursework and they might even have a short list of programs they are familiar with and wish to hire out of. That's obviously a ridiculously specific example but you see what I mean. If you just want to get a regular trading or structuring position at a bank, it's more powerful to have a better brand name school on your resume than a particular program.

 

[gauravpuri]

There's no simple answer. There are probably more pure quants than there are jobs for them. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets - that's a different story. Quants who are comfortable with large data sets and who can communicate well - those are in demand and trade at a premium.

I also feel a math oriented course would also open an opportunity for PhD .
Please correct if i am wrong.

 

[gauravpuri]

Anybody who applied to MSMF at Rutger??
Please let me know if one need to get ones transcript evaluated from an external agency if undergraduate major / minor is not in mathematics?

I am from India with undergrad in Electrical engineering

 

[lmaonade]

Another poster started a thread last night about this, but seems to have deleted his post. Nonetheless, I wanted to open up a conversation about this for future prospective students to read, as it's a good topic and I've been finding the current information to be a little thin.

Here's what I had posted:

I'm leaning heavily towards Cornell. Their placement stats seem similar to that of Columbia's MSFE program (source: the slide deck they showed to admitted students, with placements for 2013 and 2014), and possibly better than Columbia's MSOR program (?). They also have a smaller class size and the program is run by two former Wall Street practitioners. I spoke to a current or former student recently and they said the career team really works their ass off to place students, and they felt that probably no other program approaches the level of dedication Cornell has for its students' placements.

So it sounds like they have CMU-level placement help. Also, the program has been around since the mid-1990's, so I would imagine that the program's alumni network is quite extensive by this point.

My goal is to become a trader. For what it's worth, I managed to find a page on Columbia's MSOR site that showed that, of the graduates who went into finance, about 25% ended up in "sales, trading, and equities." But I just get an uneasy feeling about turning down a finance-specific program for a generalist program, with double or triple the class size, and with many of those classmates not being specifically focused on finance.

From my humble perspective, it seems like Columbia MSOR can be a great choice on an absolute basis, but on a relative basis it seems to make less sense if you also hold an offer from Cornell MFE. If anyone has more knowledge (actual knowledge, not "internet knowledge"), please enlighten us.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Will you consider about NYU?

 

[Nemoking]

Hello guys I got offers from both programs and I'm having a hard time making a choice. From what I've learned Cornell has dedicated career service and the program itself is of good quality with a relatively small class, but Columbia is in NYC and it has an excellent brand name. I also saw someone in the forum say that MSOR is just like Columbia's stats which is ... you know, and it is not the best choice for a quant job. What do you think? I would really appreciate some suggestions!

 

[xxxiecong]

Do you guys think it will be a good idea to finish msor at columbia in one year, then continue a financial engineering degree ?
In my case, I just got offer from nyu math in fin, however, I did do deposit to msor program.
And, also I got my bachelor from NYU as well, so I wanna some thing different in my life..

 

[Vera Li]

Definitely Cornell MFE. As you have noticed, Cornell MFE is better in any important aspects such as career service and program quality. And the 3rd semester of the Cornell MFE is taking place in the NYC also. Cornell is famous as one of the Ivy. I think both of them have huge fame.