Nobody has been to more than 1 program, so no one can truly tell you the differences. That said, from what I gather on QuantNet --
I believe they all place well -- it's really more about your own interviewing capabilities once you're in any of the top programs as you'll have plenty of opportunities to interview. I think Princeton has the most competitive admissions and is different in that it's the least quantitative of the top programs; this can be good as you can still do a fairly quantitative curriculum, or you can keep your options open by being more generalist in finance. Princeton also has the smallest student class so it's more tight-knit and it arguably has a closer alumni community as a result (same could be said of Baruch's program). CMU and Columbia are fairly similar, incredibly high proportion of student class is international Chinese, and it's mostly a numbers-based admissions, focused more on GPA and GRE. UCB seems to have a bit of diversity and favors some work experience? UCB's top strength seems to be Linda who is incredibly dedicated to placing students into internships and jobs.
If up to me, I'd rank it this like: Princeton (prestige/alumni network/beautiful campus), UCB (quant/Linda/Bay-area), Columbia (NYC/quant), CMU (quant).
(Location-based factors are purely my own preference.)
