Financial engineering - which is better

[supriyor]

Hi
I am an MBA - Finance graduate and I am working as a Business Analyst in Risk Management practices with a financial services company . I am also a Mechanical Engineer . In total , I have six years of experience - in project finance, project analysis for capital budgeting, statistical analysis for loan portfolios and business analysis for risk management. I am considering to do my MS in financial engineering and considering two colleges - Polytecnic University and Baruch College . Can some one tell me which one is better from academic as well from career (job) on wall street .
Thanks
Supriyo

[Andy]

Baruch vs Poly. Tough choice. Really. No punch intended !

Take a look at the wiki
Baruch - Quantnet Wiki (www.quantnet.org/wiki/Baruch) and Polytech - Quantnet Wiki (www.quantnet.org/wiki/Polytech)
Then take a look at the stat page Baruch College's Financial Engineering MS Program (http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/math/masters_employment_stats_new.html)
and :: POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY :: Department of Financial Management (http://www.poly.edu/fe/)

If the presented info does not help with your question, then apply to BOTH and see which program you can GET IN.
I hope the info I give will help you come up with a well informed decision.

[dstefan]

while Andy put it rather sharply, his point is correct.

also, comparing the web sites of the programs before asking the question is always a good idea. admission and placement stats are really important to compare, if they are posted.

[Michelle]

I went to the open house of all the programs in NYC last year when I planned to do an MFE. As I'm already working on Wall Street, I was not specifically looking at placement stats but from the questions given during numerous visits to different programs, I could really see the attitude of each program toward helping the part time students.

The Polytech program strikes me the most in their attitude (or lack of) toward job placement for part time students. The impression I got is you are on your own if you study PT. I do not know how different it would be for FT students.
Also, from reading on other forums, their program seems to suffer from several setbacks years ago and has not recovered since. There was a change in the Director position, and several changes in their program direction, curriculum. I haven't looked at them ever since so you need to do some research on it.

At other programs, i have the same more or less feeling about their placement help for PT students. Since they all have limited resource and a large group of students, some of them prioritize it to FT students only.

Job placement is not a big concern for me since I'm already working but if you plan to do PT, you should do some more research on it.

I like the Baruch program because of its indifference toward PT and FT students. As far as I can see, there isn't any difference being PT and FT student at Baruch. You receive the same level of help when it comes to job. Maybe the current students can elaborate more on this ?

In short, my advice is to go to each program's open house, ask questions, and meet the students. All the programs look similar on paper so it's hard to judge reading the (or lack of) info you have online.

Best of luck,
Michelle

[GusTsahas]

I agree with Michelle that you should visit the programs you intent to apply to as you will be spending a great deal of time when attending….. and time is a very limited commodity.

As a past graduate alumni of POLY, they were first on my mind when I thought of doing an FE program. The feeling I came away with was that POLY was milking the program and not investing back the recourses necessary to make the program top notch. Hopefully the new Director will be able to get more resources allocated to the program as well as some program changes as some of the classes are soft…

The FE program I did attend was Baruch, where the Director does his outmost to help in every way possible, and the program has the administrations full support for recourses. The program is well balanced between math, computer and finance content and placements are good… now if more students can just make it past admissions…. :D

[RussianMike]

… now if more students can just make it past admissions…. :D


Its tough to get past the Danimator :) One really has to be on top of their game.

[Dmytro]

somebody should go on the quantnet equivalent of polytech (or any other MFE program for that matter) and start a similar thread - i wonder what their students see as the main advantage of their schools.
oh-oh, i forgot - they don't have such a thing -- there's only one QuantNet! :smt006

[Andy]

somebody should go on the quantnet equivalent of polytech
Where where ? :D
oh-oh, i forgot - they don't have such a thing -- there's only one QuantNet! :smt006
almost.... Chicago Financial Math has a discussion board at
http://www-finmath.uchicago.edu/new/msfm/forums/index.php
They started several months ago and it was loaded with pxxn, sxx, Viagxx ads that they had to disable posting there. It's a dead forum for several months.
That said, we have a good thing going here and it's up to the hands of you guys to keep it up once we are gone ;)

[arjun]

Hi everyone,:prayer:

I am new to this community. I am planning to apply to computational finance PhD graduate programs. Please give me the names and URLs of some other helpful forums dealing with computational finance/financial engineering.

I would also appreciate it if you could point out the pros and cons between an MEng, and MS and a PhD in computational finance/financial engineering.

[shinichi]

Baruch vs Poly. Tough choice. Really. No punch intended !

Take a look at the wiki
Baruch - Quantnet Wiki (http://www.quantnet.org/wiki/Baruch) and Polytech - Quantnet Wiki (http://www.quantnet.org/wiki/Polytech)
Then take a look at the stat page Baruch College's Financial Engineering MS Program (http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/math/masters_employment_stats_new.html)
and :: POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY :: Department of Financial Management (http://www.poly.edu/fe/)

If the presented info does not help with your question, then apply to BOTH and see which program you can GET IN.
I hope the info I give will help you come up with a well informed decision.

Is Polytechnic University different from Ecole Polytechnique in France?

[Andy]

They are totally different.
École Polytechnique - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique)
Polytech University is an engineering university in Brooklyn, NY