Thank you very much for your advice, Andy. I will call U Chicago
I know that MSCF@CMU has very good reputation in the street. Yet many other factors makes me feel that it's not perfect. I know there's no reason to ask for perfectness at any time, but I think you can understand this because I am going to pay a large amount of money for that.
The first reason for me to vacilate is the overall reputation for the name of CMU. Outside USA, almost no one have heared of it. (Since I am a computer major student, I know CMU well though) I think this will have some long-term effect if some day I am getting back to China.
I applied to Pittsburg campus of CMU, so regarding the location I think U Chicago is better.
Though the director of MSCF@CMU told me that placement of last class was "much better than they had expected", I also heard that only 1 student in this year's NY class has got job offer in NY, many Asian students have to get back to Hong Kong (I cannot be sure about the accuracy of this information). Also a current student at CMU's program told me that it's not a good time to go to US for a MFE program. So I am kind of worried about the job market.
It seems that there have always been a lot of disputes over Columbia's MFE program. Do you know that the bad placement record of Columbia is only for this year, or it has never performed very well in the past? At least placement record of CMU this year is also much worse than those in past years, though I have no solid statistics yet.