Georgia Institute of Technology - MS in Quantitative and Computational Finance

Georgia Institute of Technology - MS in Quantitative and Computational Finance

Georgia Tech's QCF Program is a professional, interdisciplinary graduate degree program.
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Location
Atlanta, GA 30332
Application deadline
Early decision: Oct 15th; Standard: Jan 15th
The Master of Science in Quantitative and Computational Finance (QCF) degree program at the Georgia Institute of Technology equips students with the advanced mathematical modeling skills used by the financial sector to structure transactions, manage risk, and construct investment strategies. Given the enormous impact and tremendous growth of the field of “financial engineering”, graduates of Georgia Tech’s QCF program are highly sought after for rewarding careers in investment banking, trading, asset and wealth management, consulting, risk management and more.

An interdisciplinary education between the Scheller College of Business, H. Milton Steward School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and School of Mathematics, the QCF degree program offers an intensive curriculum emphasizing the practical application of finance, mathematical modeling, statistics, and analytical and computational skills through project-based coursework.



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2025 Ranking Data
Rank
8
Total Score
80
Peer Score
3.0
Employed at Graduation (%)
93%
Employed at 3 months (%)
100%
Base salary
$113,604
Cohort Size
51 FT
Acceptance Rate (%)
32.6%
Tuition
$64,347
Views
60,462
First release
Last update

Ratings

3.92 star(s) 13 reviews 4.33 star(s) Students Quality 4.00 star(s) Courses/Instructors 4.00 star(s) Career Services
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Latest reviews
Headline
Probably the best choice if you can't go to the top 4
Class of
2025
Qcf went up to top 8 this year on quantnet, which made it highly competitive for 2025 fall. Of course, you can't rely on the career service to get an amazing offer from a hedge fund, but it's good enough for most people in this hard time.
Recommend
Yes, I would recommend this program
Students Quality
5.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
4.00 star(s)
Career Services
5.00 star(s)
Upvote 1 Downvote
Headline
It is Highly flexible! Not just Finance!
Class of
2025
Reviewed by Verified Member
It is a good program even for those who do not like to work in pure finance! You can have the option to choose a double major with a CS(E) degree. Most of the cohort are very good at collaboration in lots of tech stuff.
Recommend
Yes, I would recommend this program
Students Quality
5.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
4.00 star(s)
Career Services
5.00 star(s)
Upvote 1 Downvote
Headline
Amazing program
Class of
2025
Top notch MFE program, with access to some of the best courses/instruction in the USA. For example, I took many courses through the IE department, which is #1 in the country. Some people complain about some of the business courses which is understandable, but this is a grad program, and there isn’t much hand holding. Most complaints you will hear are from underperforming students who simply do not put in the work to understand the material. The QCF program demands a high level of rigor, which is not for students who expect handholding. Overall an amazing program, with pretty strong placements into top sell side and some buy side firms as well (Goldman, BlackRock, Flow Traders, Citi, Chicago Trading, etc).
Recommend
Yes, I would recommend this program
Students Quality
5.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
5.00 star(s)
Career Services
3.00 star(s)
Upvote 1 Downvote
  • Anonymous
  • 1.00 star(s)
Headline
Brutally Honest Review – QCF Is Overhyped, Overworked, and Underdelivering
If you’re considering Georgia Tech’s QCF program, I strongly urge you to think twice—especially if you’re international, career-focused, or hoping for a supportive, high-quality academic experience. This program is not what the brochure promises.

1. Academics: A Mess of Unstructured, Overloaded, and Poorly Taught Courses

The coursework is grueling—not in a good way. You'll get tons of weekly assignments, but learn almost nothing of lasting value. The program is so packed with deliverables that you’ll have no time to prep for interviews, and your GPA will tank, affecting full-time job prospects.

• Derivatives: The professor barely follows any structure. He jumps from topic to topic, provides no slides, and lectures at lightning speed using Excel/Matlab. If you miss one step, you're lost—and there are no materials to review afterward.
• Fixed Income: Professor can't even explain interest rate models clearly. Concepts are skimmed or left ambiguous.
• Stochastic & C++: A disaster. The instructor reads incorrect slides, doesn’t understand what he's teaching, and can't even code C++ himself. Assignments, lectures, and exams feel disconnected.
• Capstone Project with Chava: Pure chaos. If you expect faculty guidance, forget it. The professor forces his own irrelevant research papers on you, offers no project support, and evaluates students arbitrarily.
• AI in Finance: Sounds exciting, but the instructor (again Chava) has no real understanding of machine learning. The class ends up being a buzzword soup.

2. Toxic Culture: Sink or Be Sabotaged

The peer environment is cutthroat and manipulative. Many students are only here to use others for group projects, then turn around and throw teammates under the bus. Trust is nonexistent, and there’s zero faculty support if you’re treated unfairly.
Dr. Chava, the program director, fosters this environment. He rewards students who "worship" him, and punishes anyone who dares to question him. Academic bullying? Gaslighting? Retaliation? It’s all here—and tolerated.

3. Career Outcomes: Way Below Expectation

Let’s be honest. QCF is not a quant feeder program. The best most students get are model validation or product analyst roles. In fact, most job outcomes are either:

• Jobs you could’ve gotten with a bachelor’s degree, or
• No job at all. Roughly 40% of students graduate without full-time offers.
The so-called “job support” is laughable:
• Career platform lists roles that require 4–5 years of experience—useless for new grads.
• Most shared “opportunities” are old public links you could find on LinkedIn or a company's site.
• Resume book occasionally gets you 1–2 interviews per semester, but it’s a lottery.

Worse, many U.S. employers now blacklist QCF students due to previous integrity issues with alumni. The program doesn’t help restore that image—it just ignores it.

4. A Few Bright Spots (That No Longer Exist)

Once upon a time, there were great professors—like in Financial Optimization or Data Mining—who genuinely cared and taught well. But they’ve either left the program or stopped teaching.

Conclusion

QCF at Georgia Tech is not worth your time or money unless you already have experience, a green card, and want to validate an existing resume. For everyone else, it’s a high-stress, low-reward grind with little academic depth and even less career payoff.
If you want to suffer under a broken system run like a personal fiefdom, come meet Chava. Otherwise, run.
Recommend
No, I would not recommend this program
Students Quality
1.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
1.00 star(s)
Career Services
1.00 star(s)
Upvote -8 Downvote
D
Headline
Totally worth my time and money
Class of
2025
The classes were very rigorous is you decide to take the good ones, especially from ISyE. There are some legendary professors in that department(Obviously as ISyE is always ranked #1). As someone with prior hedge fund experience I had a clear idea of what gaps I had, Gatech courses helped me to fill those gaps.
The scheller business courses were not really useful. At least to me. But some courses were fun as the students are much more diverse than a typical ISyE class.
Also a big shoutout to career services. Helped me stay on top of my game.
Recommend
Yes, I would recommend this program
Students Quality
5.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
5.00 star(s)
Career Services
5.00 star(s)
Upvote 4 Downvote
Headline
Excellent program!
Class of
2022
Strong courses, busy school life, supportive career services and teachers. Our career service teachers are super supportive and nice, you could talk to them if you meet any difficulties and they are always helping you solve problems! This is very important for students to find a job.
Recommend
Yes, I would recommend this program
Students Quality
5.00 star(s)
Courses/Instructors
5.00 star(s)
Career Services
5.00 star(s)
Upvote 3 Downvote
  • Anonymous
  • 3.00 star(s)
Curriculum: Scheller College of Business courses could be better. GaTech isn't highly regarded for business/finance, but that does seem to be improving. However, as another reviewer stated, the programming/technical coursework is intense so be prepared. Classes under the math/ISyE colleges were typically rigorous. Electives are fairly open to whatever fancies your interest.

Atlanta as a location is what it is. It isn’t NYC and will never be, so that’s something to keep in mind. However, GaTech students are pretty competitive throughout the SouthEast so you can fall back on that if you are having landing jobs outside the region. A decent number of companies do recruit from QCF, but some just show up at career fairs to promote their companies and that’s it. For the most part, everyone was able to find internships and full-time jobs; however, a lot of the work was dependent on the student. Career services only helps to a degree, and most students who landed big names did so on their own.

I will agree with another reviewer about Dr. Chava. He’s not exactly hands-on, and it is difficult to get a chance to talk to him whether in person or email. Check his salary if you don’t believe us (it’s public info and compare it to other professors). Granted, most grad programs these days are just cash cows for universities anyways, but I felt he could’ve given more attention to the program and to the success of the students than he did.

Class composition was probably 40% Chinese, 40% Indian, and 20% everyone else including Americans. I think some previous reviewers are geographically challenged as India is located on the continent of Asia.

Would I attend again? With hindsight, I would chose a MFE program in NYC where having a better established alumni base in the main financial city in the US would be better for both the short-term and long-term. GaTech QCF isn’t a bad program; there are just better programs than it.

Note: I graduated a couple of years ago. Also, I would give 3.5/5.0 stars if the option existed.
Upvote 6 Downvote
It's been a year since I decided to join the QCF program and now I would like to say it was the best decision I ever made.

For students who want to get decent learning experiences in MFE and want to become a quant (in any aspect), QCF is definitely a great choice. The workload of QCF is extremely heavy (no matter what background you are from) and students with no or few coding experiences will barely survive. But after I survived and looked back on what I did this year, I have to say that thanks to the high-intensive environment (especially the first semester) that now makes me more comfortable on continuing my studies. Though I have to admit that some courses seem not worth the money, the whole design of the curriculum is professional and avant-garde. I couldn't sum up in one sentence of how much I learned during this year, but I could say that I probably learned more than my 4-year undergrad.

There are courses that highly involve programming(most of them requires lots of coding), others are more theoretic and at the same time, they don't make finance be your weakness. Students are also allowed to explore other courses to tailor their career goals. Since I am from an engineering background, the finance courses are just good enough for me to understand the general concepts (but my friends from finance background really hate those courses, they are easy but the professors make them hard to enjoy). Anyway, the curriculum really well-balanced students from different background. You can have a taste of both and then dive into the area you want to.

All my classmates are nice and willing to share. We are more like partners than competitors. You can learn so much from your classmates so I often talk with them. Georgia Tech, in general, is a warm, friendly and vibrant campus. At the same time, the overall technical environment deeply influences QCF. For me, the tech environment is more like an advantage than the other side, since right now more and more companies lean to technical people. This attracts more top hedge funds and trading firms to come to our career fair so we can have more opportunities. And I don't think the location (Atlanta) is the short-side (if you do not overemphasize the pursuit of living in big cities like New York) since there are many opportunities in the local financial services companies and Georgia Tech is definitely their target school. From here I have to thank our professional, conscientious and helpful career services team who keep a good relationship with all the corporates and continue to offer us more and more career opportunities. Kayln and Laura are more like our friends and are also love to communicate with us. They are reachable and often update with us frequently. Overall, everyone here is very close to each other.

Since many people asked me about the dual program with CSE degree, I think I'll make a brief clarification here. The CSE double degree indeed offers more opportunities and choices but as I learned from the program and school, it is NOT a guarantee that you will be approved to enter the dual program. Students have to submit an application after they have finished 5 core courses of CSE.

Other general information: as far as I know all 2019 grads get full-time jobs and most current students get interns. But due to COVID-19, the recruiting process freezes since the beginning of this year so there are still some students who cannot find interns.
Students backgrounds are diverse, among 50+ students, roughly 40% Asian, 40% Indian, and 20% Americans.
Upvote 4 Downvote
QCF is an overhyped program poorly managed by Sudheer Chava. Chava just uses this program to charge exorbitant fees relative to the other programs in Georgia Tech. Neither is the program structure good nor the quality of the program. No one gets any teaching assistantship unless you are in the good books of Chava and not by merit, which is very biased.
Upvote -11 Downvote
Reviewed by Verified Member
Master of Science Financial Engineering program with most focus on computational mathematics and options pricing.

What is unique about this program
It is very computationally intensive with niches in energy risk/quantitative analysis and machine learning applications. The coursework is very rigorous, and it focuses on more practical projects with an intense development of the foundations of underlying theory. Overall, the education is outstanding.

Worst things about the program
Career services for the students within the program. Although, the director helps out in this respect and does a good job with placements. They are just short staffed in this regard.

Career services
Career services is almost there for someone to recruit for the students. Students find internships and jobs either through the school's career services or on their own. For domestic candidates, there is 100% full-time placement for the 2011 class. Overall, out of 60 students, there was about 80% placement, although that number will be larger in a few months in general.

Most students obtain jobs in their home country. For the few that receive offers in the US, they get jobs as traders at prop shops, Quants at trading firms, market risk analysts at trading firms, private equity analysts, investment banking analysts and associates, consultants, trade platform application engineers, trade clearing quants at exchanges, financial analysts at banks (25/60 get placed in the US). Overall, a successful 2011 year.

Student body
75% Asian
10% Indian
10% American
5% Other

Lacks diversity in some sense. This most likely will change soon.
Upvote 0 Downvote
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