Anyone here in FE program in USC, John Hopkins U, or Gatech?

[Travis Sun]

I haven't heard too much from these schools, anyone can share some information about them?

 

[ian.ward]

i'm interested as well

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Looks like we need to get more reviews from students of these programs. I have one review from USC MFE, not sure if I have posted it or not.
http://www.quantnet.com/review/

 

[RolledUpAces]

Hey,

I am from Gatech's Quantitative and Computational Finance program. I would like to preface that it was a pleasure meeting fellow graduate students at the NYU Career Fair. NYU Courant hosted such an amazing event that I would recommend to anyone, at the least, to network and meet others.

I will give a more formal review of the program upon commencement, since I am quite busy travelling across the country, missing a lot of school while preparing for these Superdays (so far 8).

Here is my take on the program: it is an excellent program in terms of education, preparation, and experience for working in the industry. If you want to work at a NY firm, it is certainly possible to do so from this program, however there is a higher probability of working at such a company coming from a NY school (due to companies and their "target school" preferences). I will be bold and say that if GATech had a campus in NY (or the Head of the UC Berkeley program, or an average work experience of 5 years), we would obtain the majority of the applicants and the jobs.

On that note, we only send about 5-10% of our students to NY each year, but maybe 20% receive interviews for those NY jobs and growing. I start off with this location, since it seems to be the benchmark comparison.

A majority of my first round interviews have been in the Atlanta, Houston, Washington DC, South Florida, Chicago , Boston, and Philadelphia areas, so if you would like to work in one of those locations, as well as anywhere in the South/Southeast (Alabama, Carolinas, Texas, etc), GATech provides the networking to obtain the top jobs.

The program offers tuition waivers for qualified students, so if you would like to only come out with at most $20k for living expenses, then I would recommend this program (main reason why I chose it).

It is interesting to note that GaTech students received final rounds from the NYU Career Fair, and that some students in the program beat out others from top ranked programs (based on this website) after taking exams for trading interviews (although perhaps other programs were not as interested in those positions).

Approximate figures, don't quote me:
90% of students find jobs
50% of students get placed in China
50% of students work in the US
of the 50% of students in the US: 25% are US citizens (7 people, all US citizens above a 3.3 GPA receive a job)
Average US Salary: ~$80k (mainly due to low cost of living)
High US Salary: ~$95k
Low US Salary: ~$65k

The placements will probably improve this year.

The reason why you have not heard much about this program is because historically, the students have been quite busy, and/or it would take them a while to communicate. I think the program is enacting more business communication initiatives, so students will be better able to express themselves (the political answer).

 

[RolledUpAces]

Oh, and each year there are a few people with many years of work experience that make $200k+ from this program. But I kept them out, because they are certainly outliers. And this program is thriving with Dr. Deng as director, but he is so busy that the program is in need of someone that strictly does recruiting, because one man can only do so much (he does everything)

 

[Andy Nguyen]

And this program is thriving with Dr. Deng as director, but he is so busy that the program is in need of someone that strictly does recruiting, because one man can only do so much (he does everything)

This actually reminds me of A LOT of other programs with no dedicated career staff and the director puts on so many hats with little time to do anything well. At least, you have a director that is busy working to help the students.
Cool writeup. You probably can help your program much better by writing a review on Quantnet and recruit your classmates to do the same.
www.quantnet.com/submit-review/

 

[JDawg]

Looks like we need to get more reviews from students of these programs. I have one review from USC MFE, not sure if I have posted it or not.
http://www.quantnet.com/review/

I couldn't find the USC review there. Would you mind posting it?