What’s the best master’s course in the world if you want to work at a hedge fund? It’s not in the Ivy League, and it certainly not at MIT.
What you’re looking for is the master’s in financial engineering (MFE) offered by Baruch College, a small and selective public college in New York. Why? Because it topped QuantNet’s 2024 global ranking of American MFE programs. As it did in 2023, 2022, and 2021, when QuantNet’s rankings began.
The average salary of Baruch’s MFE grads was an astronomical $220k, behind second place Princeton, where graduates had an average salary of $240k.
Fees for Baruch’s MFE are just $29k for New York state residents and $42k for out of state and international students. At second-place Princeton and third-place Carnegie Mellon, the comparable fees for master’s in financial engineering courses are $126k and $97k, respectively.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
A cheap price tag doesn’t mean a cheap experience, however. Last year's students interned at funds including Balyasny, Millennium, Verition, and Point72, as well as at banks like Goldman Sachs and trading firms like Virtu Financial.
Last year, we spoke to Dan Stefanica, the MFE’s course director since its inception in 2002. He said that an increasing number of Baruch MFEs were choosing hedge funds, although it’s not just because of the compensation offered there. Hedge funds have been turning up on campus before investment banks, Stefanica said. "Hedge funds began interviewing our students in August this year," he said. "Banks stayed on their typical schedule of interviewing in October and November."
A pretty huge 75% of the class of ’23 went to work at a hedge fund, prop trader, or asset manager after graduation (the rest went to investment banks). It’s a big number, and it’s also a pretty substantial increase on last year’s 50% in those three industries, or the year before that’s 32%.
What makes Baruch so special? Stefanica says it's a combination of excellent alumni links and the presence of full-time professors drawn from the industry, including Jim Gatheral, a former equity derivatives trader at Merrill Lynch, and Andrew Lesniewski, who developed the SABR volatility model.
How do you get in? Stefanica said that student numbers weren’t fixed, and that the course took all the students who met their standards - but last year’s class had only 24 people. Many who apply don't make the grade. Baruch interviews "a considerable number" of students in a two-stage process focused on technical questions, Stefanica said.
The majority of those who succeed are international students, and in particular students from China: "Chinese students come to us because they want to start their careers in the U.S. financial markets," Stefanica said. "But one of our best ever students was American," he added.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
"course" - Google News
December 14, 2023 at 10:22PM
https://ift.tt/EA5PjeT
The cheap course that will get you a $1m job in a hedge fund - eFinancialCareers
"course" - Google News
https://ift.tt/dUTMyID
https://ift.tt/wecStkZ
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "The cheap course that will get you a $1m job in a hedge fund - eFinancialCareers"
Post a Comment