<p>Anyone taking it? How tough is it and how's the recruitment? ie. specifically for i-banking (yeah yeah i know, another i-banker wannabe)</p>
<p>Pardon me if question is noob</p>
<p>It's reasonably difficult to get into, probably have to be top 25% of seas (gpa wise) to have a shot, this is very rough. don't know how the recruitment is, because i don't think f.e. undergrad has graduated anyone yet, recruitment should be top notch though, considering the grad program is ranked highly and the program is competitive and specifically catering to wall street. if you're bent on i-banking i would wager that for columbia undergrad - f.e. is where it's at.</p>
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It's reasonably difficult to get into, probably have to be top 25% of seas (gpa wise) to have a shot, this is very rough.
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<p>Basis for this statement? I'm very curious. Do you know what % of the people who want it are being rejected? Do they just look at GPA only?</p>
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don't know how the recruitment is, because i don't think f.e. undergrad has graduated anyone yet, recruitment should be top notch though, considering the grad program is ranked highly and the program is competitive and specifically catering to wall street. if you're bent on i-banking i would wager that for columbia undergrad - f.e. is where it's at.
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<p>I don't think the about the recruiting benefits will be as great as you think. For the "quant" jobs on the street, people with all sorts of science/engineering training are able to excel in it. All things being equal, I highly doubt that a FE major has a leg up on an Applied Math major who took some econ courses and maybe accounting&finance.</p>
<p>IEOR deparment has a track history with the MSFE program with over 90% placement rate on the street, which beats MA stats's placement rate.
the department's recruitment numberevery year matches that of the econ department in the college and financial engineering is a new field made to train "quants"</p>
<p>if you are going for a traditional ibanking job EMS may do you more good than FE. EMS is a traditional engineering management major where as FE is strictly for "quants" you'll be doing alot more financial modeling (no not the ibank-y kind) and programming rather than learning the macro picture and qualitative reasoning . </p>
<p>as for the 25% statement... I wish that was true =p that'd put the cutoff at 3.5-3.6 (basing this on latin honor cutoffs as mean of estimation) but they look at the gpa from the FE track classes more than your entire gpa (according to jenny mak) so if you have a B in uni writting .. don't worry to much.. if you have a B in probablity.. do worry.</p>
<p>ps. recruitment sucks this year, lucky I'm not graduating ^^</p>
<p>What's MSFE? MA? EMS?</p>
<p>MS- master of science MA-master of arts FE- financial engineering EMS- engineering management systems.</p>
<p>as for columbia 2002's comment, FE is a direct preparation for quant positions and columbia by far has one of the best faculties in this area I agree that at the undergraduate level academically APAM students and FE students dont vary much (in fact APAM students are probably stronger on math where FE students take classes in integer programming and simulation) but FE is more closely related and will prepare you better for interviews. out of the 40 ish interns recruited for internship this summer at goldman (those were the only stats I could get my hands on.. not to single out goldman or anything) about a little more than 1/3 were econ or variation of from the college, 1/3 were OR students and a little less than 1/3 were comp sci (tech mostly i'm assuming)
a few students scattered other majors (think there was 1 history or something). I did hear rumors about morgan stanley's intern class being alot more academically diverse though.</p>
<p>This APAM student with a 3.9 can't get bulge bracket firms to give him the time of day. Just FYI.</p>
<p>My point? It depends a lot more on your internships and class choice and an ability to articulate why exactly you want to be in finance. Even choosing FE as a major doesn't make a good response to that question self-evident.</p>
<p>I am really surprised that Denzera cannot get a foot in the door, his posts have always impressed me. I have been told that early focus helps, hence FE over art history or mech engineering (to avoid the question, why do you want to go into finance), hence denzera's point about class selection. I didn't know they looked so closely at your transcript. Also the why finance question: a headhunter in this field told me they don't want those who want to make money etc, they are looking for what Jim Simons is looking for, those who like the intellectual challenge of continually creating models.</p>
<p>So, denzera, do you really then think APAM (other things being equal) is less advantageous to FE jobs than FE?</p>
<p>The probability course for the MFE looks pretty hard.</p>
<p>den's still a soph or junior I believe? majority of internship recruiting is done in junior summer (recruit season is junior spring). as long as your have good enough resume to get you the interview (which is probably one of the hardest part for non-OR non-Econ ppl) the rest is just how well you interview.
the interview's nothing you cant cram out in a week or so but econ/OR majors are alot more prepared for it than say.. art history (it's what they are learning afterall)</p>
<p>it's not the major itself that disadvantages you, its how you appear on a piece of paper (resume.. hard to give an interview slot to an APAM major over 10 other econs waiting in line) how you can explain why you want to do this job (you think "why columbia" is hard? well you havn't seen the end of that question yet) and how well you are prepared for technical questions (can an art history major really explain the faults behind black schole assumptions?)</p>
<p>can somebody please explain to me what exactly Financial Engineering major studies? (math? computer science? finance? or a combo?) on the departmental website, it only says it prepares you well in the finance industry..... and one more thing, i'm personally very interested in theoretical physics and mathematics, does that not prepare me well for finance too? I would expect anyone who can do well in those majors, have a reasonably well intelligence to be able to do well on wall street??</p>
<p>samuel, FE is the confluence of math, stats, stochastic calculus, finance and C++. If you are super in theoretical physics/math you may be attractive, rather the math/physics people have been attractive to the financial community, at least the best among them. However, now with the arrival of FE as a discipline in itself the finance community may hire FEs rather than the math and physics guys simply because they are already well versed in the knowledge base of the field and also because the best FEs are as good as the best math/physicists.</p>
<p>In other words, there was a time when there was no FE as a discipline, the humanities majors were not quants, so to get quants the finance world went to the PhDs in math and physics (they still do but to a lesser extent) but now with FE having established itself they probably are turning increasingly to FE although an outstanding math/physics person will still get in. I would like others to comment on this to see if my view makes sense.</p>
<p>very very comprehensive explaination.. with one correction though. no c++ in the major. you can finish MFE w/o knowing c or c++. alot of simluations are either done on proprietary software, industry specific software or matlab. the intro first year sophomore track requires you to take 1004 (intro to comp sci in java) ad 3134 (data structures in java)</p>
<p>lynda, you are correct but I was not addressing the poster on the nature of the major but on the nature of the discipline which I am told increasingly relies on C++ since that has libraries. I don't know what this means. I did send you a PM, can you please reply? Thanks.</p>
<p>sorry I was writting up the reply.</p>
<p>quite honestly. I think c++ is a mess, but more efficient than java... when used corrcectly.. and older generation love it ... (got shot with a couple c++ questions even though it wasn't on my resume during career fair) -.-'</p>
<p>are you in FE now? Jr or Senior? So, if you have a high gpa in FE courses are you in? What other cuts do they use?</p>
<p>"i'm personally very interested in theoretical physics and mathematics, does that not prepare me well for finance too? I would expect anyone who can do well in those majors, have a reasonably well intelligence to be able to do well on wall street??"</p>
<p>math and physics concepts can be applied to finance, they're usually more useful in more quant heavy and in particular in more academic sides of finance, where developing new mathematical/optimization models is needed. math and physics can go a long way in furthering finance, but the skills need to be complimented with proper economic intuition and business sense. for example one trait that i recurrently see in those who don't study econ (even some math and physics majors) is an inability to make a trade off, people don't naturally think under budget contraints and don't realize that in order to gain something you MUST give something else up, this sounds simplistic, but making a realistic estimation of risk and what you give up seperates many.</p>
<p>Also i think denzera is an alum, so if he couldn't cut it, people should be worried.</p>
<p>I'm a sophomore in OR currently on the FE track. havn't applied to the concentration but talked over it with my adviser a couple times and gona apply in spring depends on the outcome of this semester (in particular the probability class). my grades in pre-comp sci courses caught most of the attention.</p>
<p>Lynda, what does grades caught most of your attention mean? What are your thoughts on using summer school to get some courses under one's belt? If so, how many are do-able in one summer session? 3 credits or 6. As you can all infer, this is a helicopter Asian parent fretting!</p>
<p>I was on a pre-comp sci track and since the department values the grades first year sophomore technical requirements quite naturally my grades 1004 1007 and 3157 provided sufficient proof for "hey this girl can program!" which btw seems to be a general problem among OR students.. most people either can't.. or strongly dislike programming (note for the major only 1004 out of those three is required, but since I was on a different track I took all of them)</p>
<p>I took a full course load (19-21 credits) per semester to avoid summer school and keeping my options open. summers I honestly think is better to get a job than take classes. most summer intern for first an second year(unless you are in a structured program) are going to be doing general office work but you get the exposure to the industry and the workplace (and some pocket income) </p>
<p>you should be able to finish the program on time w/o summer school. but if you really want to go for FE and get some summer classes out of the way, the general ones are DATA structures 3134 coms .. intro to accounting and finance (I believe is also offered every summer ) ECON 2261, Probablity I would suggest taking it during the year since it'll be a very important foundation for other classes (unless he's taken it before) . 6 credit summer session can be a real killer for any class you are touching for the first time.. this isn't highschool anymore..</p>