I am interested in pursuing a career related to finance and business. I wanted to know the pros and cons of Rutgers vs Stevens.
Stevens seems to tout high return on investment, but Rutgers Business is also a strong school. I am not sure which one will look better on a resume for finance/business.
High gpa and honors from either would be fantastic for you in such a tough major. Both schools would give you a chance to be successful in a wide range of businesses. Hedge funds love this background and nearby Greenwich ct, nyc and Boston are the hotbeds for this industry. Investment banking could be if you are a star but not heavily recruited schools. But that doesn’t matter for exceptional students.
I would choose based on your personal preferences so you’re excited to be there and net cost of each.
Congrats.
@ringlerock - The Stevens Quantititative Finance/Financial Engineering program has become over the last decade one of the foremost and heavily recruited programs in the field in the United States. Stevens has one of the highest placement rates with major Wall Street investment banks and starting/mid-career salaries among American universities. The major difference between the Stevens program and traditional business schools such as Rutgers is that Stevens, as one would expect of a technological university - places great emphasis on the “quantitative” - the mathematical tools and analysis techniques that drive financial and investment decisions. Stevens QF students become proficient in stochastic calculus, advanced statistical methods, computer science and software, econometrics, financial time series analysis, and all of the related theory and application. Stevens also believes in a well-rounded education, which has been the foundation of a Stevens education since its founding, so QF/FE students take a comprehensive foundational science core including physics, calculus, differential equations, and others. Rutgers and other traditional business schools are less focused on the mathematics and analysis, and more towards traditional techniques of marketing, financial accounting, and legacy tools of investment and portfolio analysis.
Stevens also places emphasis on the current programming languages used in financial analysis and prediction such as R, Python, C++, and MATLAB. Major programming projects and a deep understanding of the underlying computer science (discrete mathematics, data structures, algorithms, etc.) are significant part of the curriculum.
The curriculum is described here:
Stevens has one of highest ROI of tuition in the US, which you can see from Payscale’s annual survey “What’s Your College Degree Worth”. In the most recent survey, Stevens comes in at 15th out of 1,130 institutions whose alumni were surveyed:
https://www.payscale.com/college-roi
This article in Forbes also described the FE/QF program:
I think the choice between Stevens and Rutgers amounts to what type of work do you prefer, do you prefer hard core mathematically based financial analysis - what Wall Street refers to as a “quant”, or a more traditional business analysis type role for which Rutgers has a decent program. I can tell you from having spoken to people on Wall Street and some of the graduates of the program I have met myself that Stevens is highly regarded and the graduates are in great demand. At the semi-annual Stevens career fairs the major Wall Street investment banks, Federal Reserve, FINRA, NYSE, NASDAQ, and other major financial institutions are well represented.
Good luck and congratulations on both your acceptances, you can’t go wrong with either.