<p>Can anyone help me make a decision?
I got accepted by University of Michigan and Wash U st.louis, and I have to respond to these two universities soon.
I am an electrical engineering major, and an international student. I know that Umich has a much better engineering program, and probably better reputation, but I worry that the classes will be too big and the opportunities will be limited. Wash U has a much small size and greater individual attention, but it is not as wellknown as Umich for engineering. If I plan to go to graduate school (probably for financial engineering), which one would prepare me the best? Can anyone give me some suggestions?</p>
<p>I would go with Michigan. Even though the intro classes and preqs are huge lectures, the higher level classes get smaller. I personally think Wash U is kind of overrated(other than for medecine) because they like to play games and use aggressive marketing strategies to get more applicants and make themselves seem more selective. Michigan has more opportunities than Wash U, especially in engineering. You just need need to fight for them since it is a larger school (and this will prepare you for the real world). Also, Michigan offers a masters in financial engineering so you could probably just stay an extra year to get it.</p>
<p>Classes may be smaller and individual attention greater at the intro level, but not at the intermediate and advanced levels. Furthermore, You will not have “limited” opportunities at Michigan. Options for research and internships are formidable. For Engineering students (other than Biomedical Engineering), this is a no brainer. You shouldn’t even be hesitating. Michigan is among the top 6 or 7 engineering schools in the US, WUSTL is barely ranked among the top 40. Besides, weren’t you supposed to make your final decision and pay your enrolment deposit 30 days ago?</p>
<p>Strongly advice against doing financial engineering these days. That skill set just really isnt in demand right now. MFE is very pricing oriented and there just aren’t much appetite for serious complex derivative/structured products (CDOs on junior tranches with unique custom features/quantos/baskets/himalayas/FX correlation/compounds etc) these days. This is obviously unfortunate thanks to the disfunctional washington politics. For the very few seats that are available, banks would rather go with a physics/math phd.</p>
<p>The MFE skill set is also not very translatable to buy side quant (which is where the growth for quant finance is really happening these days). Even grads from top programs are having some trouble looking for jobs. Strongly recommend something less pricing oriented like Princeton MFin (very quantitative, somewhat like MFE but not exactly) or MIT MFin (less quantitative, more general finance with a quant skew).</p>
<p>however if you are set on doing MFE or any finance related master you should go to michigan. Academically it doesn’t really matter, you just need to do well (3.8+ for very top programs). However, high finance recruit michigan better so you are more likely to score better internships which matters in MFin and MFE admissions.</p>