Quant Guide 2022: Baruch College, City University of New York

New York City, US

 

 

Baruch College’s Master of Science in Financial Engineering (MFE) ranks second in this year’s guide. While the City University of New York college’s overall score remains a fraction lower than the first-placed programme, it performed better in the areas of class size, student acceptance rate, number of industry-affiliated lecturers (as proportion of the whole of the teaching staff), and average graduate starting salary. In fact, were it not for rival Princeton’s powerhouse research score – calculated by number of citations – Baruch would have topped the 2022 rankings.

It remains one of the most selective quant finance programmes. The course’s latest outing received 319 applications – down from 490 last year – and said yes to just 28, giving it an acceptance rate of just under 9%. A majority of the successful snapped up their offers – 24 of the 28, or 86% – making Baruch highly popular among offer-holders.

The programme once again boasts a 100% employment rate, but has also made gains in graduate salaries. It now reports an average starting salary of $126,983 six months after graduation, up from $116,917 last year, eclipsing Princeton for the first time.

The MFE has also gained some new instructors, says programme director Dan Stefanica: Liuren Wu, a professor of finance, who teaches classes in option pricing and capital markets; and David Cuddihy, who teaches a newly added course in statistical natural language processing. That class has proven highly popular, Stefanica says. Other instructors include: Jim Gatheral, one of Risk.net’s 2021 Quants of the Year, and a specialist in volatility modelling; mathematics professor Andrew Lesniewski, who was part of the team that developed the stochastic alpha beta rho (SABR) model; and industry instructors including Goldman Sachs’ Dmitry Rakhlin and Morgan Stanley’s Mark Ross.

Asked whether the pandemic disrupted graduate employment outcomes, Stefanica says his students performed well.

“This year’s placements are better both in terms of quality and timing of the offers,” he says, adding: “Most graduates are joining buy-side firms.”

View this institution’s entry in the 2021 guide

View other universities and a guide to the metrics tables