Fordham MSQF - 2023 Review

Fordham is a fairly unknown program in the quant space. In the last few years they have been making good progress in enhancing the quality and specifically the rigor of the courses being taught. I cover the core courses as well as many of the textbooks being used by the program. The program is also located in Manhattan which makes networking and job placement easier for students. Industry practitioners are being brought in to speak to the students about the industry and the program is setting up students with industry projects. The biggest downfall of the program is not many people have heard of them. This makes job placement a little more challenging however I think this will change within the next few years. More communication skills also need to be taught to enhance the networking of the students.
They were selected in 2023 to be on my "Quant Finance Honorable Mentions" list which only included four schools (Fordham, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, and Stony Brook).
Fordham's MSQF Website:
www.fordham.edu/gabelli-schoo...
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[@AMightyFotressIsOurGod]

Amazing professors, great courses, but one thing may not be ignored is that sometimes you have to learn with someone who can not derívate and do basic math in the same class with you, who’s the director’s favorite kid in the program. Regardless this stuff, helpful alumnus is the wonderful resource over the disappointing career services.

[@Apuryo]

Can you please make a playlist for grad program reviews kind of like your book review playlist?

[@timchang5676]

great video, yet again :) have you heard of Stanford’s ICME program? Their MS has a finance concentration but I feel it’s rarely talked about.

[@Pabloparsil]

Hi Dimitri, are you allowed to share the full list of chapters? Thanks

[@vokoaxecer]

I've applied to Fordham because of you. 🎉❤

[@eleonorauzaxbergenova1384]

Ha me too

[@angadbhatti123123]

Thank you sir ❤

[@omkarpatole8818]

Hello ! Can you review Steven's MS Financial Engineering program too?

[@EmissaryOfSmeagol]

I studied the Woolridge Econometrics book in undergrad a long time ago. I remember it being very interesting to go through.

[@charlieshin9868]

Hi Dimitri, do you think theres much of a difference on the type of masters qualification for financial maths/engineering programs (e.g: MQF, Mfe, M.fin, MsC). It seem like all these masters courses teach the same content (Derivative products, stochastic calculus, time series analysis, etc) but are named differently and seem to be awarded different qualifications. Do you think the standards for which a Mfe is awarded more rigorous than other qualifications or does it not matter at all?

[@DimitriBianco]

No the actual name doesn't mean anything. Each school just picks whatever name they want.

[@charlieshin9868]

​@@DimitriBianco Thank you so much for the reply, really enjoying how you're making the masters course reviews on your website into videos, l hope to see more of it in the future :)

[@davidc4408]

No I did Masters in Financial Mathematics at Edinburgh university in UK. All the same

[@martinthemaverick6052]

What is your opinion on University of Washington, Computational finance and Risk Management

[@niranjank353]

Hi thankyou for your efforts. I got into Fordham. Do you have any idea about university of Maryland College park quantitative finance?

[@pranavrocks2002]

Hi Dimitri I need your help would you do a video between rutgers stevens and fordham

[@Sau_UNCCMathFin]

What is that green light reflecting off your glasses?

[@davidnovosardian6848]

I think that's the special ring light for better lighting in videos.

[@nataliemont8025]

Can you please do a review on Rutgers mqf program

[@DimitriBianco]

As of now I do not have any special insight on their program. I will say I have hired a student from their program though.

[@Diego-to5jw]

Hello Dimitri! Your videos are great and you are hands down the best KZbinr in the quant finance niche. I also want to ask you a question: which out of the quant finance masters programmes in Europe do you rank the highest? I will be applying to them next October and I would really appreciate your insight. Thank you!

[@DimitriBianco]

I have invited a few schools in Europe including the UK to be reviewed however they don't want to participate. Without more information it is hard to say which programs are great. From reviewing websites I do like Imperial's program though.

[@Diego-to5jw]

@@DimitriBianco Thank you, I’m definitely gunning for that one. From my own research, I’d rank the ones in the UK (where I live) as follows: -Imperial -Oxford -LSE -Warwick -UCL -King’s College In the mainland, the best one is ETH Zürich I believe

[@toronto5618]

Hey dimitri! Do you know anything about Stanford's Master of Mathematical and Computational Finance? It is not in any ranking. Thank you!

[@DimitriBianco]

I do not. I have not reviewed any of their material and have never come across any of their students.

[@biglilrichard]

Would you think that the Wooldridge book may be too simple for a grad program? Since it is mainly designed for the undergrad level and possibly adapted to the master's level, but grad econometrics AFAIK is usually using Davidson-Mackinnon, Hayashi, Hansen, Verbeek or Greene. Not saying baby Wooldridge is not an incredible book, I loved using this book but at the senior undergrad level now my school has moved on from it. I understand many people in these programs maybe haven't done econometrics in undergrad or maybe it's designed as preparation for the TSE class since that's more relevant, but I would've thought with the general rigour of a master's program in QF it would be a bit simple.

[@DimitriBianco]

It depends on how the class is being taught and the value the professor is adding. I've seen undergrad programs using Wooldridge however they often skim much of the details within the chapters (the book is about 800 pages). Also to apply this to ML and combining the teaching makes these sort of topics more challenging. For a masters course I would expect the teacher to blend the topics in a more advanced way than just learning what is given in the textbook. Yes, there are more advanced econometrics textbooks however I feel most students aren't fully grasping the material. This view comes from interviewing many graduate students from a variety of backgrounds.

[@biglilrichard]

@@DimitriBianco That makes sense. Not sure what the usual way of teaching econometrics is, but we used Wooldridge for 2 courses in 3rd year econometrics, and then sometimes it's still used in 4th, or the professor wants to move on to something like Davidson-Mackinnon. Followup to that: You mentioned before that you really like the time series section in Wooldridge; Now that you've been using the Financial Time Series book by Tsay, do you think that is a better resource for quant work in the "real world" compared to Wooldridge which isn't specialized in time series or finance?

[@springabreaka7908]

What do you think of mba

[@chymoney1]

If you actually wanna do derivatives you need a more focused set of courses; I feel like a lot of masters program neglect derivatives because the math is so intensive it’s largely left to the Phds.

[@DimitriBianco]

University of Michigan is one of the few programs that focuses on deviates and the math. You usually take a few courses all around the math of them.

[@lebronjames8507]

Aaaaaaand the acceptance rate plummets as everyone finds out ab how good their program is

[@DimitriBianco]

At least this would help push them up in the other rankings lol.

[@valunanawat7145]

Dimitri, do quant firms hire from India?

[@deeppatel2727]

Yes, they come for recruiting in tier 1 institutions like IIT and BITS

[@DimitriBianco]

If the question is, do US quant firms hire from India, the answer is no. Most countries only hire those who are physically located there. As for Master programs in the US, most are from India and China.