When Baruch College launched its Master’s in Financial Engineering program in fall 2002, the college saw education in statistics and computational methods as integral to the future of finance.
Today, Baruch’s MFE program has grown into one of the college’s most coveted and prestigious graduate programs, with only 25 new students admitted each year on average. Baruch’s MFE program ranks first in the world and boasts a 100% employment rate for graduates as well as a $178,000 average starting salary, according to QuantNet.
“Mathematics models are central to how markets work,” Andrew Lesniewski, the MFE program’s curriculum director, told The Ticker. He explained the diverse applications of financial engineering on Wall Street.
“At banks, many MFE graduates work in quantitative risk management. On the buy side, quants try to predict which way the market will move. In asset allocation, quants use mathematics to find the best way to invest,” Lesniewski said.
For students in the MFE program, coursework involves taking classes in computer programming, probability, algorithmic trading and volatility estimation.
“Our instructors are top academics and practitioners in the industry, alumni are always willing to help, and each class is relatively small and tight-knit,” Eliam Lin, a student in the MFE program, told The Ticker in an interview.
In addition to coursework, Baruch places a heavy emphasis on international competitions. At the Rotman International Trading Competition, hosted annually in Toronto, Baruch students have won nine world championships, including the most recent one.
“It’s challenging and stressful, but also genuinely fun. I owe my intuition for the mechanics of trading to the [Rotman competition],” Lin said.
For students and faculty, the group-based and international nature of the Rotman competition reflects the MFE program’s support for global talent. “You have 45 people [in the program], some are from China, some are from India, some are from France, some are from New York. The program has been adapting, but always getting stronger,” Louis-Pierre Arguin, a math professor who teaches in the MFE program, told The Ticker.
For his research on prime numbers, Arguin was recently awarded a $560,000 four-year grant to participate in the Simons Collaboration on Universal Statistics in Number Theory. The grant money will also create a new postdoctoral research position at the CUNY Graduate Center that will further enhance the university’s mathematics Ph.D. program.
With many MFE professors contributing to leading math research, the recent breakthroughs made by artificial intelligence have raised new questions about the role of technology in the program.
“It’s a bit stressful because you feel like ‘Am I still useful?’ But at the same time, it just opens the door to a lot of new things,” Arguin said.
He emphasized the changing role of coding. “It used to be that coding was important. Now, less so, but [it’s] still important.”
For undergraduates interested in applying to Baruch’s MFE program, Arguin encouraged prospective applicants to participate in the college’s Pre-MFE Seminar Program, which reviews core math skills. “It’s just a way to get some skills that you need to do a master’s level. So it’s sort of leveling,” Arguin said.
The seminars are offered online and cover topics such as advanced calculus, probability theory and numerical linear algebra.
For students pursuing quant careers, a rigorous undergraduate math education can ease the transition to difficult Wall Street roles and competitive graduate programs.
“This is a professional master’s. The students will be on the job market very quickly. Some of them already are, or they have internships. So the teaching is quite intense,” Arguin said.
