testarossa

So have you decided where are you going next year yet ?

contingent credit default swaps i guess ...

I believe Columbia's yield rate is pretty low. I also got the call like 2 weeks ago and tried to use my other acceptances as a leverage to get scholarship from them and haven't heard anything yet.....

I am denying it.

MBAs and quants work on two different sides of finance, that requires two entirely different sets of skills. OR route is more on the academic type of job such as modeling or programming as direcdingo said while MBA route is more about business aspect. It's often very hard for OR graduates to get trading jobs because it's traditionally for MBA graduates and vice versa. Certainly there would be exceptions for people who fall in between. It's understandable that people from academia often make fun of business people. And also, OR jobs often are not directly account for the profit of the firm so don't expect a large size bonus out of them.

I don't know. It's been quiet for a while. Are you in the waiting list because I know a lot of people are going to reject their offer.

I didn't mean that the department treats non-FE badly. In fact, from what I heard, there is no discrepancies between FE students and OR students at all, except on your degree. What I meant was that the majority of professors at Columbia IEOR do FE-related research (70%). If you are interested in something like Logistics or Supply Chain or Applied OR as such, the opportunity to do research as well as to discuss with professors who are in the field is limited. Columbia is better than Cornell in FE-releated field and maybe less competitive in other fields of OR. Again, this is what I heard from someone else who went to Columbia. He might be bias.

A friend of mine who went to undergrad and MSOR at Columbia said the department focuses mainly on Financial Engineering and other OR fields are not as competitive. For someone like him and many other people who are interested in other fields of OR, there are better programs such as GaTech or Cornell or MIT. (Princeton's OR also focuses mainly on FE) For me, I think I am 80% sure that I will attend Stanford unless Columbia offers me some scholarship, which I highly doubt.

I mean the acceptance rate for people who got admits and actually went there.

I was contacted by Columbia MSOR today by email, asking me to call them for a quick interview. So I called and were asked about what are my other admits and whether Columbia is my first choice. It seems Columbia is really struggling to retain good candidates. I guess their acceptance rate was really low last year.

Seadub is right. Since there are 8 different tracks and they are very distinctive (Environment, Finance, Entrepreneurship .... ) unlike Columbia (OR, EMS, IE, FE), you can divide the total number by 8, making each track has 30 students which is a fairly good class size. @Souman: Congratulation with all the admits. Columbia's MFE is very prestigious, at least on top 5. It is the crown jewel of Columbia IEOR department, on par with Princeton Math Fin and Baruch MFE (though overrated). However, I would strongly suggest to go to Columbia MFE if you are not Asian because Columbia has a lot of MSOR Asian (150+) also concentrating in FE. You'd have to compete with all of them for job. Otherwise, if you are Asian, Cornell is better IMO. Here is link to 2 reviews, one for Columbia's MFE and one for Cornell's FE Columbia: http://www.quantnet.com/review-of-columbia-university-financial-engineering-program Cornell: http://www.quantnet.com/review-cornell-financial-engineering-program

Stanford MS&E department is the result of a merging among 3 different departments: Dep. of Industrial Engineering, Dep. of Engineering Management and Dep. of Economic System and Operations Research. The department have 36 faculty members compared with 19 faculty members of Columbia IEOR so the student-faculty ratio at Stanford is a little bit better. But as you said, it's still a huge number. We can't deny that both programs are intended as cash cow. If the the numbers from pittman is correct, it's now even harder to choose between Stanford and Columbia ....

The entire department has 284 MS and 108 PhD students, .... they can't possibly double their department size source: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MSandE/cgi-bin/academics/studentinfo.php

Where did you get this statistics ?

Yea, I've met people graduated from Stanford and they are definitely more engineer-oriented and their perspective are somewhat different from people graduated from Ivies. Does anyone know about grade inflation/deflation and difficulties at both programs (Stanford, Columbia) ?

I am also deciding between Stanford MS&E and Columbia MSOR (assuming I will eventually get in). Both schools cost ~$40k for tuitions a year. Since living expense should be the same in Palo Alto and NYC, cost would not be a factor to compare both programs. In general, both programs offers the same flexibility I need, I could choose business courses and finance courses to make my curriculum fit consulting industry requirement. The attention and reputation of professors are quite similar. Regarding job placement, Stanford MS&E seems doing better than Columbia MSOR but to me as an international student, I just feel it won't make much difference. It's going to be very hard in either places and I have to compete with like .... another 200 master graduates, let alone undergraduates. Therefore, the only differences is Stanford's culture vs Columbia's culture: an entrepreneurial technology oriented environment (relaxed, creative) vs traditional conservative environment (ivy league, formal). Personally, I would prefer Columbia because of NYC and partly because I am accustomed to East coast through my undergraduate. However, Stanford's culture seems more fit for global economics, especially in emerging markets like China or other countries in Asia. Also, Stanford's reputation is more famous internationally compared with Columbia. It's a tough choice for me as well ....

I just logged in the application website for Columbia OR and it says that the application deadline has been extended to April 15 .... So I guess we shouldn't expect the decision to be sent out anytime soon. This is so bad since I have to reply to Stanford by that time.

I am going to master hoping to get into Bain or similar consulting firms .... but you are already in. I would definitely not forfeit the job. It would make it a lot easier getting into top MBA programs if you want to in the future.

Why do you want to know the name of the school? No offense .... Assuming you want to know because you'd like to evaluate the competitiveness of each applicant, I personally think there is no differences knowing the name of the school. To admission committee, all top schools and schools from ivy leagues are the same. Saying that you are from Harvard or Yale or Cornell doesn't make much difference to them. Likewise, saying you are from Cal State, Penn State, or Michigan State also doesn't make much difference to them either .....

congrats sahilb and kivo @kivo: i'm still waiting for Columbia. I will most likely choose between Columbia and Stanford, but I am not sure which one though. I'll spend this weekend trying to plan the curriculum and see which one is better......

some information I got from MIT ORC adcom (FOR THE SM ONLY, NOT PhD), there were 8 acceptances out of 56 this year. and I got admittance letter from Stanford (MS&E) two days ago

yea ... a friend of mine also got rejected today .... Where did you see the rejection posts ? are they in result section?

I guess it is because they have a larger application pool this year. I heard many other programs have got ridiculously large number of people applying.

I guess no news regarding Stanford MS&E and Columbia MS OR today from everyone ?

Congratulations ....... Good luck with the rest