NYU Tandon financial engineering program ranked among the best
Student Wencai Zheng works with Professor Peter Carr, chair of NYU Tandon's Department of Finance and Risk Engineering
BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, February 5, 2020 – Two arbiters of quantitative finance education this week placed the NYU Tandon School of Engineering among the top master’s degree programs.
The Quant Finance Master’s Guide for 2020, published by Risk.net, placed the New York University Tandon School of Engineering fifth in the world — an eight-position leap from last year. Risk.net, one of the foremost financial publications, measured such factors as graduate salaries, employment rate, program selectivity, student-lecturer contact hours, and faculty research.
Additionally, TFE Times listed NYU Tandon as number three among the 2020 Best Master’s of Financial Engineering Programs, up from number four last year. NYU Tandon’s program — the first to be certified by the International Association of Financial Engineers — was earlier ranked ninth by QuantNet, an online resource for the financial industry. In that report, NYU Tandon climbed seven positions over the last five years.
The rankings reflect a restructuring of the educational offerings at NYU Tandon under the leadership of Professor and Department Chair Peter Carr, who is ranked second in the world by Google Scholar in Quantitative Finance citations, second in Derivatives, and fifth in Financial Engineering. The department faculty also includes acclaimed scholar and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ranked first in the world in Tail Risk citations, third in Quantitative Finance, and sixth in Financial Engineering. Carr and Taleb generated most of their citations while working in the financial industry as a quant and trader, respectively. Such high numbers of citations are highly unusual for practitioners, rather than pure academics.
Under Carr’s direction, the NYU Tandon Department of Finance and Risk Engineering has been particularly responsive to global demand by financial institutions and insurance firms for machine learning expertise, adding more than a dozen courses on artificial intelligence in recent years. Other cutting-edge coursework focuses on crypto-currencies, blockchain, sophisticated modeling and information technology such as automated differentiation and cloud computing, computational finance, algorithmic finance, and risk finance. The department offers multiple classes through Coursera, as well as short, specialized courses taught by leading industry practitioners.
Eighty-six percent of NYU Tandon’s financial engineering students are employed within three months of graduation, with Risk.net reporting an average starting salary of $91,200*. The department offers career training and networking events, and a dedicated career placement officer, Sara DeLusant, whose background includes managing Morgan Stanley’s quantitative finance campus recruitment.
“Our latest rankings — and the upward trend they represent — affirm the high caliber of our faculty, many of whom have decades of experience as industry leaders, as well as the drive and intelligence of our students,” said Carr. “We’re proud to be preparing them for highly sought quant, risk, and tech careers, and feel confident that we will continue to attract even more talent to the department.”
“We are thrilled to see the Department of Finance and Risk Engineering recognized as a global powerhouse in financial engineering,” said Jelena Kovačević, dean of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. “They are pushing the boundaries in the field, creating a fertile training ground for the next generation of experts, and shaping the future of the industry.”
*This is based on salaries from the 2017 and 2018 academic years.
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, one of the country’s foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.