Remember back in 2015, we told students that NYU’s Financial Engineering program was good, but many applicants said the campus was in Brooklyn and the program wasn’t well-known, so they wouldn’t consider it!
On October 5 of the same year, NYU’s engineering school received a $100 million donation from alumni Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon and was officially renamed the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Overnight, Tandon became flush with cash and began attracting more and more applicants.
Today, NYU’s MFE is the most popular financial engineering program among applicants, bar none. It has also become a ruthless rejector, with even 3.8 GPAs landing on the waitlist!
Not just MFE, every program at Tandon is taking off, and the admission bar is rising yearly. Thinking of using Tandon as a safety? It’s not that simple anymore!
With Big Names at the Helm, They Can Afford to Be Bold
Since Peter Carr took over as department chair in 2016, NYU’s Financial Engineering program hasn’t slowed its sprint. From a former safety program, it transformed into the best value in financial engineering, and now stands as an almost unsurpassable industry benchmark.
Peter Carr is the former director of the Mathematical Finance program at NYU’s Courant Institute, and previously headed the market modeling group at Morgan Stanley and the Quant Research group at Bloomberg.
He also poached Sara DeLusant, the former head of industry relations at Baruch College’s top-ranked MFE program, to serve as career services director for NYU MFE, bringing incredibly strong employment resources.
NYU Tandon’s MFE program now beats MIT on QuantNet, firmly holding a top-10 spot among financial engineering programs.
This year, on the latest Quant Finance Master’s ranking published by Risk.net, one of the financial industry’s well-known publishers, it jumped 8 places to rank fifth worldwide.
It also moved up one spot on TFE Times, officially breaking into the global top three.
Even Peter Carr couldn’t hide his excitement, sending an email to all NYU MFE faculty and students expressing pride, while also revealing a daunting piece of news: first-round applications for the 2020 MFE program hit an all-time high!
The latest statistics show 1,594 applications for NYU MFE, with only 28% admitted. This year’s admission situation will only be fiercer. If your GPA is below 3.8 and GRE below 330, you’d better steer clear! Many applicants this year have already reported heartbreaking cases of being summarily rejected despite decent backgrounds!
All Programs Are Soaring
Led by the MFE big brother, other Tandon programs are also collectively taking off.
Which U.S. university school gives out the most generous scholarships? None other than NYU Tandon. Pretty much every program offers scholarships; as long as you keep your GPA above 3.3, you can receive about $4,000 to $8,000 per year, a clear sign of their commitment. For students worried about New York’s cost of living, this is already a significant savings.
Tandon students can take MFE courses across departments within the school, and also select classes from the Stern School of Business. Tandon’s mathematics program has also recently been merged under NYU’s Courant Institute, one of the top math programs in the nation. With merged and shared teaching resources, program quality has rapidly improved.
People joke that Tandon’s CS program is just average, but every year it gets flooded with applications! The Greater New York area has very few renowned computer science schools, yet there are thousands of companies needing computing and tech talent, a number that keeps multiplying.
New York is no longer just a paradise for business students; it has long solidified its identity as “Silicon Valley of the East Coast.” Tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Netflix are going all out to expand their footprint in New York and recruit talent.
Tandon students, with decent professional training plus the geographic advantage of being in New York, will undoubtedly enjoy early access to these opportunities.
A graduation employment rate as high as 97%, and mid-career salaries above $119,000. From the smallest companies to global industry giants, from Tandon’s own STEM career fairs to the broader New York job market.
Tandon students don’t worry about a lack of jobs; they worry about having too many opportunities and not knowing how to choose. For some, that dilemma might even come before graduation.
Not to mention how reasonable Tandon’s tuition is. Study in New York, spend less, get scholarships, and then earn more. Yes, such a sweet deal exists.
Admission Difficulty Rising Year by Year
Of course, good news travels far. Top-tier applicants treat Tandon as a safety, average applicants cling to Tandon, and lower-tier applicants also want to take a shot.
As a result, applications to Tandon increase every year, and admission standards get higher and higher. Will the pandemic affect international enrollment this year? Tandon says they have no shortage of applicants.
Regarding this year’s GRE score submission, Tandon’s admissions office only gave a relatively official response of “as flexible as possible,” while advising applicants to submit as early as possible and still requiring official transcripts and score reports.
In reality, Tandon has already started sending out rejections and waitlist decisions. The school isn’t worried about finding students; it’s worried about having too many applicants to choose from.
Looking at Tandon’s recent admission trends, the surge in applicants has made the school increasingly value multidimensional background experiences.
While emphasizing high-quality students, Tandon also looks at whether applicants genuinely want to attend and whether their future development plans align with the school’s mission. Some applicants’ old mindset of “high stats guarantee safety admission” can basically be discarded.
A few years ago, people might still ask, “Does Tandon really award NYU diplomas?” In fact, whether it was the former Poly or the current Tandon, NYU’s engineering school has always had a higher employment rating than the main campus, and it’s often voted “best value school” by American media.
Tandon that you once looked down on is now the Tandon you can barely afford. As one of NYU’s hottest schools today, home to top programs nationally and globally, Tandon’s momentum will likely become even stronger.
If you want to apply to NYU Tandon, you’d better start early!
