Quant Guide 2021: Rutgers University

Piscataway, New Jersey, US

Nick Romanenko/Rutgers

 

 

For Rutgers University’s three-semester Master’s in Mathematical Finance programme, the coronavirus arrived at the best possible time: in the middle of the programme’s annual spring break. With the campus already deserted, says senior programme co-ordinator Ana Mastrogiovanni, the transition to online delivery was rapid.

“We had to go from in-class instruction to online courses with less than a week’s notice,” she says. “We got lucky, since students were off at the time.”

The situation is far from ideal: no-one is thrilled about the move to virtual teaching, Mastrogiovanni adds – 100% of classes and examinations now take place online, and, “in general, the students are not finding the online courses to be as effective as the in-class courses”.

Internships have been cancelled entirely for the programme’s autumn semester, she says, which hasn’t happened “in a very long time”.

Of course, some level of student dissatisfaction is inevitable — few students will have anticipated their studies taking place during a pandemic. The programme has worked hard to make the online offering as accessible as possible, Mastrogiovanni adds: if a student misses a live class due to scheduling conflicts or time zones, lectures are available to view on demand. Virtual office hours with faculty members have also been rescheduled to accommodate students in all regions.

On a more positive note, the programme reports a strong upward trend in graduate salaries for this edition of the Quant Guide. The average base pay for a Master’s in Mathematical Finance graduate is now $87,000, up from last year’s figure of $70,200.

Modules this year include a broad range of compulsory and optional classes: electives may be taken from among courses offered by the mathematics, statistics, computer science, and electrical and computer engineering departments. In some limited cases, students may also take electives from the business department.

View this institution’s entry in the 2020 guide

View other universities and a guide to the metrics tables

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