Quant Guide 2022: North Carolina State University

Raleigh, North Carolina, US

 

 

North Carolina State University may not be as high-profile as certain other institutions in the Risk.net Quant Guide, but its Master’s in Financial Mathematics goes head-to-head with – and, in many cases, outperforms – courses at some of the biggest names in higher education. The course gets major chops from its perfect employment rate and rapidly increasing average graduate earnings. In this year’s ranking, it places sixth.

Graduate starting salaries, at $89,513 last year, were solid as measured against the full sample, if slightly lower than the star US programmes. But for the latest iteration of the guide, this base shot up to $109,286, putting NCSU’s graduates among the best compensated. Most graduates secure jobs in banking, while a smaller proportion enters consulting.

“Our graduates are placing in higher-profile roles at larger organisations – at significantly higher compensation,” says Tao Pang, director of the master’s, and a professor in the department of mathematics.

“We believe that’s due to a strong labour market for data analytics professionals – and our efforts in enhancing the programme’s talent pipeline, curriculum, career preparation and employment relations.” 

Three new modules have been incorporated in 2021, he says: blockchain and cryptocurrencies; credit risk management and modelling, focusing on probability of default and loss given default modelling; and financial analysis in Python and R.

Topics in machine learning, fixed income products, financial data analysis, Python programming and credit risk have become more popular among students, notes Pang. By contrast, there’s a declining interest in some of the more traditional areas of quant finance, he says: “We’ve observed that stochastic calculus and numerical methods have become less popular.”

View this institution’s entry in the 2021 guide

View other universities and a guide to the metrics tables