Baruch, Princeton cement duopoly in 2026 Quant Master’s Guide

Columbia jumps to third place, ETH-UZH tops European rivals

The Risk.net Quant Finance Master’s Guide 2026 will be published on December 22

Baruch College and Princeton University claimed the top spots in the latest edition of Risk.net’s Quant Finance Master’s Guide, cementing a duopoly that has existed since the rankings began in 2017.

This year also saw the emergence of a new challenger: Columbia University’s Engineering School, which jumped three spots to third place and has risen from tenth in 2022.

The reasons for Baruch’s top ranking are evident in the data: the New York school has the smallest class sizes, a high ratio of prominent industry quants in its faculty, accepts the fewest applicants, and is popular with students (96% accept offers to study there), with all graduates finding well paid jobs within six months of completing its Master of Financial Engineering programme.   

As programme director Dan Stefanica explained in a recent podcast with Risk.net, Baruch has adapted to the changing times. Students are actively encouraged to use large language models (LLMs) for coding, while application deadlines have been moved forward in response to tightening US immigration policies.

The data collected by Risk.net suggests the appeal of a career in quantitative finance remains strong

The standout feature of Princeton’s Master in Finance is the size and scholarly credentials of its faculty. The programme boasts an almost equal ratio of students and lecturers, and those lecturers are the most influential among the universities featured in this guide. The research papers of econometrician Jianqing Fan, economist Markus Brunnermeier and computer scientist Sanjeev Arora have, between them, received almost 200,000 citations since 2020.

At Columbia, professor Ali Hirsa, director of the MS in Financial Engineering programme, has developed strong connections with the industry – 81% of lecturers are practitioners – which compensates for the school’s above average class size of 136 students for this academic year, and contributed to a perfect job placement rate for recent graduates.

European programmes also rose in the rankings, claiming 11 of the top 25 spots – one more than last year. The University of Zurich and ETH Zurich’s jointly taught MSc in Quantitative Finance was the top-ranked European programme, at fourth overall, ahead of EPFL in Lausanne in eighth place. The two Swiss programmes narrowly edged out rivals including Oxford University, Technical University of Munich and Paris-Sorbonne University, all of which ranked in the top 15.

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The results, though, showed little evidence of the Trump administration’s immigration policies – which have resulted in international students facing visa delays and denials – denting demand for US programmes. Some universities in Europe and the UK shared anecdotal evidence of an increase in applications from countries such as China and India, which are most affected by US visa restrictions. The effect on applications to US programmes might become more visible in the next academic year, given most application deadlines fall around March.

The good news for applications is that average salaries reported by course directors of the top 25 programmes rose 7% to $127,336 for US programmes and 14% to $103,580 in Europe compared to last year. The disparity is largely explained by the weakening of the US dollar in the past 12 months. The data shows that salary growth in local currency terms has been comparable across continents, at approximately 6% on average.

The data collected by Risk.net also suggests the appeal of a career in quantitative finance remains strong. The total number of students seeking offers from the universities listed in the Master’s Guide is estimated to have grown by around 10% compared with last year, with six institutions receiving more than 1,000 applications.

The offering of new courses related to machine learning and artificial intelligence also appears to be growing, despite reservations within the industry over whether these skills are strictly necessary for a career in quant finance.

The methodology Risk.net used to compile the ranking is unchanged from last year, barring a minor extension of the observation window for lecturers’ citations from four years to five. We estimate this change had no material impact on the final results. The variables given higher weights are the job placement rate within six months of completing the programme and the starting salaries of graduates. The latter is adjusted for purchasing power to mitigate disparities in the cost of living across countries.