April 10, 2020
Written by NYU Shanghai Graduate Admissions
On March 30th, a webinar themed "Webinar for Current Students" was held by the Office of Graduate Admissions online, where two current students, Xuanwei (Wayne) Qiu from MS in Data Analytics and Business Computing(MSDABC) and Yimeng Li from MS in Quantitative Finance(MSQF), were invited to talk about their learning and living experiences in New York and Shanghai.
During the 40-minute panel discussion, Wayne and Yimeng shared with the audience about their reasons to choose the program, coursework, career plan, and students' experience. The following Q&A session has opened up for the audience to ask questions.
Reasons to choose the current program
Wayne:
When I was selecting the programs, I focused on how these programs could contribute to my future career. I first evaluated the reputation and ranking of the program. According to the latest ranking released by US NEWS, Stern is one of the Top 10 business schools. But after further research and study, I noticed that the title of a school could be helpful for the CV screening round of the job-hunting process. It was the internships and project experiences that mattered to further interviews. MSDABC program is practice-driven and would profoundly enrich my working experience and techniques, so I finally made the decision to join the DABC 2020 cohort.
Yimeng:
Apart from the reputation of the program, I put the location on my priority list, as I was sure that I would be working in China. MSQF program allows me to have exposure in New York, while NYU Shanghai' Asia/China focus gives me opportunities to familiarize with the workplaces and build up connections in China.
Coursework
Wayne:
My favorite course is Network Analytics taught by Professor Bruno Abrahao because it is technical and emphasizes practices. Besides, Professor Bruno often invites guest speakers, some of whom are head of top consulting companies, to the classroom and demonstrate how the content in the textbook is applied in real-life situations. I felt so thankful that Professor Bruno has been so supportive during the job-hunting process, for example, by referring students to internships or full-time positions. Not only Professor Bruno, but the faculty in both Stern and NYU Shanghai is also trying their best to guarantee the best learning experience for all students.
I suggest that students who are admitted to the DABC program start to learn about the basic Python package like Pandas or Nompy if not familiar with them because those basic data analysis packages would be largely used in almost all of the program courses.
For the Capstone project, mine is to work as a consultant together with a team and to improve a client's marketing campaigns using data science tools like predicting models of machine learning and natural language processing. By managing the data in the real business setting, we practiced not only his technical skills but also soft skills such as communication and negotiation skills with clients.
Yimeng:
While in the MSQF Program, I love most of the courses. Among them, Professor Menachem Brenner's Futures & Options is my favorite because of the combination of theories and real-life situations taught in class. Professor Brenner is experienced in the financial field. His personal experiences and stories make the class interesting. Also, professors in the MSQF program will assign various difficulty levels of tasks for students to match with their previous financial knowledge background so that both students at different knowledge levels feel challenged while manageable.
My suggestion to future students who study in the QF Program is that studying the R language in advance, as it will be commonly used in the coursework, and it is always good to know about Python as well.
In my Capstone project, I worked with a financial service institution to identify potential customers by conducting credit risk analysis. The process is exciting and meaningful, because we used real-world data, and dealt with a real client who is the head of a bank. I practiced soft skills in my project as well, like presentation and teamwork. Capstone projects not only allow us to have hands-on experience, but are also a way to build our connection with clients.