Hi everybody,Please help me on choosing the right course.I am a 3rd-year PhD in Finance student and will defend my dissertation in this October (I am done with dissertation essays). My career objective is to work in a Hedge Fund for the next couple of years. I have very strong math background (top-prize winner in China's math contest). Just wondering which course (CMU vs. NYU) would be better:CMU--Statistical Arbitrage 46-936 This course intends to provide students with concepts and techniques for statistically and econometrically based trading. The course begins with the general principles of arbitrage pricing theory and the statistical nature of the price and volatility fluctuations in financial markets. It introduces the ideas of market neutral strategies, and provides the statistical techniques required for identifying and exploiting pricing inefficiencies. Various statistical strategies will be covered, including pairs trading, cointegration-based trading, data mining, as well as strategies using the information from derivatives markets. We will demonstrate how to search for arbitrage strategies based on intra-day patterns, long-term patterns, multi-equity relationships. At the end we stress that statistical arbitrage is not riskless, and we discuss how to assess the risk, arising from model misspecification and inappropriate estimation. The topics covered are particularly relevant for proprietary trading, such as in the context of hedge funds.NYU--G63.2754 CASE STUDIES IN FINANCIAL MODELINGThursday, 7:10-9:00, J. Gatheral and N. Taleb.A course in practical financial modeling which emphasizes intuition and understanding of the deficiencies of conventional modeling approaches. Modeling the equity option implied volatility skew. Managing the complexity of interest rate modeling. Trading and hedging as clinical research. Understanding the implications of different modeling choices. Adapting models to take real market behavior into account. Bleeding, leaking and blowing up. Developing and communicating financial intuition.I believe that the CMU course seems more specialized, and better for me (I have extensive trading experience), but no ideas what the NYU course is really about.Thanks.

Go with Nissim Taleb.(Otherwise I'd say CM)

So what's your point? Can you take course both from NYU and CMU?

you are cool. finance PHD+ top math prize winer+trading experience... then why do need you course?

Hi,Thanks for all previous responses.AlphaNumericus, I know Nissim Taleb is surely a very big name. Just wondering: he is offering any training courses? More information would be greatly appreciated.My situation is I am starting a hedge fund during for the last year. So do not want to spend too much time on taking courses or self-teaching. I feel the CMU course is more on trading strategies, while the Columbia one is more on quant. Still would like to hear more from you fellows.Nice weekend!

I would say that CMU gives you a broader exposure to quant finance and places more emphasis on coding, which is a good thing since a lot of the graduates are hired by i-banks as junior quant developers whose job is to write C++ codes (same case for other programs, not just for CMU). At NYU, you get more exposure to industry practitioners though. In terms of recruiting, I would give the slight edge to NYU even though both are excellent and have great placement record. Hope that helps.DKL