Great Pay, Job Placements Give FE Program A Boost in National Rankings

Over the last five years, CGU’s Financial Engineering Program has made steady progress in the ranks of QuantNet’s “The Best Financial Engineering Programs,” which presents the nation’s top 30 schools and is regarded as the field’s gold standard for rankings.

That rise continues this year: QuantNet has released its 2021 rankings, and CGU’s program has again moved up and is ranked at 22.

Last year, the program advanced from 27 to 24—with this new ranking, the FE program has gained two slots and moved to its highest position since 2014.

This puts CGU’s program ahead of top programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and other leading schools.

For the Drucker School’s Michael Imerman, who co-directs the program with the Institute of Mathematical Science’s Henry Schellhorn, new career and professional data submitted to QuantNet has made a crucial difference.

“The increase in our ranking reflects that a greater percentage of our students are getting great jobs with an average starting salary of almost $95,000,” he said.

CGU’s program also reports that 85% of its FE grads are finding employment three months after graduation with a wide variety of global businesses, including the Capital Group, PayPal, Qontigo/Axioma, and Mizuho Bank, among others.

CGU’s program is a partnership between the Drucker School and Institute of Mathematical Sciences. The program’s focused integration of management and mathematics prepares graduates for careers in a broad range of specialties in financial services including asset pricing, financial analysis, and three areas in which Imerman said CGU’s program stands above its peers: FinTech, data science, and risk management.

“I have never been at another university where we dedicate as much time and energy to ensuring student success as we do here”

–Michael Imerman, FE Program Co-Director

Over the past two years, he said the program’s curriculum has been updated to address all of these rapidly growing, in-demand areas and “we are quickly establishing ourselves as the leaders in the market.”

Imerman also credits the program’s continuing success in the QuantNet rankings—along with its steady climb in another important annual financial engineering ranking published by the TFE Times—to the dedication of the program’s faculty, staff, and recruiters.

“I have never been at another university where we dedicate as much time and energy to ensuring student success as we do here,” said Imerman, who joined the Drucker School in 2018 from Lehigh University, where he served as Theodore A. Lauer Distinguished Professor of Investments. “It is just part of the culture here. Our doors are always open (literally when we are on campus, but figuratively since March 2020) and we are always willing to go the extra mile for our students.”