The Student Experience

Students benefit from a holistic experience, spending their first year on Cornell’s Ithaca campus building a strong foundation in quantitative and computational finance. They then have the opportunity to apply those skills in a summer internship before completing the program in New York City at CFEM. There, they immerse themselves in a practitioner-taught curriculum, industry projects, professional conferences, and high-impact networking events.
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To complete the core requirements of the program, students must take a certain minimum number of credit hours from three modeling and data science modules. While the selection of qualifying courses in each module is broad, each course is strategically hand-picked across various departments to offer students the knowledge most sought after in the field of quantitative finance. In addition, students must take certain credit-hours from the financial applications module for completion of the Financial Engineering Concentration. Financial applications module includes courses from the Johnson Graduate School of Management and CFEM.

Most of the CFEM coursework is taught by practitioners. Our practitioner lecturers work in the same field as the courses they teach. CFEM courses change year to year in response to the fast-paced needs of the financial industry. Please email us at orie@cornell.edu for more details.

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All of CFEM’s initiatives, whether academic or professional, focus on giving our students the needed edge to start their careers in finance and opportunities to build robust professional networks that last a lifetime.

CFEM elective courses vary from year to year to accommodate the changing demands of the financial industry. The electives are structured to complement and broaden students’ understanding of the current financial markets and to expand their ability to apply their quantitative knowledge efficiently and productively as future finance professionals.

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  • Financial Data Science Certificate (FDSC)

    The Financial Data Science Certificate (FDSC) is integrated in the curriculum and is designed specifically for students who are interested in deepening their knowledge of machine learning and data science applications.

Financial Engineering Project

Working in teams, all financial engineering students complete a semester-long project in which they tackle real-world problems alongside financial industry sponsors. Each year, we offer approximately 10 projects to ensure small teams and a broad selection of topics. The CFEM faculty makes every effort to ensure that the annual project slate encompasses a wide range of financial markets, including high-frequency trading, fixed income and equity derivatives, fintech and large data applications, risk management, asset management, and allocation.

Projects also offer our students significant opportunities to meet practitioners, secure employment, and establish a long-lasting professional relationship with sponsors.

Sample Project Titles from Previous Years

  • Leveraging LLMs and NLP to Build a Financial Podcast Insight Dashboard

  • Midpoint Order Product Strategy

  • Market Making in Crypto

  • Dynamic Regime-Switching Investment Framework

  • Time Series Clustering for Macroeconomic Events

  • LLM System Specialized in Asset Management

Professional Development Programs

In addition to the Ithaca campus career service resources, students have access to comprehensive professional development training and job search assistance offered by CFEM. Over the years, CFEM leadership has developed a broad career development program to prepare our students for their careers in quantitative finance. The professional development programs range from financial engineering career bootcamps in New York City to networking and interviewing workshops for individual assessments and preparation. Students work directly with the CFEM associate director of career development.

Professional development has been fully integrated within the financial engineering curriculum and includes some coursework that is required.

  • Life in New York City

    New York City – widely known as the financial capital of the world – offers unmatched access to finance professionals, industry events, and Cornell’s powerful alumni network. During the CFEM semester, students benefit from alumni-led panels, networking events, professional conferences, and informal gatherings like alumni happy hours. Being in NYC allows students to build real connections with practitioners and alumni who are active in the industry – and who are eager to support the next generation of financial engineers.

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