Columbia MS Accounting and Fundamental Analysis or Yale Silver Scholar Program

I'm a senior undergraduate from China, with a major in accounting and a minor in statistics. I got the offers from CBS and Yale SOM recently.

I'm considering to pursue my graduate study among the above-mentioned two programs. I've been researching these two programs for quite a long time, but I figure out that I do need some advices from people in the U.S. and Europe — you guys know about these better.

My short term career goal is to become a capable research analyst in buy-side funds. "Capable" here means profound researcher with solid accounting knowledge base (to better understand the fundamentals of a business) and focused quant approach (to work more efficiently, to make the conclusions more convincing). I've done over 12-month internships in PE/VC funds during my undergraduate years and I've already got some quite appealing job offers. However, I think there's still long way to go and an intensive graduate program shall be necessary for me.

For Columbia, it embodies a focus in value investing. Even though the program is newly designed and quite costly, the faculty as well as the curriculum seems attractive. The uncertainty is mainly about the job placement. Also, the class profile showed that over 80% of the candidates are our Chinese, which means the community is not diversified.

For Yale, Professor David Swensen and his fellows contributed a lot to the development of institutional investors. The two most successful investors in 21st century China are Mr. Zhang Lei and Mr. Shen Nanpeng — they are all graduated from Yale. Compared to CBS, it focuses more on asset allocation and portfolio management, while CBS focuses more on securities selection under the criteria of value investing. It's hard to tell which one is better, they are both important.

I prefer Yale, but it would be hard decision for me to give up the intensive and well-organized training at CBS. What's your guys' opinions?