Does having MSc Financial Engineering/MSc Quantitative Finance make one a better fund manager than having MSc Finance

CFA General Work Experience
#1

Hello everyone, I am deciding to take a master degree abroad in order to have a chance to work as a fund manager in the leading investment management company. But I am not sure whether should I take MSc Finance or the MSc Financial engineering. The reason why this comparison comes into question is that I heard a lot from the alumni and current students of MSc Finance that the curriculum is significantly overlap with the Bachelor degree of Finance and when I take a look at the syllabus, that make the argument become even more solid. So,I just don’t want to spend an almost 30k GBP to study what I have already learnt. I then would like to know if the MSc Financial engineering make one a better fund manager when making investment decisions, as it seems more complex and implement a lot of tools in the decision making.

Here are some of my backgrounds

  • I am in Thailand
  • I have a Bachelor degree of Finance
  • I just recently took the CFA level 1 exam, waiting for exam result and looking forward to finish until the third one
  • I have some programming knowledge and still learning more

Any comments would be very appreciated, Thanks

#2

Hi there.
I’ve been in the asset management business for nearly 20 years, in a variety of roles. IMHO it doesn’t matter that much which degree you go for, so long as you do well and have the right attitude.

Knowledge and technique helps of course but what matters in the end is performance. Maybe a financial engineering might be slightly more quantitative xhile a finance degree might be a bit more generalistic, but that’s not always true. But if your aim is to manage funds, you can be successful with both approaches.

I’d suggest choosing the course you find most interesting and challenging, where you will learn the most, and where you will network the best.

Good luck