naturallight Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The Top 10 Quant Schools, According to the Street > http://www.advancedtrading.com/showArticle.jhtml?a > rticleID=209102204 good to see my alma mater (Cornell) made it. surpised by Rutgers, I had heard GT has a good program… a lot’s changed from when I went through the program… seems 5 times harder to get in now. When I first joined everyone I spoke to outside the program asked what financial engineering was… now it’s about 90% ask what the program entails… scored 790 math and agree it’s not terribly difficult… analytics I scored 750 and verbal was below 550…
The description of the Cornell program is a bit misleading. The program is actually taught at the Cornell campus (Ithaca / upstate NY) rather than Manhattan. When I did the program a few years back, it did not require any hardcore programming skills. I do recall using some VBA and SAS but nothing too intense. One nice thing about the program, you can take about 1/3 of your credits in the Johnson School of Management with the MBA students. I got to learn HJM from Jarrow himself.
ShouldBeWorking Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The description of the Cornell program is a bit > misleading. The program is actually taught at the > Cornell campus (Ithaca / upstate NY) rather than > Manhattan. > > When I did the program a few years back, it did > not require any hardcore programming skills. I do > recall using some VBA and SAS but nothing too > intense. > > One nice thing about the program, you can take > about 1/3 of your credits in the Johnson School of > Management with the MBA students. I got to learn > HJM from Jarrow himself. yep… when did you graduate?
2006, did my undergrad at cornell also.
MFE is a complete waste of money unless you want a career as a quant.
Gouman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > MFE is a complete waste of money unless you want a > career as a quant. ;)… Its the same thing as saying CFA is a waste of time, unless you want to remain in finance… Yes, I am aware it is for quants… There is nothing wrong with being able to develop your own models for trading and portfolio management, option pricing, derivatives… Maybe I just dont understand what you are getting at
yep MFE is pretty useless i spend my days trying to sell ARS to retirees
quorky Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Gouman Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > MFE is a complete waste of money unless you want > a > > career as a quant. > > > ;)… Its the same thing as saying CFA is a waste > of time, unless you want to remain in finance… > CFA is a waste of time unless your going to stay if finance. Why the hell would I pay 40,000 dollars to learn to be a quantitative analyst when I’m going to be interviewing for fundamental analyst positions. Why the hell would I sacrifice 300+ plus hours for years to earn the CFA if I’m not committed to a career in finance. Nobody in marketing or HR is going to care if you have earned the CFA. I can think of better ways to allocate my time and resources. Like figuring out what I really want to do, then concentrating on getting the credentials to excel in that area. The added value of having the quant level technical skills in say a fundamental environment is nil. You just don’t need to understand Ito’s lemma, or Stochastic processes to work as an Equity Research Associate or an Investment Banker with a focus on say Oil and Gas companies. So why pay a grip to learn about them. Just learn it on your free time, or bother the quants at your job. Most of them have Phds, and no lives and are more than interested in sharing their work and ideas because most people just aren’t interested in Eigenvectors, Girsnaov’s Theorem, Real Analysis etc.
Interesting, there are two guys who just graudated with MFE from UCB are currently working as Equity research within my firm. I really think MFE is useful to jobs outside quant.
I personally think the math you have to know and the programming skills you need to know makes the MFE harder than the CFA program. At the end, the CFA exams are just a test. I passed level 1-2, but I’m not confident about doing real work, because I haven’t done any projects in excel or programmed in C++. Also, I took a brief look at the math, and I wouldn’t be able to do any of the work. The Barush program accepts less than 15% of applicants. Semester Applicants Admitted Adm. Rate Enrolled Yield Full-Time & Part-Time International Fall 2002 58 25 43% 20 80% 11 & 9 6 Fall 2003 95 27 28% 14 52% 7 & 7 2 Fall 2004 132 48 36% 38 79% 16 & 22 8 Fall 2005 129 36 28% 26 72% 13 & 13 6 Fall 2006 184 42 23% 34 81% 15 & 19 9 Fall 2007 337 48 14% 35 76% 19 & 16 13
I am preparing for my GRE and giving it 4 months of dispersed 1 hr/day studying. Then am gonna try for MFE part-time. Let’s se how everything unlocks.