Recent content by ysmith

Basic Stochastic Process by Brzezniak and Zastawniak is really good in my opinion as an introduction. Once you have that it's not hard to get into the more complicated stuff

sounds interesting but maybe not THAT interesting... might give it a try, just to see. Any personal comments? People who have used it and wanna share pros/cons?

B can comment on your potential to learn and grasp difficult concepts and that's what they want in a MFE program. THIS IS OF COURSE, GIVEN THAT HE KNOWS YOU WELL. HAS WORKED WITH YOU PERSONALLY AND KNOWS YOUR WORK C can testify to the fact that you're a self-starter someone who can get the job...

Why not try and get a job in the UK? I am at York right now for a semester and their program seems very practically oriented. I don't know how it ranks compared to other programs in the UK or what the state of the job market in England is (although two of my friends have gotten jobs in trading...

check the other careers sections. i've seen at least 3 different threads on this. or just use the SEARCH function and search for "interview questions". there's also a list of quant books from Andy which includes a number of interview books. good luck

wow this is really cool! thanks for sharing

Well how do investment banks make money really. They make money out of money, in most general terms. So the only real world problem that you are faced with is a maximization problem of the form how to make money subject to the condition that I won't lose it But seriously, if 10% of those...

TJ, Most Financial Engineering degrees allow for some leeway in terms of courses (Northwestern, Cornell and Princeton for example). The econometrics sequence would not be easy to fulfill but one can make up for the finance courses by taking them at the respective university's business...

Wow! A lot of people want to solve real world problems. If 10% of those graduates were genuinely motivated by solving problems than the real world would have no problems at all. Very insightful though.

I don't know how demanding a quant position is. That's what I was trying to find out with this post. Is it just crunching numbers and doing grunt work or actually doing exciting research? From the answers I've seen so far it's about both and but with better compensation than academia.

About getting a positions in academia I will say this, depends on your goals. You can go to a nice liberal arts school and still make 100K and up while teaching three courses a semester. I personally know at least 6 Ph.D.s doing that. So the question becomes why get a Ph.D. in the first...

conclusion So our basic conclusions were the following then: (1) The benefits of working in industry are higher compensation and the possibility of working on cutting edge applied research (2) Ph.D. Finance > Ph.D. Financial Engineering in the finance industry (3) Financial Engineers...

There has been a thread on this before. I think. Yes Ph.D. Finance > Ph.D. Financial Engineering in the finance industry. But then again how many Ph.D.s in Finance graduate every year and how many Ph.D.s in Financial Engineering? It's kind of like a doctor and an endocrinologist. Lotsa people...

reply I guess I see your point. As Derman put it in the new interview: It’s not exactly what you think. In the quantitative area, a lot of what you will do is often grunt work that is nevertheless very necessary. My reasoning is this. I can still work in academia and try to come up with...

I am applying for a Ph.D. in Financial Engineering and have talked to friends/acquaintances at Northwestern (Ph.D. Financial Engineering), Columbia (MFE) and Princeton (Ph.D. Financial Engineering). All three of then have explained that most often than not Ph.D.s end up stuck in a back room...