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I think early is always better for those programs. I do not know how these programs review applications--'first come first serve', random, or some other order but putting your application early certainly will not hurt you.

I go to the same program, so here's my take: The earlier rounds are more competitive (more people apply) but more people get admitted during the earlier rounds. Fewer people apply to the later rounds but there are fewer admits as well, so it's hard to say which is better; personally I got...

If "The Wolf of Wall Street" is what prompted you to become interested in finance, I suggest you have no idea you are getting into and need to do more research.

Wow, I wish I had been smart enough to think about my future back when I was a freshman :) If you're planning on an MFE: Go through this forum and website, look at the MFE admissions websites for various programs and make sure you take those courses during your time in university. Take more than...

Have you taken all the math/programming classes listed as requirements on MFE programs' admission websites? (Example-for CMU: http://tepper.cmu.edu/prospective-students/masters/masters-in-computational-finance/admissions) Almost everyone in an MFE program has a (nearly) perfect score in the...

I'm sad to have to admit, but some people I know who have MBAs in finance couldn't tell me how to price a simple Treasury bond. Granted, this is probably not the case for MBAs from schools worth paying for. There are many MFE programs producing anywhere from 20-80 graduates every year. Then you...

Interviewing is a learn-able skill. Seems like you've just gotten started so keep doing it and you'll be fine. Re: FO -> MO--I think this is more of a career & lifestyle move. People get tired of the stressful FO jobs and move to less intense areas or other industries. There are also cases...

I have this book: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithmic-Trading-DMA-introduction-strategies/dp/0956399207 I've barely read it so no idea whether it is any good or not.

Profile looks great. Similar to mine actually (and it worked out for me). You'll be fine!

Getting into pure 'blue sky research' roles which seems like what you want to do might be tough without a PhD or at least an MFE. Have you thought about pursuing further education in statistics / time series analysis / quant finance?

Very important in my opinion. Even more so than the statement of purpose. I think my recs played a large role in my admissions.

What level of mathematics do you need to take for your CS degree? Most decent programs have a fair amount. As per what internship -- it really depends on what you want to do. If you want to work in financial technology then do a tech internship at a bank. If you want to do quantitative trading...

What is it that you want to do?

By all means put it there. But the focus really should be on your ability to handle the program and your mathematical/technical knowledge and why you should be chosen above other candidates. What is your background? Feel free to message me with further questions.

I ended up attending a different program :)

Don't worry about it. The depth and quality of the recommendation letter is more important. Also I asked my thesis advisor to write me a recommendation after I hadn't spoken to him in 2 years. So a year is nothing-just go ahead and ask if you think you can get a good recommendation from a math...

Your SOP and recommendation letters need to show the admission committee the following things: 1-You're smart and get things done 2-You are academically qualified for an MFE 3-You can handle the workload of an MFE 4-You'll make the school look good by getting internships / full time offers...

You'll only get 'stuck' if you have that mindset. It isn't easy to switch from BO/MO to FO (in the same way that it's not easy to switch from doing management consulting at MBB to engineering at Google--it's a different career path altogether) but I know plenty of people who did it, either...

If you want to get into quant finance, I believe MAFN is looked upon more favorably. The MSOR is just that, a MS in Operations Research. Not financial engineering. As you said you are largely your own when it comes to finding a job. By the way, starting in Fall 2013, Columbia MAFN added the...

Yup-you need to make sure that your contacts can be trusted with information and that they aren't idiots who don't know what they're doing. Learning to differentiate between these two types of people is one very important skill you need to have in the financial industry--regardless of division.

At least for me, I don't see 'moving around' by itself to be such a big deal. I feel that the difficulty for most people is 'getting in the door'. A lot of people try to make career moves without even knowing what they're getting themselves into, and the real killer in the majority of cases is...

Don't do this if your final objective is to get into quantitative finance / quantitative trading. As a support person you will not be exposed at all to the core of the software that investment banks use. You will basically be putting out fires every day while everyone (traders, developers...

http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/recruiters-and-companies/recruit-at-tepper-school/mscf/full-time-employment-statistics/class-profiles

Your post sounds both arrogant and lost. That attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. Why don't you take a step back and think about what it is that you really want to do?

AFAIK CMU does this for every applicant, regardless of citizenship. They run a full background check.

Which is why I minored in Math...! Also this varies a lot. Some schools make you take quite a heavy load of mathematics as part of the CS curriculum, and others will let you get away with barely touching basic linear algebra or probability. I was lucky enough to take linear algebra...

My interview last year was about 45 minutes in total. It is non-technical and designed mainly to assess your fit with the program and your motivations/career plans.

I think these posts are a pretty good guide. https://www.quantnet.com/threads/how-to-prepare-for-financial-engineering-programs-part-1.9964/ https://www.quantnet.com/threads/how-to-prepare-for-financial-engineering-programs-part-2.10012/

Current CMU student here. There is certainly a lot of computing but it is maybe 20-25% of the whole program. There are 4 dedicated computing courses plus a bunch of other courses in which you will be using R etc.

They ask you for a campus preference when you apply, but this is not final. I believe students are allowed to change campuses (only once) after you enroll.

I have a MacBook Pro 15 inch from 2010. My MFE program requires Visual Studio, so I have VirtualBox with XP installed. Depending on the kind of coursework, I may end up buying a fast Windows laptop with Core i7 on it. At home I keep a dual 24-inch screen powerhouse desktop PC with an i7, 16G of...

There is no difference in admission standards.

Yes, I believe the info above is correct for CMU.

Get your Ph.D. In my book, someone with a Ph.D in any technical subject deserves some respect/recognition.

I watch 3 hour video lectures for school. 35 minutes is nothing.

Eclipse with CDT and PyDev might work.

Some schools admit in multiple rounds. If they admit enough people from previous rounds (to fill the number of seats in the class), I imagine it would be tougher to be admitted in later rounds. However, keep in mind also that a lot more people apply in the earlier rounds, making them more...

In defense of CMU: It's a school that has specialized excellence. Computational Finance is one of them. The School of Computer Science is another--it's on par with Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT CS. I would say CMU MSCF is on the same level as Princeton MFin (in terms of quality and reputation in...

CMU is M.S. Computational Finance and Princeton is MFin, so I think they are differently oriented. Although I would imagine a lot of people perceive Princeton to be more prestigious (especially in Asia--Ivy League is a big deal) I believe Columbia's MFE program is more established than MIT's.

Technology is the division responsible for all of the in-house software at the bank (trading systems, pricing engines, and the like). It's the IT division. Operations is middle/back office.

Taking a C++ course on this website or at some college might help.

"Monkey Business". If you haven't read it, please do.

Why are you applying to MFE programs if you're already a quant researcher?

A B- is fine.

You're in the wrong forum...

In my opinion, the biggest factor is having previous work experience (preferably in finance) or not. It's much easier to negotiate a higher salary when you already have a job, than coming fresh out of school

Almost all large financial firms hire H1Bs.

While on OPT you are still considered to be in F1 status. OPT is an extension of the F1 visa and is available to all F1 students who have studied for more than nine months (typically one academic year). As far as I know it is up to each company whether they hire people on OPT. For full time...

An internship leads to a job at the company. Since it's especially difficult for international students with no experience to get a full-time job after graduation, the internship is extremely valuable for such students (which form a large part of incoming MFE classes)

No reason to wait until you're here. ltn@math.columbia.edu. From what I remember he responded quite quickly.

Talk to the director (Lars Nielsen); he told me this was a new option from this year and should have some information for you.

Purely from a quant job perspective, the related area of machine learning may also be relevant. If you like CS then do an undergrad in CS. If you are interested in AI, take all the AI courses your school has to offer. (My school only had one AI course and one ML course, unfortunately)

I don't know about grade non-disclosure, but I think some programs will not release class ranking information.

I was admitted on May 9 and my deadline was May 28.

I wonder how they process applications...I submitted on March 1, and I got a decision in early May. Some people had submitted months ago (even last year) and are just getting their decisions now.

I got into CMU with a CS major and a math minor, for the record. I had Calculus up to multivariate, linear algebra, probability, statistics, and combinatorics. Didn't take diff eq.

Was at work, and lazy :P

My friend is doing the Minnesota MFM program and told me placement is quite good (over 95% for the 2011 class). However the firms and locations in which graduates work are probably quite different from East Coast MFE programs.

What does this graph show? Languages used in existing systems? Or languages used for newly developed systems?

Why is the dropout rate higher for part-time students? People quit in the middle if they think they don't need it anymore? Too demanding to work / study at the same time? Got relocated at the job?

6 failures, meaning 6 people either dropped out / were kicked out? I find that pretty hard to believe considering the size of the class...

I got a generic email from GSAS when they admitted me; after that, nothing.

I vote for Columbia as well.

You're right, top MBA programs will be difficult to get into without any work experience. The degree in finance that is "Not so much intensive as FE" would be the MS/MA Finance degrees (MFin). http://lmgtfy.com/?q=masters in finance However there are differences between programs in terms of...

It seems like several people have declined offers of admission. Hopefully we'll see more admits soon.

If you can get a job in the finance industry, I would take that over CFA.

Very interesting that C++11 added support for lambdas. Some firms use functional-heavy languages (OCaml at Jane Street, for instance) and groups within larger firms also follow this trend. I know groups at almost every investment bank using some functional language.

I'm at Question 17...very interesting site. Currently doing it in Python which makes some of the questions really easy (almost cheating). I think it's a good site to refresh one's memory of a programming language.

My understanding is that the GRE optional exception is meant for French students entering the program who studied under a professor affiliated with someone at Columbia. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I've made my decision and will be joining CMU MSCF this fall. I like the curriculum a lot, and I feel like given my background, it is a better fit for me. The courses in the MAFN program seemed to be basically PhD-level math/stats courses and designed for someone who potentially could go on to a...

I agree. Your background seems to be strong. However, you may want to try to work in a financial institution first before deciding that you want to switch to the financial industry.

May not be "useful" in the sense that you wouldn't be using systems programming in the program or in most jobs (some do) but it is always a good idea to spend a few classes close to the machine.

If a company hires you that means they believe you can do the job (i.e. qualified). Your GPA may be somewhat lower than many of those applying to top schools, but by no means is it a deal breaker. As for language skills, if you consider yourself to be at 'business level' or above they can be...

Don't know about algo trading specifically, but CMU does have four dedicated programming courses (out of 25 courses) and I imagine several other of the courses use programming as well.

Econometrics is probably not enough to satisfy the probability and statistics requirements. You need a course, preferably two courses, which develop probability and statistics using Calculus. It looks like neither your math/programming are currently adequate to apply to MFE programs, so I...

5/24/13

Relational DBs can have extremely high throughput and low latency with the right schema design.

I agree. I would say try to take it only once, maybe 2 times max.

You can't change past grades, so the best thing to do would be to make sure you don't have fails/withdraws at your new school, and get good GRE scores.

I would be cautious with taking the GRE close to the deadline. Sometimes the scores take much longer to send than expected. I sent my 2011 GRE scores in January and my schools didn't receive them until March.

I would say a regular relational database such as MySQL, Oracle, Postgres should be fine. You can store positions in many ways, the question is how to most efficiently design the data structures to enable quick updating and querying of positions.

I'm going through Schaum's outline of calculus, lol. Seriously! I haven't touched calculus since 2008.

I was admitted to Columbia MAFN and I'm waiting for the result from CMU MSCF after my interview last week. If admitted to both, I have only 3 days to decide and will have a tough choice to make. Both of them will be part time. Background: CS degree with mathematics minor from a US school...

1) You should be fine as long as you have a good reason for the gap 2) I believe most schools request transcripts of all institutions attended, whether undergraduate or graduate. So yes, they would see all of your grades.

Depends on what you want to do. These are similar but different paths. I agree with Andy that the major itself may be viewed as "not quantitative enough"; however, if you can take non-"watered down" versions of all of the courses you listed, your math background will be adequate for MFE programs.

Why do a quant degree if you want to go into corporate finance? That is a completely separate career path. Edit: my bad, didnt see the MSF there. Regardless, I think you should narrow your goal down more. Corporate finance and quantitative finance are vastly different disciplines.

What prerequisites are you missing? Also I suggest you do the finance internship. That really shows interest in the field and gives you an edge - many applicants never worked in the industry and are trying to get in.

5/13/13

You don't need a year to study for the GRE.

Just got the admit notice. :)

I'm not sure. Looking at the Tracker, however, I can't see an 'Admit' with no interview.

Some tips (I live in NYC). Message me if you need info. I only know Manhattan so I will mainly give advice for Manhattan. From what I know, some parts of Queens and Brooklyn are now as expensive, or more expensive, than parts of Manhattan. -Price of apartments correlate to neighborhood...

5/9/13

Will do-thanks!

I just got my interview email today. I'm so happy I made it to this stage! Anyone else?

I thought they already did that...SEVIS has been around for years.

The website http://gsas.columbia.edu/content/academic-programs/mathematics-specialization-mathematics-finance says "March 1 for early admission: Decisions to admit, reject or put on wait list are mailed by late April." I sent my app in on March 1 but still do not have a decision. One of my...

Great post...I've been thinking of buying a tablet to do this kind of stuff. I guess the killer for me is that many technical books are not available in tablet format (aka Kindle)

Nevertheless, people who have PhDs and masters degrees apply to these programs, so you'll be facing some tough competition.

1) I think some programs look for 'anchors'. For example, suppose the concentration areas are mathematics, finance, and computer science (all three are part of a quant curriculum). As long as a candidate has background in at least one, plus the needed math, it should be OK. Of course, there will...

The main difficulties I found when learning Linux (I used Ubuntu) was figuring out where the thousands of config and setting files, etc are stored, and determining what the particular tools are for each task (i.e. vim, grep, df, ls, awk, etc). Installing software from source and maintaining your...

If you can handle MFE, passing the CFA shouldn't be any problem for you. As you noted, it's more about memorization and practice, and commitment.

Could someone suggest a subset of books under "Books to read before starting an MFE program" ?

BS CompSci / BA Music double major, Mathematics minor. GPA: 3.73 (Major), 3.71 (Overall). GRE: 800 Q 650V 2 years of experience in the financial industry as a software developer in an investment bank and hedge fund vendor. -------------------------------------- Admitted, required to take...

BS CompSci / BA Music double major, Mathematics minor. GPA: 3.73 (Major), 3.71 (Overall). GRE: 800 Q 650V 2 years of experience in the financial industry as a software developer in an investment bank and hedge fund vendor. --------------------- Going to CMU.

3/4/13

3/1/13

Agreed with above. I've heard UW applied math is excellent, but if you are choosing between the two finance programs, go to Columbia.

BTW, if you know C, C++ and Java, picking up R, Python and VBA should be very easy for you.

Just trying to give back after all the help I've received on this forum :)

I'm a Japanese national so hopefully I can help in this thread. Many entry-level jobs/jobs resulting from campus recruitment in Japan start in April. However, this shouldn't stop you. I had several offers in Tokyo including application development in an electronic trading group at an American...

Hi all, I'm applying to several PT/online programs which have different deadlines/decision dates. Is it possible that I end up in the situation where I have an admission offer with a hard deadline and I have yet to receive a decision from another school(s)? Can I contact my other school(s)...

Thank you, Ken. I'm currently leaning toward the MFE but I will talk to some people I know to get a better idea. mhy

Hello, Just joined QuantNet today. I'm really impressed by the quality of people/information here and I've already spent hours reading some of the threads. For a bit of background, I have an undergraduate computer science degree / mathematics minor and I work as a software developer in NYC...