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If you draw that conclusion you should not be a quant.

See if anyone in the econ or finance depts needs a research assistant. RAs with programming skills are quite valuable. Also start scheduling informational interviews with people in industry. And get to know the juniors and seniors. They will be in a prime position to help you network when...

This post might help too: http://www.r-bloggers.com/what-are-the-most-popular-bike-routes-in-london/

99% of the time I would say this is true, but if one gets another offer that is much, much better then one should discuss that with both employers, but Don't start an auction! And if you're not sure the new offer is sufficiently better, then it is definitely not. Ellen Reeves, How long do you...

Isn't that assuming that the uphill and downhill parts have the same slope?

The funny thing is that the cold-call is lower risk in my opinion. There is no record. If you send a really bad email then you get forwarded around the office (maybe world) as a joke!

Senior is exactly the way I would describe their core customer base. ;) I had a salesperson at JAB tell me to come back in ten years!

Search early and search often. Network network and network.

If you legitimately have all those skills then you won't need a HH.

Did you try searching this yet on the forum?

Truth be told quant finance jobs aren't all what they used to be. That being said, they still beat most other jobs out there, especially for young people.

If you're interested in energy trading then definitely take a look at the MBA programs at Rice, UT, UH, A&M. If you're dead set on a quant role then check out Georgia Tech's QCF program - that's what they call their FE program. GA Tech is not too far from Texas and has a large network of...

Slowly making my way through The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. Really drives home what an incredible place Bell Labs was.

To beg the question, how do you define "quant"? ;) Is a quant the same as a financial engineer? Try this post: https://www.quantnet.com/threads/master-reading-list-for-quants-mfe-financial-engineering-students.535/ particularly the first reading.

Georgia Tech offers Graduate Assitantships. That can be either working for a prof doing research or grading papers. Additionally a few schools offer fellowships where you get money but you don't even have to work! Check out post number 7 here...

I'm quite skeptical of professional groups. Unless you know for a fact they have events in your city they're pretty worthless.

I did an MBA and an MSFE together right out of undergrad. Looking back I have mixed feelings. I got a large fellowship via the MBA program so that helped a lot. I also worked really hard and completed the dual degree program in 2 years instead of the usual three. That being said, today when...

Unfortunately I don't know of a source for REC prices online. Those are a lot more idiosyncratic than electricity prices. I'd start with the relevant ISO's website and move from there.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Hurry up and buy DataSciNet.com! I don't think it will really happen since data science is more of a re-brand of statistics than a new field. An MS in Stats pretty much is an MS in Data Science (although I could be revealing my ignorance with this...

A lot of this depends on what your program will require and also what your career goals are. Some quant finance fields require C++ and others don't. Depends on what tasks you'll be doing. Large data? Statistics? Are you working on models for yourself or others?

I'll have to review some notes. Peter Carr has a lot of papers about Put-Call Symmetry and barrier options such as this one.

This is quite useful for pricing barrier options as it allows you to replicate the payoff with a static portfolio.

Busy

I haven't used it yet but the compiler package is supposed to help with speeding things up without having to go to C++ http://www.r-bloggers.com/speeding-up-r-computations-pt-ii-compiling/

I'll be there.

I'd say TRAB has done most your work for you. But really you are choosing a school for yourself. Call them up. Look at the risk vs reward.

You've got a good background and you don't need a visa. You're going to do pretty well. One question is where do you want to work? If your interest is in energy then are you keen on Houston? Are you aiming for NYC or Chicago?

As you alluded in your post, information revelation is the key here. Very often people get too distracted by viewing volatility as movement rather than as the discovery of information. At the end of the day, the way we define daily returns is just that - a definition. It's not as though there...

I have not done a PhD but what I have always heard from friends who have is that it's more about what you want to do for your dissertation and what kind of support the school has for your favored specialty.

http://www.rinfinance.com/ Anyone else going and interested in meeting up?

Check the Lacima Group white papers at LacimaGroup.com. I think it requires a free registration to download. They are pretty practical and a get introduction to a number of techniques. Also if you can then you should get to the Energy Risk conference in May. If you're starting out then...

I'd add: 1. Financial Aid - Merit and need based 2. Dual Degree Offerings 3. Try to break out career placement stats by location and industry 4. Elective courses offered

I think Duke has a decent terminal masters in Econ. I know LSE offers a well-known econ masters program, but I don't know if it's targeted more as a way to signal dedication to potential PhD programs.

I found PCA to be one of those things the profs tend to reference but nobody ever teaches. They just kind of assume you will learn it elsewhere. I like Avril Coghlan's booklets available for Multivariate Analysis and Time Series. Both focus on R and are more on the applied side than the theory.

This is exciting to hear! What course will you be teaching? From my personal observations it is not being an international student per se that holds students back. It is generally the difficulties that international students have with soft skills. They tend to network less and they have...

Structuring and analytics.

You do realize CGU is a graduate level only university right? Typically grad schools are not judged as a whole but by the constituent programs. As far as the MSFE program is concerned there are old placement stats here: http://www.cgu.edu/pages/8648.asp. Also check out the chat session they...

I wonder how endemic this is. I find it hard to believe only one school has done this.

Yeah for research I wouldn't recommend an MBA. If you're wanting really straight up research then something that involves a good thesis and a good internship is probably the way to go, but there are others here who would know more what to do for this.

Be careful using your imagination. Sometimes doing a dual-degree MBA/MS opens you up to even more potential fellowship money as the two departments get to "share" the cost of subsidizing you! Also you have to remember that to a certain extent you get what you pay for. Except as Andy points...

It's also pretty easy to complete a dual-degree program with an MBA. You can combine it with an MS in stats or even an MS FE!

For interactive plotting I use Manipulate via RStudio. I have found it to be quite grand. Vectorization only goes so far unfortunately. If I recall correctly, even the apply functions are actually coded as loops and have similar execution speeds. What I am doing: Numerical algorithms and...

Maybe next update to this table could include a break down of expected merit- and need-based aid so applicants have a better idea of actual expected cost?

So Claremont, UCLA, Georgia Tech. offer merit-based aid. Anyone know any other schools with merit-based aid?

This could not be more true. I've tried experimenting with the parallel processing packages for R but to no success. I do find R to be perfect for investigating data though. Beautiful plots and so many statistical tests accessible in seconds with different packages!

I'm so bummed I missed this. I ended up working late. I'll have to check the replay!

Modeling a forward curve is non-trivial. Even modeling the spot price alone for a commodity curve can be pretty daunting. I recomend looking here first. That presentation is a good intro on different frame works. Even if that particular presentation is too basic for you check out the other...

As an alum I agree. The program is pretty good and continues to improve.

Claremont Graduate University's program has some of the least strict pre-reqs but you still need to make sure you take Multivariable Calc and Linear Algebra. http://www.cgu.edu/pages/6417.asp

The class sizes are decent, between 25-45 usually for anything shared with MBAs (like corp fin and fin accting) but the pure MSFE courses are usually between 5-20 students (stuff like electives in quantitative risk management, etc). Also, your table at the top looks wrong. You don't take 3...

Sorry, I thought you had said you were already attending UCLA. I didn't realize you were debating acceptance. Good luck with whatever you decide!

I know you are probably joking but don't give up so easily. Target the firms and positions you want and bust your ass getting to them. You're at UCLA Anderson. Lot's of recruiting goes on their in the MBA program that will tend to include more front office-y positions. Go to those sessions...

GDF Suez has a very nice tool with most of the major hubs and zones in the US, both DAH and RTH prices! http://www.gdfsuezenergyresources.com/index.php?id=5 Additionally I have found http://commoditymodels.com/ to be a great read. Combined together these two sites could make for some great...

Where do most of the interests lie for the group or yourself? Equities, Commodities, Fixed Income? Risk, Derivatives, Start Arb, etc?

This is way too simple and cavalier. The difficulty in discussing the ethics of "financial engineering" is the confusion of what exactly that term means to people. If we are going to talk about something specific and often politically-charged, then let's get all our terms straight at the...

In short, you really can only interpret to mean that given Quantnet's methodology and the sample size of programs used that Claremont is 20 out of 22. So if this is the universe of programs you are willing to consider and their weightings and practices correspond the same (or very similarly to...

Pointers I'm ok with. Pointers to pointers.... you have gone too far!

I know! Did you know some people just buy pre-made bikes and cars? If you never get the metal, glass, plastic, and other raw materials to build a vehicle how do you expect to be a good driver? What are you going to do when your car breaks down, find someone else to fix it? Next you'll tell me...

First, I am still quite the novice when it comes to R in general. I am finding some odd results with quantmod's functions for daily returns. Start with the following code: getSymbols('QQQ',src='yahoo') testRet<-allReturns(QQQ,type='arithmetic') Then I perform the following: > testRet[2]...

I'd register at LacimaGroup.com and read some of their white papers. Particularly the ones on mean reversion. It depends on which correlations you're talking about.

VBA with a c++ dll or two. That's all it takes for me.

This gets looked over so often. I really wish they'd report something like a ratio of previous salary to salary after graduation, or some other similar metric.

I know things have occasionally gotten petty in the original thread on the rankings. Let's keep that out of this thread. I am simply trying to assemble a list of the publicly available stats for the ranked programs. I already did some initial searching and have the list below. If I couldn't find...

There is a plethora of non-confidential information that is also not being revealed.

It's not the Bay area but for Southern Californians ( or those willing to travel) there is an Energy & Energy Derivatives conference at Claremont coming up: http://druckerenergyconference.eventbrite.com/

We don't know because Andy won't tell us....

Thats true, they argue about important things, like where their alma maters' football team ranks in the AP poll...

You fixed it! Again keep on the crusade for transparency! I wish these programs would give all their stats away openly.

Dude you're killing me. It's Claremont Graduate University, it hasn't been called Claremont Graduate School for decades! ;) All in all really good. I get that you can't release some of the data, but it says that in some cases you simply used the most recent public data. Do you mind listing for...

I wouldn't say his approach is bad. It's just a very academic way of looking at the valuation.

You have some wiggle room by saying "nice" (perhaps a true scotsman fallacy?), but no not all theories about free market economics are based on the same assumptions.

I stand corrected here. I suppose from all the debate it doesn't matter as much which degree you get. Just make sure you go to a targeted school and really master the market you want to be in.

Definitely do an MBA to go into sales and trading. The less "quant" stuff you have on your resume the better. When people see that you have the quantitative skills its very hard for them not to put you in a corresponding role.

If you can only afford to take one then take the GRE. If you can afford to take both then do so. Some people are just better at one or the other. Get your scores and see which test places you further relative to the schools admittance stats.

I am shocked and chagrined! I know you like to play the older, wiser, experienced, educated, "I'm a pimp", whatever card, but give people a little more credit. You might share a condition with Stan Marsh. Often people are using simple metrics like how much a school is "liked" as a proxy for all...

What do you use as your front-end? A gui or console? Who else uses your programs?

Who you calling indecent? ;)

Ah, but you won't have that Midwestern charm. ;)

I just started using R a bit at work and then came across the website for this conference. I think I'll be attending next year. Incidentally if anyone is really good at using R with hourly time series data I'd appreciate some pointers. I'm finding it to be rather unruly (perhaps this would be...

check out this thread for more on CGU: http://www.quantnet.com/forum/threads/ucla-mfe-vs-usc-mfe-vs-cgu-mfe.5996/page-2. I know nothing of Rutgers but if you really want to work on the east coast then probably go to school there (save money on flights for interviews/networking).

Also I just want to make sure we're all clear on what we are talking about. There are two programs that can sometimes get confused with abbreviations. Claremont Graduate University (CGU) offers an MS in Financial Engineering (MSFE). Claremont McKenna College (CMC) offers a Masters in...

This sounds old to me. I attended and graduated recently from CGU's dual MBA/MSFE program. I have heard rumors of about 4-5 years ago the program being like you describe. I know of maybe 2 FE students who got jobs through the school (profs or the career management). There were some issues...

I have to agree. Generally when an MFE grad doesn't get a job it is because they can't find a finance job. Usually by the end of one year post graduation they have found some numerical and/or programming gig that allows them to pay off their debts, albeit probably rather slowly and not with...

Y'all need to get out more. NYC may have a number of great things but you couldn't pay me enough to live there longer than a year.

Archos Android tablet

No-name - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Sweden issued the Interpol notice, unless you have some documents to leak yourself?

That's one side of the equation. They also offer the dual programs because there are talented students that want them. Some schools like GA Tech have graduate assistantships (GA) available for masters students. I *think* that all else being equal you are more likely to get one if you apply as...

Pretty good advice I'd say. What city are are you in bachan? THe region can determine a lot about what type of finance firms are accessible.

I don't know what your financial and family situation is but have you considered doing a one-year finance masters (if youre not necessarily looking for a quant position) as a way to kick start your switch?

Your characterization of finance as just moving money around and not contributing to society tells me this isn't the field for you. Maybe go take some econ classes and see if your attitude changes. You need to understand what capital is if you want to be anything in finance. Maybe use your...

CGU MSFE https://www.facebook.com/pages/Financial-Engineering-Program-at-CGU/126163287255

As to legality, do you mean with respect to laws or the rules a university sets in place? For public schools though the line gets very blurred. One way departments and programs get around these policies though is that both programs charge the same price but then one of them gives (more)...

Exactly. What sort of career are you after? In addition to the schools you said, Georgia Tech. and Claremont Graduate University both have dual degree programs. Depending on the school, you may not have to pay an extra application fee to apply to both programs, moreover their admissions...

If something is not only sanctioned, but officially encouraged, then it is by definition not cheating. I believe most of these comments should distinguish between these things. If you believe that these discussions produce students with good grades, but a poor understanding, that is more a...

Isn't this website basically that book? I suppose there's more that could be done along the lines of "offical" info from the schools, like Princeton Review does but you seem to me to be doing quite fine as is. Maybe just making a seperate index page of all the reviews would go a long way?

Sounds like you're taking to things like a fish to water. Happy for you man. Congrats on the Q Strat position too by the way. Sounds like you haven't even started the actual classes yet and your resume is already rivaling some people with a couple years of work experience!

Has this person even taken one physics class? That's a pretty blanket recommendation.

Ahh, makes more sense. I thought because this post had such a focus on the necessity of describing lesser-known programs that you were applying the NK label in that regard. But yes that does make much more sense in regards to media black out, which is definitely not exclusive to any type of...

"Reporting from inside North Korea"??? That's really telling that you choose North Korea as analogous to a non-first-tier program.

Rich, given that Mannya is going all the way back to complete a whole other bachelor's degree I find his story to be a bit out of the ordinary, thus very much warranting chronicling. Besides, it's not like his articles will really be crowding out others.

Just out of curiosity, why did you choose to do another whole undergraduate degree? Why not just take the necessary math courses (calcs, lin alg, dif eq, and prob) part time or online?

While this is a good introduction, it would have been better to leave your editorial opinion out of this. It's important to let new people get to know the vocabulary and mechanics of the financial system before attempting to spin their opinions. Also many some of your criticisms of different...

I've got some experience in power structuring. Where are you based?

I've always resented people looking down at asking "is this on the exam?". Yes I want to know if I need to learn this topic NOW or can look at it later. It's just like prioritizing your projects at work based on required dates.

I believe CGU is rolling admission for both Spring and Fall.

You're treating the supply and demand as though all MFEs were interchangeable. Quality is a big separator.

Anderson's reputation in finance is stellar. You will have little problem starting your career, plus an mba avoids the possibility of getting thrown in the back office path, which it sounds like you don't want.

Some of the FE programs have excellent placement records for summer internships, but what about students at 2nd and lower tier schools? I wonder what would be the best strategy for these students. Ought they desperately try to get any sort of internship, even if it is not really finance, but...

I wonder how much to discount the review of someone who attends UCB and has no full time offers. They're placement is usually well above 90%?

Quite a biased list......

C++ is not explicitly integrated into the classes right now at CGU. The classes feature a lot of Matlab and VBA. There is a student-led course on C++ each year plus students can take classes at HMC as pointed out earlier. I would also say that C++ is a bit over-rated on these forums. It's...

You wouldn't get a job from this answer, that's for sure! What's the third person to do? in this way, you save 50% max! IlyaK8 did the right solution, although his reasoning was not perfect! advice: think the solution through before you answer it - one thing is to come up with a solution...

i don't understand If something does not interest you for 4/5 years why would you choose it as a career?

Hi Andy, Please sign me up for the Finance Forum moderator. Thanks, Frank Response by the Quantnet Team Frank, We appreciate your level of participation, energy. You deserve the position. Your interest in the position has been granted. You now have access to the private forum. We look forward...