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To do PhD in Finance, the best preparation is to do Masters in Financial Economics at Columbia or to do 2-year PhD preparation program (like an internship) at Stanford Business School. The only MFE grads I have seen in Finance PhD programs were from Chicago and Princeton. They were doing PhD at...

Yep. IIMB alum here. For quant roles in USA (with no hope of Green Card in this lifetime): Columbia MSFE >> GATech >> IIM B/C For much better career opportunities long-term, both in quant and in MBB: IIM B/C followed by UCB MFE (they have very strong preference for IIT/IIM grads with relevant...

Here are the questions which you are evaluated on: Will your program compile? Will your program run? For expected data, will your program return the expected results? Have you selected the appropriate data structures to use in your code? Does each method perform a single task? Does your code...

Whatever Philip_Mitterrand said above is exactly correct. You are ideal match for Harvard MBA

I think that the above quote may be precisely the issue. I don't have hard statistics, but I am guessing that there is a very large difference in the intellectual ability of the 30 Courant students vs. the 150 Poly students. The employers may get confused for some time. Eventually, if you take a...

First of all, you should go to the highest ranked NATIONAL university (not based on SUBJECT rank) which you get admission into. Secondly, for an advisor, you should choose a senior, chair professor who has a reputation for being very kind and graduates all their PhD students. They approve even...

Methinks that thou art overly pessimistic. Maybe if you would deign to teach a course as an adjunct, then you could merge the philosophies of Hull and Shakespeare. Explain to the students that if Monte Carlo does not work, Macbeth will.

Here is a list of commonly asked C++ interview questions. This should keep you busy for sometime and you will not be blindsided in the interview: C++ Interview Questions and Answers - Test & Download http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~lyan/c++interviewquestions.pdf Google You also need to go through the...

The waiting period depends on the country of origin. For people from European countries, they would normally get the Green Card within 2 - 3 years after the I-140 was approved. For people from India, the waiting period is currently 12 - 15 years after their I-140 gets approved (and it is getting...

The above post is correct. All the questions will be on Collections, Multi-threading, and search and retrieval algorithms. None of the standard Java questions on Spring, Struts, Hibernate, Design Patterns, Web Services. For Goldman-Sachs in Jersey City, you can expect the initial screening...

Dude, you were very lucky that both your parents are physicians and you were able to go to schools like Yale and Oxford without worrying about mundane things like tuition and rent and utility bills. Your repeated switching of fields from medicine to finance and now to quant indicates that you...

I don't know dude. It seems that some people are trolling this forum. Specially since you decided to apply to such different progams and you could easily find out where the students are getting placed and there are so many quant guides available which provide the answers to the questions which...

Look, if your goal is to work in HFT or AlgoTrading as you have stated, then there is no doubt that the Harvard CSE program would be the best choice. But you need to understand that you will be competing with Computer Science PhD who would have far superior knowledge (not necessarily...

Nope, Nope, Nope, Yep.

Your GRE score is actually extremely high. You will have an excellent chance of admission at IIT-Chicago or Minnessota. The quality of education at these schools is as good as the quality of education at the top-ranked schools. But you should be mentally prepared to return to your home country...

PhD is FREE even in the most prestigious universities in the USA. In USA, as a PhD student, you will not have to pay any tuition and also the university will give you a stipend of approximately $30,000 per year. There is nothing to stop you from getting a free Bachelor degree in Denmark and then...

$400K total (base +bonus) would be be in HFT AFTER FIVE YEARS. Whoever told you that you would get that in your first year is misleading you. I know dozens of Computer Science PhDs from CMU. They are all starting at $160K - $200K in the tech firms. The few who go into Finance sector are starting...

Even though you have a solid Bachelor and Master in Computer Science, you still need five years of industry development experience before people take you seriously as a developer. Two years would be too less experience to make a transfer. Since your education and work experience is in Germany...

If you do not have any money to pay tuition and living expenses for US Masters degree, you can try applying for admission to PhD programs. The PhD programs are usually fully funded. The main problem is that it will take 5-6 years to get the PhD degree and you will get very little sleep during...

Why do you want to try for a quant position? Your main strength is your technical knowledge. You sould be able to get an entry-level position (or a least an internship) in HFT. Then, learn as much as you can and after 3-4 months they will convert it into a full-time position. Your income...

Find out what textbooks and materials are used in the UCB MFE program and read up as much as you can in advance. The UCB program is incredibly intensive and fast-paced and the students are super-smart. prepare as much as you can in advance. With UCB MFE on your resume you are anyway going to get...

Which university did you get your PhD from? There are PhDs in EE from MIT and Stanford who are making big bucks on Wall Street. There are also a lot of PhDs in EE from University of Karachi and Dhaka University who are driving taxis in New York and Toronto. The university name is 99% of the...

You make a lot of points which may or may not be valid. However, I am a naive person. On one hand, I see hard data and detailed analysis presented by senior economists at IMF / World Bank / Goldman Sachs / PWC, all o whom have PhDs from top schools. On the other hand, I see some points by an...

There is uniform consensus among IMF / World Bank / Goldman Sachs / PWC, and other economic analysts that Chinese economy will be larger than USA economy in PPP temrs within SIX years and in Market Exchange Rate terms within TEN years. Now the really suprising news: By 2050, the Chinese economy...

Database Sytems - Absolutely Essential Programming Languages (Java / C++) - TWO courses are Absolutely Essential Data Structures and Algorithms - Absolutely Essential Software Engineering - Highly Recommended Computer Networks - Optional (Low Priority) Operating Systems - Optional (Low Priority)

CQF is 26 weeks part-time at 20 hours study per week. Total = 520 hours study Princeton MFin is 100 weeks at 70 hours study per week = 7,000 hours study. So what you are saying is that 520 hours study of CQF material is equal to 7,000 hours study of Princeton MFin. CQF students must be...

They have B.S. from HSW, then 3-5 years of PE / VC / IB experience, then MBA from HSW. In addition to this, you also need a good Rolodex.

Most of the job ads which are posted on the websites like efinancialcareers and monster, etc. are placed by recruiters who are fishing for resumes. I think probably most of those jobs may not even exist. When you are in the MFE program you will see the job ads which are posted by the career...

Well I did my MFE. So I saw at least one hundred jobs which were advertised. Like I said, 90% of the jobs tell people explicitly not to apply if they need visa sponsorship. I also saw that every single one of the American students got a good job whereas most of the international students had to...

Well, the advantage of being American is very obvious in the lower-ranked programs. 95% of the jobs which are advertised will tell people not to apply for the jobs if they need visa sponsorship. They will only take applications from Americans. So 90% of the jobs will only want to hire the 10% of...

From the Bank's perspective, it is better for the Bank to wait until these MFE students return to India and then hire them for a $15 K salary in India to do the same job rather than to hire them at a $90 K salary in the USA. Of course, this strategy will not work for MFE grads from schools like...

Great Job dude. You are pulling in some really useful information about placements from these schools like FSU, Chicago, UCLA which contains useful information which people did not have earlier. Keep up the good work. Hopefully, the MFE applicants will be able to easily find these posts in...

I would advise you to go to MIT. They are already arranging a no-cosigner loan for you so your risk is zero. Then get five years experience. Then get an MBA from H/S/W/Booth/Sloan. Again, they will arrange a no-cosigner loan for you so that your risk is zero. The most important thing about the...

Berkeley and MIT will arrange for you to get a guaranteed loan with no co-signor required. I think that Purdue and North Carolina - Charlotte give out a lot of Teaching Assistantships which means that you would graduate with zero debt. Other than that there are schools like ETH-Zurich, EPFL...

EXCELLENT POINTS. I always get suspicious when people advise others to decline admission to Berkeley. If you take a look at their placement statistics, it is a no-brainer to accept an admit from Berkeley. So these guys are misleading others to decline a Berkeley admit so that they can get...

Why don't you go on linkedin and do some good searches and find out where the alumni of these programs are working. You are probably going to get the same job as what the alumni of your program has got. Then, based on what job you want after the MFE program, you can make your choice. My...

Well the bottom line is that you may not have the intellectual ability and you definitely do not have the skills to break into quant finance. You bring nothing to the table. You write long posts and whine about low salaries in web development, but if someone sees your resume, they will conclude...

Well I have about 30 datapoints for fresh Computer Science PhDs from Carnegie Mellon University. In the tech firms like Google / Facebook / Microsoft / HP / IBM, they are getting starting package between $160 K - $200 K. In the Finance sector, they are getting starting packages of $120 K - $140...

$550 K seems to be quite a high asking salary without any previous experience in HFT / Algotrading, specially since you are asking it as a guaranteed salary and not as an expected bonus (which may be zero). Normally for fresh PhD / MS, they start at around $120 K base with expected bonus of $50...

BBW seems to be on a one-man mission to trash the reputations of these MFE programs. I have to wonder if he will provide us with a list of MFE programs which he actually approves of.

Before you start dreaming about going to IIM, I should inform you that IIM-A,B,C will only select about 1 in 800 people who apply for admission in the General category. So stop dreaming about something which is not going to happen and plan for something which is more realistic.

Every person has three beings: 1. what you think you are 2. what other people think you are 3. what you really are You should strive to bring these into alignment. The smartest people I have met do not really think of themselves as being smart. Learn to cultivate humility. Your knowledge...

Actually, BU is quite a prestigious university. They may be eliminating the PhD students mainly to make sure that only high-quality PhD students graduate and leave a good impression in academia when they graduate. This elimination does not happen in the Finance PhD programs in the Business...

You will get a lot of free time to study Math indepth if you get a job as a waiter. There will be no need to ever do any coding.

Soren S. Nielsen Technical University of Denmark - Informatics and Mathematical Modeling He was on my PhD dissertation committee at Texas, Austin. He is now at Technical University of Denmark. Why don't you talk to him. He is an expert in Financial Modeling, specially in Mortgage Backed Securites.

Could you please provide the link where CMU reports the Average Internship salary? I could only find the salaries for the full-time placements of CMU.

Berkeley says that they have 100% internship placement with AVERAGE SALARY $7,300 per month. It is safe to assume that all the internships are paid and the students are not doing unpaid internships.

It is not fair to compare BU with Columbia. Columbia should be compare with CMU and Berkeley and Princeton. Probably BU should be compared with Rutgers and other Tier-2 schools and they are doing a great job in this regard.

The best book on Algotrading / HFT will only have one piece of paper in it. It will state that you have PhD in Computer Science from Top 20 US university.

Okay, let us assume that you are better at numbers than ordinary people like us. So according to your number crunching: CMU (6 failures + 18 people without internships + 84% full-time placement) = Berkeley (100% internship placement with salary $7,300 per month + 100% Fulltime placement with...

Berkeley MFE 2013 Internship stats: http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement.html Berkeley MFE 2012 Fulltime stats: http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement2012.html

Berkeley is showing 100% internship placement at average salary $7,300 per month and 100% full-time placement at average salary $158,000 per year. I am sure that Princeton will have similar stats. So how come CMU is ranked # 1 with 6 failures and 18 students with no internships. These people are...

Well, if a student is taking out a $100 K loan, it is better if he has a mercenary attitude and gets a good paying job after his studies. Otherwise, he will be living a miserable life for many years while he tries to pay off the loan with a low-paying job.

It is almost impossible to fnd an unemployed Computer Science or MIS graduate. But the students are reluctant to study these majors even though they could make $150 K within 5 years of graduating from college. People prefer to do PhD in Math / Physics / Philosophy / Fine Arts, and then be...

Yes, but there are exceptions. There are some exceptionally intelligent people with only Masters degrees who are doing great work in HFT / Algotrading. But, generally speaking, an EECS PhD from MIT would be a golden ticket into the field and would open almost all the doors and would get you much...

With MS in EECS from MIT, you will probably get some good interviews in HFT / Algotrading. Then, it will depend on how your perform in the interview. If you stay at MIT for 2 more years and complete your PhD in EECS, then for the rest of your career, you will get multiple job offers everytime...

I don't know about WPI, but SUNY-Buffalo is a good school. I did my MS in Quantitative Finance from SUNY-Buffalo. I am now working in HFT and making over $300K per year. So potential is definitely there, but you have to work hard.

Dude, if you are still a PhD student, you need to be more careful about what you post on these forums. If you post careless stuff like what most people do on these forums without thinking twice, you may find that your PhD takes 2-3 years longer than you expected.

Outside of HFT work, I cannot see any good reason to use C++ on any development project. Java is as fast as C++ and demand for Java developers is surely at least 10 times more than the demand for C++ developers. C# is rapidly gaining popularity, but the frameworks are still being developed, so...

This is very true. The really sad thing is that nothing changes as they get older.

A medical doctor who graduates from a low-ranked school gets the privilege of working as a doctor. An MBA or MFE who graduates from a low-ranked school gets the privilege of working as a waiter.

if you want to get into PE/VC in India, you will need to get an MBA from top 5 school in USA (H/S/W/Chicago/Sloan). Blackstone and Carlyle will only hire H/S/W MBAs. You can get a job in IB from IIM-A,B,C provided you are in the Top 5% of that batch. You can get a job in Management Consulting...

CS 145: Introduction to Databases CS 245: Database Systems Principles CS 242: Programming Languages CS 261: Optimization and Algorithmic Paradigms

You have just nine good years left in your life. And you want to waste six of those years doing a PhD and living in poverty and surviving on Ramen noodles? Why don't you enjoy your life now. When you are 40 and life starts going downhill, then you can do all the foolish stuff like getting a PhD.

Take the algo trading job. That will give you the best opportunity to use your superior intellectual ability plus your IIT-Computer Science degree plus your Columbia MFE. The entry-level base will be around $110 K and bonus will be around $50 K. But the salary increases very rapidly and you will...

Queueing, scheduling, resource allocation, inventory management, supply chain management, combinatorial optimization, decision making under risk and uncertainty, multi-criteria decision making, etc. etc.

Before you learn assembly language programming, you have to first take courses in Microprocessor Architecture and Microprocessor Interfacing and Peripherals. In assembly language programming you are manipulating bytes directly at the register level. It will not make you a better programmer. It...

The school will have an international office which coordinates the I-20 paperwork, visas, etc. for the international students. You should contact them. They normally have a group of volunteers who are senior-level international students. Generally they will pick you up at the airport and let...

The situation is not quite as simple as it appears on the surface. There is in fact a huge overlap between the CS undergraduate program and the MIS undergraduate program in the Business School. The course material covered tends to be common. CS has a few more courses which are highly theoretical...

Most of the ads for C++ / Java developers ask for Bachelors degree + 5 years experience. Maybe that explains the $150 K salary. Most of the ads on EfinancialCareers ask for PhD + 5 years programming experience. Maybe that explains the $300 K salary. I mean PhD + 5 years programming...

With IIT-M and Columbia MSFE, your risk is really very low. Plus you have 3 years programming experience which essentially brings your risk down to zero. There are many students from low-ranked engineering schools in India who go to second-tier MFE programs and cannot get jobs. You should ignore...

I think that you can get in if you can pass the technical interview. Take a look at some of the technical interview books on this web site and keep preparing until you can comfortably answer at least 90% of the technical questions. But QD rates are not going to be significantly higher that...

From the point of view of quant practice, I think the best choice would be Wilmott / Derman / Taleb. I think these people have had the greatest impact on quant practice.

If your goal is to do Finance PhD in USA, I would recommend MFin at Barcelona GSE. I know a guy who is currently completing the MFin at Barcelona GSE. Within past two weeks he has received admission into three TOP Finance PhD programs in USA. He is a really smart guy and got free ride at...

I bet this company is Ren Tech.

Do a search on Linkedin and find out where the domestic students and international students from Claremont are working. That should give you a good idea of the job placement. It will be very helpful if you post your research findings over here.

This is great news. This poor guy lost his job, his family and one year of his life.

Columbia MAFN placement is a lot better than I had thought. They should collect placement stats and put them on the web site. This collecting data from LinkedIn is very useful and will help many other MFE students make their admission decisions. I hope someone undertakes this exercise for...

Relax. Research is very hard the first time you try to do it. You will be very proud of your PhD dissertation when you complete it and very ashamed of it if you read it 10 years later. Go to your library. Find some research articles in the top journals by your advisor or in his / her area of...

In terms of system performance and speed, they are identical. Java is much easier to code and maintain. It is not just the newer prop shops which are using Java. Goldman-Sachs has migrated their entire HFT system onto Java platform. This is likely to be the trend going forward.

In think that EDHEC is the only recongnized part-time PhD. I don't think that you will learn to do research. The good thing is that all your classmates will be MDs, Country Heads, or CEO level people.

Okay, here are the answers to your queries. They will not waive the GRE / GMAT requirement if you want to apply for Finance PhD. They will treat you just like any other applicant. It is quite common for Math / Physics PhDs to do a second PhD in Finance. They normally get the Math PhD around age...

Shantanu, Stanford will be tough because they admit very few students. Most of their students are from France and China. You will probably get an admit from UCB, CMU, and Columbia. To maximize your chances at UCB, you should take CFA Level 1 as soon as possible. For job purposes, your...

Take a look around you in your quant job and see who your co-workers are, with whom you have to spend 12 hours every day. Then trot over to Madison Avenue for lunch and see what wonderful restaurants and coffee shops they have on Madison Avenue.

Any quant who manages to move from a bank to Madison Avenue is the luckiest guy on earth. It is like moving from hell to paradise.

If you instantiate an object outside the switch loop, that object is visible by the code within ALL the case statements of the loop. If you instantiate an object within a switch loop, that object is visible only within the case statement within which it is instantiated. You cannot access that...

Rent-free living in Manhattan. Really smart.

Kennedy.

It is best to stick to Financial Economics or Econometrics. Game Theory is extremely difficult, especially when you get into modeling multi-player games with bounded rationality and incomplete information. You can see what happened to Nash and Harsanyi, even though they won Nobel prize for their...

There are many research areas in Economics: Financial Economics, Econometrics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Industrial Organization, Game Theory. If you do your dissertation in Finanial Economics or Econometrics from a Top 10 school, and read hundreds of Finance journal articles, then you can...

I went through employment-based Green Card process in EB-1 category. Got the Green Card in 8 months. Depends on which country you are from. For India and China, EB-2 takes 5 years and EB-3 takes 12 years. Bank does not have any flexibility. It all depends on the job advertisement. If the job...

Well, that is the history of civilizations. There was an era when Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal explored the world and colonized the world and ruled the world. World War II changed everything and saw the emergence of USA and USSR as economic and military superpowers. The macroeconomic...

You also need to look at the cost of deployment. If you are doing development in .NET and then deploying to 10,000 users, you must install .NET on all 10,000 computers and pay license fees every year to Microsoft both for .NET development platform as well as .NET installation on all 10,000 user...

I think that you are probably wrong on this one. Java is an incredibly robust and versatile platform for development. The technologies are changing rapidly to the new environment with Spring, Hibernate, Struts. Companies like Oracle and Google are investing huge sums of money in open-source...

Here is some accurate information. Between 2000 and 2008, enrollment in Computer Science and IT /IS programs in USA DROPPED between 50% - 60% in EVERY university. This will show the huge gap between demand and supply for competent programmers in USA. As for teaching programming in High Schools...

Right now there is huge demand for Java programmers in USA.They are paying between $800 - $1,000 per day for Java contractors in USA. This is because US government has cracked down very hard on H1-B visas and is making it very difficult to get the H1-B visa. If US government policy changes, of...

I don'tunderstand what the Berkeley students are getting upset about. Their placement stats are pretty impressive: http://mfe.berkeley.edu/careers/placement.html I mean with 100% placement sucess, average $158 K compensation plus average $21 K signing bonus, they must be quite happy...

UCB-Berkeley admitted one student from SUNY-Buffalo into their MFE program starting in March 2011. She had done BS and MS in Finance with specialization in Financial Engineering from SUNY-Buffalo. You can try that route. You can find her profile on UC-Berkeley MFE page and email her for advice.

It is probably best if you do not check the Business Week salary data for Haas (Berkeley). You may be surprised how high Haas is ranked and the salary which the Berkeley MBAs get.

Now you can see the benefit of having data which everyone can analyze and has been verified by the school directly. This data is from the Business Week rankings. http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/full_time_mba_profiles/baruch.html The data has been verified by Baruch Business school...

For MBA rankings, US News, Business Week, Financial Times, and Forbes publicly release full information on all the schools which they collected as well as the methodology which they used to generate the ranking. This way, any person can use their algorithm to calculate the same rankings and...

Well he claimed to have Berkeley MFE and $200K+ salary, which is believable. BBW claims that he is standing behind a counter and asking "Would you like fries with that?" For all we know by seeing BBW's frequent posts, he may be receiving pension checks from UK government.

This thread was just beginning to get quite entertaining and you shut that guy up with abuse. Can you imagine if he actually has a Berkeley MFE. He would be earning a lot more than all these guys who are ridiculing him.

I have to say that some of the schools which appear on the Top 20 MFE rankings are referred to by the Law students and the MBA students as TTT schools.

At least he has the guts to say what he is believes in. There are too many losers on this forum who try to suck up to Andy because they believe that Andy will get them admitted into Baruch or NYU or CMU. It is like herd mentality where average people find strength in numbers. If he has Berkeley...

You can get interviews based on your PhD degree. The issue is whether you will be prepared for the interviews and pass the interviews. See the reading list on quantnet.You can read the books by yourself and do 20 interviews. If you fail 20-30 interviews, then you probably need to go to the...

Clearly SUNY-Buffalo should be ranked # 1 and SUNY-Stony Brook should be ranked #2. These rankings must be wrong. How can Princeton be ranked above SUNY-Buffalo and SUNY-Stony Brook?

Default is a near certainty. They need $300 Billion in immediate bailout to service their pension and healthcare obligations. With an economy contracting at 8% per year and an incredibly elderly population, they are done. No way out. Germany refuses to bail them out. I hope policy makers in USA...

Britain robbed India of its natural resources for 300 years and dragged India into two world wars. If it had not been for the colonies, the Luftwaffe would have flattened London and Liverpool as flat as the cornfields in Iowa. India's GDP has already exceeded UK's GDP and within 30 years it will...

The IT people from India have to wait 12-13 years to get the USA Green Cards even though they are working on H1-B. They get Canadian PR in 1 months without ever being in Canada for a single day. So they move to Canada, get the Canadian passport in 3 years, then come back to USA on TN-1 visa...

Most of the published articles in this area use Microeconomics / Game Theoretic Models. See Auction Theory (second price auctions). Similar models have been used for using pricing as a mechanism to control congestion in computer networks. For a more practical approach, you can try to contact...

Hey, congrats on your admits to Columbia and IIM-Indore. Both are great schools. If you have strong Math and Programming / IT background, you will most probably get a good job from Columbia with a good salary. If you are not able to get a job through the university or by yourself, you can...

I wonder how people manage to pay off their student loans from their unemployment checks when they spend all day posting on the forums. The smart people are working 70 hours a week and making lots of $$$$ and we rarely see them on the forums.

You need to post your resume on efinancialcareers.com and then contact headhunters. Apply for all the jobs which you are interested. The most important thing is to be present in NewYork City for the interviews.

These are the actual salaries. http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/index.php/1/desc/LSATLow Generally 96% placement rate with starting base salary around $130 K from any decent law school. The key difference is that the law school students are 98% domestic students. So the few students who...

U. Chicago is a very prestigious university. The main problem is that 95% of the Finance jobs are in New York City. It is surely a huge blunder to drop out at this stage. Ask them if you can transfer to Stamford to complete the program. This way, you can interview in New York City for the final...

Many of the Physics PhDs are able to get quant jobs after two months self-study of MFE course materials. A few of them actually do the MFE degree. Even if you have a PhD degree there is surely no harm in being humble. After you have done a few quant interviews, maybe you may not be so confident...

I think that school brand name is much more important than any particular degree name. the companies tend to hire from the same schools every year and the university name has a huge impact on the hiring.

The guys got really lucky to get into MIT Sloan the first with only 175 applications. I wouldn't be surprised if MIT Finance gets over 2,000 applications this year. Anyway they will have the MIT brand name on their resume for the rest of their careers, so that is a really lucky break for them...

For quant jobs, if they are choosing between a quant PhD or an MFE, 99% of the time they will select the quant PhD. The only exception is if the PhD demands too much money or has not bothered to prepare for the quant interviews.

Innovation used to occur in the USA because those super-smart tsinghua grads used to come and do PhD and work hard for low wages. Now they just come to Harvard / Stanford / Wharton for MBA and sometimes PhD. Then as soon as they get the degree they are on the next flight back to Shanghai /...

Okay let us assume that this dude was so brilliant that he was able to hack his way into the MIT computer systems and get an official transcript from MIT with his name, SSN, and date of birth on it. The question is, why did he just award himself "A" grade in some freshman level courses. He could...

99% chance you will not get a tenure-track academic position with Math PhD. Most of the Math PhDs are working on Wall Street along with the Physics PhDs and some of the Engineering PhDs. Wall Street USED to be a haven for the quant PhDs, but now there is oversupply of MFEs who are willing to...

This story is so incredible that it may not be actually true. It is quite likely that some facts are being seriously distorted and that the newspapers are blowing smoke up your a$$.

I am genuinely puzzled how this dude faked the MIT transcript. The transcripts are printed on high-security paper with watermarks, raised seals, and other security devices. They can be easily checked online. How did he fake it? Also, how did he change his SAT score from 1160 to 1600? This is...

Yeah the students at Harvard and Stanford, etc are pretty smart, well-rounded, etc. But for sheer concentration of heavy-duty brain power, I really doubt that they can match those Engineering grads from tsinghua or the Computer Science grads from IIT. Those people are just amazing.

Those Engineering dudes from Tsinghua are pretty smart. They are like the IIT Computer Science dudes.

If you get a distinction, then they will definitely take a close look at your application and you will have a shot at the top schools. But distinction at Exeter is very different than a distinction at LSE. LSE distinction practically guarantees entry into a top program. With Exeter distinction...

The link below provides accurate, actual data of the Top companies which sponsor H1-B visa and Green Card for their employees. If you need sponsorship for h1-B visa, you should apply for jobs in these companies, because most probably the other companies are not willing to sponsor the H1-B visa...

It will NOT help your application at all if you offer to pay your way for a Finance PhD. ALL the Finance PhD students pay $0 tuition and get a stipend of $25K - $30K per year. There is no exception. The only two universities which allow the students to enter the first year of the Finance PhD...

I am a bit puzzled by that data point of $44 K salary. He must have meant $144 K. From $44 K salary, if he has to pay taxes and living expenses in New York City, how can he recover the $100 K MFin loan amount?

Well, in this case the solution is easy. There are two possibilities. A good MFE degree (Top 5 school) will give you the education to prepare you for the technical interviews and will also give you an internship which will provide some industry experience. Alternatively, you can just read the...

I think that a lot of people who are posting on this thread are very misinformed. If they had any idea at all of the positions and salaries which the PhDs from the Business School were getting, they would realize just how ridiculous their statements criticzing the PhDs are.

What is your visa status? The three main reasons why people are having difficulty in getting Finance jobs are: 1. No formal education in Finance (or degree from very low-ranked school) 2. No relevant work experience in Finance 3. Needs H1-B visa sponsorship which many companies are not willing...

$250K for nine months seems to be about right. Plus $40 K for summer support. Plus, after they get tenure, they get a lot of additional compensation from Executive MBA teaching and consulting work. Very few people outside of the Business Schools believe that these salaries are accurate. Also, a...

The profiles of the Business PhDs at one unversity which I can see are almost all at partner / senior partner level positions. The typical position for the Finance PhDs is something like Head of Fundamental Research Group at Citadel or Head of Equity Research at Barclays. The rest are all...

There is something fishy about this story. This guy actually got 1160 on SAT, but claimed he got 1600. Then he faked academic transcripts from a school which he never attended. The he faked reference letters. Then he faked his way through four years of college courses and homework assignments...

UC-Berkeley MFE can place you into a front-office position which would be appropriate for your qualifications and experience. The other schools which I would recommend would be CMU, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, and Baruch. You will have adequate Math background from Engineering courses...

CMU and Baruch have good placement record. Chicago is an extremely high quality academic program, but I believe that the students are having placement problems. You have almost perfect profile for Harvard / Stanford / Wharton MBA. International, female, 760 GMAT, 2 years finance work...

from wilmott

This program actually looks really good and challenging. My only concerns were: 1. Why would any student want to take on $170 K debt (similar to MBA debt) to do this program when they could enroll in the PhD program and take the same courses for free and also be paid $2,500 per month as PhD...

Very sad to hear about this. This guy has three young daughters. Now he has to go from $400 K salary to prison. I guess FBI has got lot of free time so that they want to send these smart, intelligent, young people to prison and ruin their lives and their families lives. Meantime, these useless...

True. But this leads to gaps in the resume and Kroll can verify that the person was not in prison during those gaps in the resume. The interview may become tough. Also, Kroll is just a $50 pre-MBA background check which hopefully helps prevent a $50 Billion Madoff type scam or the type of...

Look let me spell it out for you in one word "KROLL". This is the background checking service that is used by ALL the Top 50 MBA programs and also by the MFE program at UC-Berkeley. They will verify your academic transcripts, your employment record (dates, positions, salary), your criminal...

I had to read your post twice. Did you say that you were starting Community College and already planning for early retirement?

It seems that the US government is going after Wikileaks. First, they got Interpol to slap some sexual harrassment charges against the founder. Now, they get eBay to terminate the Paypal account of Wikileaks to cut off their funding. Now Columbia University has warned students not to post any...

In the USA, the following universities provide teaching assitantships to MFE students, so you can get the degree for free. Purdue University UNC-Charlotte Georgia Tech In Europe, the MSF programs at the following universities are free for international students: ETH-Zurich EPFL-Switzerland St...

I hope the Russian dude has got access to Quantnet. If he is using a government appointed DEFENSE attorney, he should tell that attorney to take a hike IMMEDIATELY, even in the middle of the trial. Hire your own attorney. If Johnny can get OJ free, TraderJoe can get you free.

Yeah, I also feel sorry for him and especially for his parents who came here for his trial. He got set up by a government-appointed "DEFENSE" attorney who was probably colluding with the FBI and the prosecutors and the justice departent. The government appointed "DEFENSE" attorney has to...

Wow, I read the Forbes article. This guy got his MFE from Columbia in 2007. His 2009 bonus at Societe Generale was $130,000 and they offered him many multiples of that for his 2010 bonus. He took $575,000 signing bonus from Tower. This for a guy with TWO YEARS experience. Now with all those...

I certainly hope the Russian dude has the brains to hire his own attorney and to tell the government appointed attorney to take a hike. Any decent attorney can beat a rap like this. You just claim that the dude is doing his job and is working overtime at home for free just to keep his job and...

He was obviously not very smart to get on the witness stand and try to tell his "story" and he was not very smart to use a government appointed attorney who suckered him into pleading guilty on the stand to this offense. What he really needed was a staunch defense that he was only doing his job...

Well this guy will get 3 years. Then he will do 12-18 months and be deported. He is just 27, so he should be okay once he returns to India. The background checks in India will not check criminal records in USA. He may have to change his name though to get a job in Finance. The Russian dude's...

Well, his career in the USA is in big trouble. If they find him guilty, he will have to serve time and then be deported, since he was presumably working on H1-B visa. If he is found innocent, he will find it tough to get a job in the USA and he will probably have to leave because of visa issues...

This is a VERY SMART decision and VERY PRACTICAL. It is better to keep applying to the Top 10 schools every year until you get into a good school, rather than go to a low ranked school in a hurry and then end up unemployed because no company wants to hire any of the students from the low ranked...

I am a bit surprised by this information. 99% of the PhD students in Math / Physics / Engineering get the quant jobs through the headhunters. The only exceptions are the few PhDs who do an MFE after PhD from schools like UC-Berkeley. In that case, they get the job through campus recruiting. I...

Well the solution to all the problems is really a simple two-step solution. Step 1: Raise the retirement age to 75 years. Step 2: Provide subsidies to the fast-food burger and pizza places. This has turned 70% of the population obese and this reduces life expectancy by 14 years from 79 years to...

Seems to me that Baruch, UC-Berkeley, and Toronto may actually be reach schools for you. Your work experience is solid and will help you to get a job in a similar type of work. To actually switch into Finance, not very optimistic. UC-Berkeley would work, IF you get admission (very big IF).

You should be able to get admission into some of the schools on your list like Kent State, UNC-Charlotte, and maybe soe others. Learn as much as you can at TCS. The job you will get in USA will be IT job / programming job. Best you can hope for is quant developer job. These are the only jobs for...

Dude, if you have BTech in CS from IIT (not SC/ST category), then you are a really smart dude and will make a lot of $ on Wall Street. The MOST important thing (MFE or MBA) is the ranking of the school from which you get the degree. I would say schools like UC-Berkeley, Princeton, CMU, you can...

There are more trader meetings held at VIPs in Chicago than in the conference rooms.

Finance PhD in USA takes minimum 5 years. If you go to a top 20 business school, it will take 6-7 years before they give you the degree. By the time you get the degree you will be mentally drained, financially bankrupt, and you will feel like you have aged 20 years. Just do the one year MFE at...

You WILL be able to get admission into some schools with a 730 Q on GRE. Then if you spend enough money, you WILL get a very attractive piece of paper called a diploma. Then maybe, with that piece of paper you will be able to get a job in your home country. No company in USA would hire you and...

Just apply to all the top 10 MFE programs and hope for the best. Que Sera Sera.

Now we know how they can afford to give all the faculty members two-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rent-free. That is the ultimate perk in New York City.

I thought PhD was the worst possible experience in a person's life. Hopefully, there are not any more experiences which are worse than that.

Elance.com Ework.com RentaCoder.com Guru.com All full of homework assignments, programming assignments, term papers.

The students who enroll in these online colleges are perhaps not the smartest people in the world. The community colleges in New York and California provide an excellent education for tuition rate of $2 K per year. These students turn down this heavily subsidized, fairly high-quality education...

That is correct. CMU and IIT give partial student scholarships, but the student is still going to end up with a massive amount of debt (close to $100 K debt). Purdue, UNC-Charlotte, and Georgia Tech give out Teaching Assistantships. So the tuition is waived for the MFE program and the student...

In the USA the only universities which offer financial aid for the MFE program are Purdue, UNC-Charlotte, and Georgia Tech. In Switzerland, you can get an excellent MFE for free at ETH, EPFL, St. Gallen. In Germany, ULM is free. Most universities in France, Germany, Scandinavian countries will...

Well, it is easy money for the colleges. They have realized that 93% of their revenue comes directly from the Federal Government in the form of student loans. So they are preying on these students. Mostly they teach high school stuff and make the students feel smart and intelligent with "A"...

I was also shocked at the French protests when the government raised the retirement rate from 60 years to 62 years. In reality, for most of the jobs which are done today, people are quite capable of working until they reach the age of 75 years and the government needs to raise the retirement age...

Best exit fro IB analyst position is after 3 years experience, get MBA from Harvard and then starting salary $210 K which doubles and triples extremely quickly.

PhD in Computer Science can go into HFT. PhD in Finance can go into Fundamental Research, not HFT. Trading is more intuition + experience than theoretical knowledge.

Lot of jobs in IT and Risk. Also in Fixed Income. But you will not be able to move to FO later on.

Go to Waterloo and get a MS in Math Finance for $5 K. It is really a superb program. If you want to spend lot more cash, go to U. Toronto and do MSMF. York also gets good placement in Toronto with their MBA concentration in Quant Finance.

Why don't you apply for jobs in the boutique firms and hedge funds. At least you willnot have to compete with the international students. In the IBs, your application will land up in a huge pile of resumes along with all these international students who have MFEs and MBAs and PhDs from top...

Well if you are genuinely interested in doing research and building a name for yourself, then you should go for an academic position. Generally there are at least two faculty positions available for each Finance PhD and the ratio is projected to increase to 3:1. Right now, they are filling 70%...

In USA, they graduate about 250 Finance PhDs every year. 100 of them will go back to their home countries. 100 will take up faculty positions. The remaining 50 come to Wall Street to make $. Some of those who take faculty positions come to Wall Street as soon as they get their Green Card.

Fresh Finance PhDs who take positions as Assistant Profs are getting $160K - $200K for 9 months + $40K for summer. After tenure, they get a lot of additional compensation through Executive MBA teaching and consulting. The Finance PhDs who are working in the hedge funds are earning a lot more...

A lot depends on whether the company will have to sponsor your visa to work in USA. If you have USA citizenship, you will be able to get some Finance job (maybe not quant job) from a Tier 2 school. If you need visa sponsorship, you will probably not get ANY job from a Tier 2 school. The IBs used...

Some of these students have $100 K in student loans and then they have to stand behind a counter and ask "Do you want fries with that?". They have to take 25 years of abuse and harassment from the collection agencies and deal with wage garnishments, freezing of bank accounts, repossession of...

For all its funding problems, the quality of research that comes out of LSE is of amazingly high quality and this is reflected in the fact that most of their PhD grads take up faculty positions in Top 10 Business schools in USA.

In order for the bubble to burst in China, three things have to happen: 1. Infrastructure development has to be completed, AND 2. Demographics have to be similar to USA and Western European countries with 22% of the population over age 65 and living off the government. AND 3. China has to adopt...

PhD is something which peope do in their 20s. It is by far the worst six years of a person's life. Do not be under any illusions about just how bad the experience is. It is not possible to endure something like that when you are in your 40s. Why do you want to lead a miserable, impoverished...

If you have CS degree from one of the top 5 IITs (and not SC/ST category), then you will be very successful on Wall Street. Just take admission in the highest ranked school and then make big $.

Dude, cool down okay. I have PhD in Finance from one of the top Business schools in USA and I don't know the answer to your question. So I have to acknowledge that you are a real smart guy and can ask really deep (???) questions. The bottom line is that two young dudes claimed that you ripped...

I think that half the people working on Wall Street would be happy to pay $50K for a Green Card. A lot of them actually do this. If you read any of the borough newspapers in New York City, you will see ads of shady people who arrange the Green Cards. They are actually able to do this by...

Well, if you are filing based on marriage and not on work then the situation is completely different. All the stuff about labor certification, I-140, I-485, etc. and the 10-year waiting period does not apply. In the case of marriage, they issue a conditional green card within 3 months of the...

It is possible to attend school on part-time basis while green card application is pending. The main criteria is that you should keep your full-time job which was the basis of the labor certification and the green card application. USCIS requires that the person stays in the same job from labor...

To the best of my knowledge, NYU and UCB will have 100% placement even in the middle of a deep recession. Columbia should have 100% placement rate (they have posted decent placement stats for MFE) but in this recession, a few of the international students were not able to get jobs. But I think...

Mapusa. Been a long time though. I did my PhD in USA and have been here since then.

originally from Goa, been in New York City for past two years. It was based mostly on his last name, which is Goan.

Hey dude, are you from Goa? The best MFin programs are Princeton, MIT, London Business School, LSE. If you are able to get into any of the top 10 programs, you will probably be able to get visa sponsorship for a job. If you do the degree from a program ranked below Top 10, it is very unlikely...

Actuarial Exams will offer high degree of job security. But pay is quite low (about $120 K) and it takes 5 years to pass the exams. May be better to do a quick MFE in one year from a good school. You can generally get student loans to cover the cost. If you are expert in SAS, there are many...

IIT has good brand recognition in USA. I was seeing the profiles for the Indian students at UCB and they are all IIT people. So that will definitely help you. The best strategy is to apply to all the Top 10 schools and then see where you are able to get an admit.

Look, if someone came into our office and offered everyone admission to Harvard MBA program and told them quite clearly that they would lose two years salary and be $200 K in debt, I am sure that 90% of the people would immediately quit their jobs and join Harvard. It is as simple as that. There...

There are people who quit $200 K jobs to go and do MBA at Harvard / Stanford / Wharton. So lost income is $400 K plus program cost is $190 K. But that $600 K loss is peanuts compared to what they make later on.

Business Week provides a comprehensive listing of the recruiting firms at each of the MBA programs. The best way is to locate the programs where the firms which you are interested in are recruiting from and then get into those programs. All these PE / VC firms and IBs and MC firms have target...

Goldman Sachs accused a Russian programmer of stealing their source code a couple of years back. That guy was arrested but no charges were ever filed against him. Last I heard he had a nice $500 K job in a hedge fund. He probably has all the Goldman Sachs source code.