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Yes percentage of international students in MFE is similar to other science departments. However I wouldn't say that MBA make a lot of $$$$. I agree that top graduates (5%) can get to higher salaries than other graduates. However I doubt that average is high. It's difficult to get to $90-100k...

Peter Schiff is definitely an outspoken critic of spending oriented economy. In many respects, I agree with him. More important, I respect the fact that he holds his opinion in front of deride. In '05/'06 everyone was laughing in his face ...

The numbers of H1B are a good estimate. For green-card, they are undervalued. However it does show the possible issues with green-card application for large banks. Hedge fund can support easier for green-card but the counts are small here. The main reason is that hedge funds hire largely...

I think the thread is too critical on PhD. I wanted to pursue a PhD about 5 years ago. The reasons why I haven't were personal, nothing to do with a prospective job/money. First of all it's a personal choice. Doing a PhD for a job is not a good idea. However continuing some research during...

* Which books do you recommend on trade execution and market microstructure in general? * Do you see a need for real-time scheduling and other Computer Science areas for bulk trade execution? * Trade execution cost has been a focus for buy/sell side companies as well as servicing/brokers...

I agree. Also, sending people to detention centers is absurd. If a person is illegal in a certain country, just arrange to be sent back to country of origin. No need to persecute. At same time, personal details are recorded, tighten the borders so they won't be able to come back the next day. I...

The article is short and it contains only 2 numbers. It's not sufficient. Also comparing with '09 is not going to be promising for MBA aspirants. The job market in '08-'09 was at the bottom. Furthermore there is another twist. Number of MBA's is rising gradually year by year. Assuming the...

erlang looks interesting for distributed p2p infra ... http://www.erlang.org/faq/introduction.html

Time series and statistical arbitrage is taught by Rob Almgren at NYU-Courant as well. Some of the materials are available online. http://cims.nyu.edu/~almgren/timeseries/ From the curriculum, the class may include only a small portion of algorithmic trading.

You have an interesting office :). I have a good friend that didn't take this risk and I am sure he is not in the 10%. As already said here, the risk is large. If a person has a 100k steady pay job, in this job market, it's a gamble to throw it away. Of course, they can be successful, but what...

I've had a T60 since early '08. When I replace it, I will go for another thinkpad ...

A lot of conviction about this offer. It sounds like your next "religion". I don't want to bring you down, but no program can guarantee work, job market is unpredictibile. If MIT Finance accepts 50 people and they have to look for jobs in 2008, do you think it's a formality to find one? Let's be...

Not so easy as in the past. Furthermore even if all is smooth, it still takes 1 year. I don't see any issue with the idea. In fact at the moment there is a similar option. If you invest at least $500k in some business here, then you get the green-card automatically. The discussion is really...

Interesting article. It is subjective, of course it cannot be a precise, general analysis of technical working environment on Wall Street. It contains good points. For instance, he is correct that most software engineering work on Wall Street involves systems integration. He is also correct...

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-deolalikars-proof/

In general, I would tend to disagree. Recommendation letters show some results/experience/research that cannot be included in a resume/statement of purpose. They are a confirmation that applicant worked with a professor/manager on something relevant for the desired degree. Personally I think a...

I haven't done my undergrad in this country, so I cannot talk from my experience. From different contacts, I know that Baruch undergrad is business focused. It's very strong in accounting and good in economics. MFE is loosely related to Baruch undergrad. In other words, I don't think an...

Not really :). Scheme is sometimes considered a good language to start. The structure is very clean, academical. It's a pure functional language where you can understand in-depth lambda-closures and the core concept of a program. Partially I agree with this approach. One simple "limitation" is...

I am a C.S. guy. I have a Masters from UNC-Chapel Hill with research in systems area. I applied to MFE programs after working 3 years at GS on Technology Infrastructure side. In general, NYU was focused more on Math/Physics graduates. They needed Math oriented people rather than...

Peter is an exceptional economist, too bad most people were not listening ...

Good that you were one of the "special cases". Same way, 40% is on the high-end for model validation, but anything is possible. In general, a person from career services with NY schools I mentioned can deny/confirm my statements. Unless income is skewed towards the Pacific, this is a good...

Well it sounds right to some people, not so right to others. 50% bonus in the first year is out of the ordinary. Of course it happens in a hedge-fund or some "special" position. Most graduates work for large banks, at the start of the career there is a clear compensation evolution. The income...

Your statements are highly subjective. To say that a program is the best for sure is risky. First because there are many criteria: Is it the best brand-name? How do you even define a clear "dominance" on brand-names? Does it have the best professors? Does it have the best placement record...

Quantitative finance is pretty broad, so the answer is definitely yes. In certain areas (e.g. algorithmic trading) the weight can be much more on software engineering and computation than complex pricing models. It would probably be easier to start on a development oriented role. Assuming you...

In NY, Spain had a lot of supporters. A lot of Spanish speaking people chose to support Spain even though they might not have sympathy for the country. Similarly Brazil has a lot of support when they are on top. People love winners. Spain was a complete team, clearly their best generation in...

You really want to tease our London friends.:) Quoting UNC-Chapel Hill basketball T-shirt: 'Elevate and Dominate!' ;)

Fully agree. On top of a fascinating read, I think the book is pretty consistent in details. Other partners played decisive roles. The characters "move in a realistic fashion" in those late 90's markets. Also we don't have precise details about strategies employed after LTCM by the specific...

I've read only the second one and I highly recommend it. It's a great way to start ...

Interesting trading story. It seems we found the "fat finger" ... :)

Come on Alain I am not saying what other people should do. I am just expressing an opinion. Of course it's subjective and of course it can be wrong and right at same time. The same way another user can say iPhone is great or Android is the best. I don't see an issue with that. It's a preference...

No jealousy, I could buy them all, this is just my opinion. I don't really care what people choose to buy. In general it's good if money are invested one way or another in technology. However I still have the right to choose what I feel important. I always like to keep the big image and see if a...

I refuse to get an iPhone because I don't need it :) The work blackberry and my personal phone are sufficient. Perhaps not the right reply on this thread, but here goes ... I think judgement on necessity is missed by a lot of people. They get excited about the amount of features crammed into...

England played well for 10 minutes. Sobbing after one chance is not a good attitude. If they were strong, they shouldn't have conceded two goals easily in the first half. Germany played what they know best, after opening the score they are very difficult to beat, excellent on counter-attack...

By BS model, I think you are referring to Geometric Brownian motion SDE for the underlying (e.g. stock). The pricing is built on top of notions of risk-neutrality/martingale measure. None of them require equal probability for up/down movements. In other words, there is no assumption of "fair game".

=D> Good stuff and it shows some of the game attitude for specific countries. I love the German one ... :dance1:

I thought the debate New York vs London was done in '07. The crisis had a much more devastating impact on London economy than New York. All numbers, even bank earnings confirm it. Now with added taxes to London banks and austerity measures in England, I don't see a short term competition ...

There is quite a bit of theory that is required to understand risk-neutral pricing. You can start even from the wiki page and then pick-up a stochastic calculus book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-neutral_measure The core of risk-neutral pricing is the concept of martingale (stochastic...

I was sure Eugene is going to jump into the vi discussion :). As a matter of fact I agree with both. I used vi for about 6 years for C/C++/Perl even a bit Java, still happy to use it. However it's not easy to navigate through large projects, no integrated language features (e.g. debugging) and...

Come on you gotta love the guy :D:D

Excellent interview Joy. Good job. Hopefully this is a start in a series of discussions with top quants :)

I agree with agency the article seems to be written about a guy that read somewhere 0 AND 1 = 0 :) The discussion around overall execution speed is broad, but the first item to consider: where is the bottleneck? CPU is just one component, in most cases in front-end trading execution systems...

Short answer is that it should be fine to use partial GPA as well. It's nothing abnormal as an international student. After all, if you want to start the Masters immediately after the Bachelors, the application calendar urges to apply in December latest. My statements apply to programs with...

There are many uses. http://www.technewsdaily.com/9-super-cool-uses-for-supercomputers-0496/1 Personally, in my previous research, I have logged into two supercomputers. I was focused on the scheduling algorithm and parallel code optimization. However I know most jobs were running protein...

It depends on the position you are seeking. This article refers to a certain portion of Investment Banking. Of course, there are jobs that require little technical background but soft-skills may be decisive etc. By recruiting primarily from a top-school, the employer assumption is that you...

What other books you recommend on Stochastic Calculus in general? Do you see statistical models gaining more popularity compared to pure SDE approach? Has this crisis contradicted some base assumptions behind risk-neutral valuation? What is the next major area of development for quantitative...

Your initial statements are pretty generic. For instance: CMU program is older than Columbia, the number of accepted students is reasonable, so CMU has a wide alumni network as well. The brand name of both programs is very strong, hard to differentiate here. You will find plenty of threads on...

Good idea Joy. The agenda is promising. I will see if I can take one day from work to go to a different GS building :)

Interesting ranking. Some countries came as a surprise to me, especially the Scandinavians and Suisse. I guess strong social policies have to take some resources. It would be even more intriguing to see the rate of change in debt accumulation for these countries in last 10-20 years ... By the...

Inter won, great game from Millito. Two simple clean goals. As I said this guy is up there with Messi. Sad that Argentina doesn't have a strong manager ...

Till the World Cup, checkout the Champions League Final: http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/championsleague You can see some of the top players in the World Cup (e.g. Robben, Millito, Olic, Schweinsteiger, Stankovic, Eto'o, Sneijder) Some stats...

There are many sites (e.g. bwin, WilliamHill). I am not sure if this betting falls under the same laws as gambling. Laws have changed here in the last years. Since I was a kid, we were organizing in friendly pools. We were starting with bets on all games of the group stage (1X2) no odds. Since...

If you go back through the list of winners there are basically 4 major teams: Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina These have won 14 out 18 cups. There are 2 cups before the WWII taken by Uruguay, another era. The only "exceptions" are France (1) and England (1), in both cases they were also the...

Debate continued by Los Angeles ... http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B64S20100512

Balack is a good player but not the only German. In fact his contribution was small in the last set of games. Also, he missed many games for Chelsea while they won the Premier League. Germany relies on some Bayern Munich players and others in the domestic league. Their club teams started to...

Such analysis was done at previous cups as well. It's not relevant since football is not statistics. England is a strong team, especially considering their manager. However there are core problems which will stop them short: - Rooney, best forward is injured - main players are hard to recoup...

Happy Birthday Shlomi!=D>=D>=D> Happy Birthday mister Bunicu!=D>=D>=D>

Now it may have changed. When I was an undergrad, and earlier, in your case you had to quite the first school and apply to the other one.

It's arguable when specialization should occur. On one side, the U.S. education system offers a lot of freedom to students. Basically they can keep all their options open in undergrad. The risk is that without grad-school, the hard skills/technical strenght may lack after bachelors degree...

Prerequisites are a requirements but they are not sufficient. In other words, programs won't put a broad list of prerequisites. It allows many applications and flexibility of the applicants. They can show their own strength in academia, work experience etc. People with different backgrounds...

I enjoyed Manoj defense as well. Maybe in the future people that really understand markets will have the chance to talk ...

A friend mentions horse racing. It sounds like the commentary for a long, long, long final stretch ...

It's a corporate and academic goal as well. If the country wants to be competitive in technical fields and the domestic supply is limited, then you have to look outside the borders. That should be the whole idea behind the green-card process. Never say never. If there are enough road-blocks...

The article is biased, conclusion is wrong in my opinion, however it has some good points. The core of the issue is: If the goal is to select only the best, why were 92% low-skilled people approved for green-card? By penalizing 100%, you are baring the access for the 8%. These guys really...

Happy Birthday Vadim!\\:D/

I don't want to divert the discussion. I think this thread is useful to promote Python. On the flipside of your argument programming languages usually have a lot of hype. Few languages have survived the test of time. In this category, I would consider only C++, Java and Fortran. As for the...

I agree that Python or Ruby are gaining ground and they have added exceptional features. However I wouldn't consider Perl irrelevant. It is used more than any other flavor including Python. A lot of system related programming is still done in Perl. Job-offers on tech sites (e.g. Dice) still...

Interesting quiz section: "Are you smart than a GS trader?" Good trading interview questions ...

Yes BM is a scaled random walk (by contruction). Initially you can make simplifying assumptions and deal only with random walks. Another important notion is the reflection principle. In your problem, once you reach point 'a', there is an equal number of paths to reach 'b' and '2a - b' ...

There are many sources of information. Talk to a person that pursued MFE. Pick-up some introductory books from the "master read list" thread on quantnet. Check the curriculum for some MFE programs and peek at the content for a couple of courses. Overall, you should spend at least a few weeks...

90% is a bit exaggerated. Math, as a generic term, is essential, a requirement, however implementation can be just as important. Most MFE will have at least 30% of courses with a heavy implementation side.

I am not a proponent of unlimited influx. I was saying that a process for skilled immigration is required. Simply granting visas to everyone getting a certain degree will be arbitrary and it won't work. Overall, at the global economy, I agree with you that it is a balance induced by this...

There won't be an agreement on this topic. However I think the driver should be the real economy. More specifically, authorities need to set in stone a clear structured process of immigration for "skilled labor". Current process has become excessively bureaucratic. It should involve support...

I said I won't reply on this thread but it seems it never stops. One last reply. tbbear and Marko please censor yourselves from make naive assumptions about users on this forum. In fact, since you have both joined this month, spend a little time to browse around and learn something. Your...

Great job. After a quick browse through the doc, the base framework looks nice and flexible. The next step is to enrich it with more functionality. Do you plan to add some financial related classes?

Many MBA programs don't require finance experience. It seems that your end goal is to work as investment banker. In this case, I would recommend to build a strong application for an MBA school. It can include good recommendations, perfect GMAT, even taking some CFA levels, taking general...

Of course you can apply to investment bank positions and be accepted. However the curriculum, your knowledge gathered during an MFE is focused on quantitative analysis. This is completely different than skills required as an investment banker.

You are all over the place on a clear simple topic. As I tried to explain to you, apparently unsuccessfully, it's not about governments, countries or politics. It's about a company's decision. The company doesn't want to follow censorship requirements of some authorities. Now, public opinion in...

Relax this is a quant forum, not your political ranting website ... First of all, your logic is limited to black vs white. Secondly, you don't distinguish between government and regular people. Thirdly you make no difference between state vs company. Let's take them systematically. Please...

Average American doesn't care about information censorship in China. Whatever system works for them is fine. Google withdraw from China will not affect their immediate balance, however it might be a lost opportunity. The market share was increasing and the overall Internet market is growing in...

If execution speed is the only criteria, then don't use any OOP language. An STL container that can handle generic object types will not offer same performance (memory/access time etc) as a finely tuned custom C collection of structures. A boost smart pointer, will never have the same access...

The brand name is important in some cases. But there are others, not so much: - working experience before/during the MFE - interview comes as a recommendation of a professor/friend/colleague - respective employer is looking for very specific skills

I've sent you a private message. We should not diggress from the subject of this thread ...

This looks like "noise" in the opposite direction. In other words, same politicians, a year ago were blaming these skilled immigrants for taking American jobs. Now they suddenly want to give them a green-card. What changed in the meantime? This is just another rumor to win some votes ...

100% correct! Ilya, I find it weird (to say the least) to advertise all your problems on a public forum. It would be ok to ask for an advice about a program/company. The responses can be a factor from a bigger decision. However asking repeatedly "What do I do?" will lead nowhere. You...

Interesting. In Romania, in my undergrad, most of this curriculum is covered in different classes: all series & polar coordinates are in advanced calculus, eigenfunction expansions&coordinate transformations in linear algebra, separation of variables in ODE (same concept). Even more interesting...

Each of these "elementary PDE" require at least 10 pages. They use Fourier/Laplace transforms, Banach spaces, numerical methods. It depends what is perceived as "elementary":) In my opinion, it would be more useful to focus on ODE in undergrad instead of PDE. There is material for advanced ODE...

I am surprised that Berkeley would consider PDE as a prerequisite. ODE I can understand, but PDE is a deep subject, graduate level. To my knowledge, never heard of "elementary PDE". Even the simplest of them require numerical methods, transforms, spaces etc. Something elementary would find a...

Of course VC++ is a good framework especially for learning. You are correct also that most of C++ and other libraries (e.g. boost) will be fine under both environments. However the truth is that production code in banking does run primarily on UNIX (not just Linux). My response was addressing...

Generally a false statement. Banks may have quite a few developers, they are not buying hundreds of licenses just to develop code in Visual C++. Especially since the code needs to run on UNIX platforms in production anyway. So it would need to be Gnu compliant. .NET is the only Windows based...

I am not trying to downplay, but how can you define success in one year? The students haven't even graduated so we cannot talk about employment statistics. Obviously no alumni working in quant finance. There are no academic contests/olympiads dedicated only for MFE students. The only thing...

The expectations are high and of course the school brand name is strong. However it is a bit of a problem to say that program is phenomenal with no history. Wait another 3-5 years and then it can be ranked ...

Common sense has nothing to do with voting a law. It's all about negotiation between the 2 parties. So far I don't see any of the 41 GOP voting for it. The rest is just hope and speculation ...

I don't have a lot of experience with Java, but I can say what I do in C or Perl. In both of them, I setup signal handlers. In such a function, I consider the thread pool and other downstream dependencies. Basically if your threads ids are collected in a structure, then it's not difficult to...

If SQL is an art then you have to be a genius to use LISP or C++ :) Seriously, the thread is about SQL knowledge for quantitative finance positions. It is very important to know the basis, core statements and concepts, however I doubt that you will get questions about setting up cursors and...

Databases are a broad branch of Comp. Sci. There is plenty of theory behind constraints optimization, optimal table design. There are hundreds of books on database structure, indexes, store-proc design. These are not relevant in this discussion. Relevant part is data-mining. Can you write a...

There are a number of reasons: 1. Commitment of program director for finding job opportunities 2. No separation between part-time/full-time. 3. Good experience (program started in 2002) and growing in brand 4. Emphasis on numerical methods/implementation/stochastic calculus. This is what I want...

I've graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill Comp. Sci. department (around #15 in U.S. at the time). Stats department is much stronger, they were top 5 in the country. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/statistics This means that the program...

First of all, it sounds like you did well in the interview. Congratulations. This comes from one of those IT drones at GS.:) Anyway, it is wrong to over-analyze an opinion or statement from an interview. From my experience and other cases, decisions are not taken so easily. Also, if the...

I doubt that people can comment on incomplete data. There are many PhD's looking for jobs now, having the diploma is not enough. Also, to be direct, work visa matters a lot for big banks. They are under close scrutiny in this area. Furthermore, without knowing much, I could guess that you are...

I have a T60 since 08, no problem. Sometimes I leave it running for 3-4 days. Rest of the time is in hibernate mode, I reboot it once a week (sometimes once a month). The only thing that I don't like is the Lenovo Message Manager application. Other than that, high recommended.

Agreed. I think some people realized there is more room to use the 401k liquidity. You can say if we securitize couple of levels of mortgages, why not try something with 401k as well? So there is a scope creep for 401k, from a pure retirement fund to a pure investment.

This argument would work if the only people going through OPT -> H1B -> GC application are from China and India. In that case, authorities can say diversity is important and they want to limit expansion of certain nationalities. However this is not the case. There are many people from other...

Your question is a bit too generic. If you are refering to desktops, then Andy is right. There is a wide variety of C++ developer frameworks. The code will execute on server-side which is mostly UNIX. So, code would need to compile under a UNIX C++ compiler (e.g. gcc). Some developers may use...

Congratulations to the Saints for producing the surprise at the right time. By the way, any prediction is a guess. If 8 out of 10 say team A will win and B wins it doesn't mean that those 8 were ignorant and chose the wrong option ... Colts were favorites, no question about it.

It is easier than 10 years ago, but isn't the point system still in place? http://www.workpermit.com/uk/uk-immigration-tier-system/tier-1/general-highly-skilled-migrants.htm

I share same opinion here. The number of people going through standard green-card process is lower and lower. EB3 backlog makes it unusable. Also, as an Indian/Chinese, you stand little chanced of getting the green-card by following the legal steps. Some authorities want to reduce immigration...

Well there are some added conditions for U.K. because they have somewhat of a special position in the EU. In the rest of EU, you are correct, workforce has free movement.

Come on, Vikings lost on their own mistakes. Also the refs made some important calls against them. Saints played poorly, definitely worse than expected. Colts should win easily ...

80 hours a week is needed only in some cases. Many others require normal 50-60 hours. You don't have to "work with the market" unless you are really front-office or close to that. For instance, you can work on stress testing, modeling, middle-office credit risk etc. In these areas you would work...

Number of MFE programs is increasing however most of them are very recent. If we go back five years, you could list them all from memory. The base point is that you have to do some research about available choices. Also, more important, you shouldn't choose PhD as an alternative. You should be...

These "solutions" to rebrand a financial product show the core fallacy of this politician approach. People may say CDO are bad, we just ban them, so the politician jumps to meet public sentiment. Laws will be behind the market all the time, no point in trying to catch up. The goal is to...

DB2 or SQL Server have some powerful features. I've seen/updated stored-procedures same as source code with several hundred lines. They were primarily used to aggregate tables from different databases with completely different functions (e.g. inventory data, monitoring data, server information...

A big bank will use all of the enterprise databases. In order I would say: Oracle, DB2, MS SQL, Sybase If the question is focused on tick-data, then I think RRD solutions (KDB or others) backed on disk are still a good option.

Don't worry about syntax this is not the core characteristic of a language. First you need to know the category and half a dozen strengths. For instance, LiSP is a functional language that implements precisely the lambda closures however it also offers internal list processing features. It...

Good question. From the curriculum, it seems a Masters in Finance. Most MFE I've seen will have a large portion of Math and at least 3, 4 classes explicitly core requirements in this area (e.g. PDE, probability, stochastic calculus)

GoIllini provided some good advices especially the one regarding "hedging your statements". If you say something like "I know the O stuff" in a interview, you are very likely setting yourself up for a "massacre". Algorithm complexity is a broad field. Starting from high school, with a CS...

Joe profits indirectly as I suggested. I am not saying that he should be happy that other people are getting a bonus. Just that when people were laid off, Joe lost his clients as well and he was in trouble. This is your opinion, but it's not based on numbers. At the moment services covers...

Invalid point.In this case, let's consider the president or an army general. Their decisions can lead to immediate loss of lives. It sounds like they have a massive negative impact. Invalid point. In your hypothesis those traders will lose their jobs, if they failed "miserably", then they...

He worked in a quantitative area, but I don't think you can consider him a quant. Algorithmic Trading is one area of quantitative finance that is a bit "special". At the moment it is much more oriented on implementation and price discovery rather then models/complex algorithms. Many times...

In a normal market, it is easier to invest than raise funds for the first time. So if she can use her charm and raise funds then I will put some money as well.:)

MBA 100k starting salary was common in 2005-2006. Not anymore. Right now, first challenge is to find a job :)

I agree that the balance may change in 15-20 years. I was just making some "blunt" general statements for this moment in time. Of course if U.S. reaches 100% debt from GDP out of which 50% is covered by China, then it is a whole different game. Other than that, I share some of Chanos "suspicion"...

I have a similar opinion with Alain. Let's assume China stops every commercial/financial business tomorrow. If U.S. relies on China for mass manufacturing, then it can be done by many other countries. Initially it will be tough since a large gap opens up. However, I think it will be filled by...

You are correct Alain that certain jobs like doctors have this income. However you cannot say they don't do anything. That was the important part, getting 100k and doing 0 work, not a bad deal :)

If everyone would have a guaranteed 6 figure salary doing nothing, then 95% of workforce will be actuaries. :) So let's take the last statement, it means there is a contradiction: First one is that actuaries work a lot for the wage. Second is that not everyone is making 100k. Other than that...

I like the first part of your post. Perhaps people thinking about the amount of lies to enrich the CV, should re-read it. After all, Wall Street quant finance is a pretty small world. Well I am sure that bigbadwolf wouldn't call it a rant, probably he would say it is an honest direct...

You should avoid to generalize anything. There are all sorts of people reading your post. Perhaps some of them are naive by your standards. I am sure many of them aren't. I understand your political views, you don't like corporations, any financial company, U.S. society in general. You want...

The discussion on this thread should be focused on quant finance. In general, Eugene and others have good points. If you are taking about a quantitative/CompSci interview, you have to be very careful. You can probably embelish a bit, but it is very risky to blatantly lie. Most things can be...

There are many arguments for each of them. Best advices were given by Dan and Max. Apply to both, go to demmo sessions, talk to students. After that, set a personal preference ranking and wait for the offers. In the end it is a personal decision, no matter what others say. On this forum, you...

No surprise coming from you. However a bit abnormal to come from the leading CQF guy, a quantitative finance degree by all means. He has in the curriculum same "deeply mathematical" models that other MFE programs use. In fact his papers&books are used in his program as well as others. So it...

Sorry I couldn't make it this time. I left the office after 9PM. I will try to be there at the next one ...

I enjoyed "When Genius Failed" as well. A nice book about hedge-fund managers is "Hedgehogs" - Barton Biggs. It is full of stories about lives of managers, it goes into their character, anxieties, flaws, strenghts etc.

Hi GoIllini, I will try to show up a bit later, hopefully around 8:00PM. Stefan

Makes sense. I will try to show up around 7:30-8:00PM. It would be easier to choose a bar/lounge since people show up at different times ...

Nice words, but I don't see a proposal on quantifying placement record. You can consider the employment percentage, the starting salary. These are provided only by some programs. Even these, will not paint the picture. The core question is: how do you quantify a position versus another?

Placement record is a very important factor in choosing any program. After all, the goal is to find a good job at the end. The problem is that it cannot be quantified. More specifically, how can you rate job positions? A program may find all technology jobs for its graduates and so 100%...

Nice video Eugene and a lot of truth about recommendations. The only use for dozens of recommendations is to elevate your ego :)

Happy Birthday Aditya!

We are on opposite positions on this essential topic, all the more reason to discuss :) Even though you don't admit it, you are still looking for the "truth", for the model that works as a law of nature. No such thing. A model can work for 2 years, in certain market conditions, then it can be...

Your approach starts from a hidden assumption: "search for absolute modeling truth". In other words, you see quants as searchers for a perfect model in a market that doesn't follow strict laws. False. Markets are not perfect and most people are not claiming that. The goal is to estimate...

It happened only a couple of times:), but I agree with you here. Humans are driven by fear, rage, gluttony, ego and all other sentiments much more than ration. In fact logical thinking is applied in some cases, but the entire life is build on something else. If we extend to society, I am not...

This is a debate that bigbadwolf would enjoy :) Let's make it simpler since this is not the subject of the thread. MFE requires a strong mathematical foundation, pure science. It also intersects with software engineering, a piece of Computer Science. So I would say it is pretty close, much...

There isn't much detail about either job. With information available, I would tend to agree with GoIllini and choose BlackRock for the brand-name. Furthermore I would stress out that it is useful for anyone to know Perl (or some flavor: PHP, Ruby, Python etc). It offers a clean and flexible...

Is MSME, Masters in Mechanical Engineering? If so, then it is not relevant to finance. If you are interested in quantitative finance, then start gathering information. There are 3, 4 forums with plenty of discussions. It would be useful to sit down and discuss with a couple of students/alumni...

Never say never :) ---------- Post added at 11:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:36 PM ---------- GPA is only one piece of the application for Grad School. It is important but not decisive. First thing is to decide what job you would like in 5 years. Next you have to see if you are...

As Alain said, this is a free country. You cannot force people to stay in the States after graduation. You can offer them good conditions and they might stay, the whole discussion in this thread. If you make a difficult/random path (e.g. visa) then they might leave. I agree with you this is...

Very good point, few people notice it. US universities are financing large majority science/engineering of international grad-school students. They expect some research and of course they expect that student will build a career and add to the name of the school. So far it has worked pretty...

Perhaps I wasn't clear. If you take all employees from both companies, add bonus and base salary, sort them, you cannot say that gs[20000] >> pf[20000] This is all that matters for many employees. The public can be easily manipulated. In times of stress, easiest thing is to point fingers. We...

I agree with GoIllini about value of Finance PhD. In fact I know 2 people working on Wall Street with such a degree. They are in good positions (focused more on econometrics side) and they have pretty safe jobs. The option to teach is always something worthwhile. Many other sciences graduate...

People are judging here only from finance perspective (not pure engineering) Personally I haven't heard of EMS specialization. I can tell about Tibco's product Enterprise Messaging System (EMS) :) Operations/Operational Research is pretty broad area. Some MBA programs even have such a direction...

Relax mate, no need to get so excited about debate online vs classroom. I agree with some opinions from here. Communication with the professor, more importantly with peers is an issue with online classes. However, a friend that Graduated from Columbia OR liked the idea of "re-running" the...

Of course you can. Not all jobs require C++. If we are talking about "research quant" or pure modeling, then Mathlab/SAS/R can be just as useful.

Fully agreed. For people looking for jobs now, it may be a good idea to have a broad view. After all, things may change in a few years and better opportunities will appear.

I was the same place as you last year. The decision is difficult, it is different from one person to another. I can tell you reasons that I had to choose this path. I cannot say if it is right or wrong, I cannot even say if it is right/wrong for me. We can talk in another 5 years :) I have...

Not true. Most items you are refering are corporate services. Only a very small piece is handled by GS employees, most of them are contracted to other companies. GS will focus resources where they are best. There are no bank-tellers, no branch personnel like other commercial banks. Depends on...

2 important observations: Average per employee is not a decisive indicator since the compensation is not distributed uniformly. Certain areas that produced a lot of profit, will likely receive more from the compensation. This applies to any company and it makes sense. Slight, but essential...

This is business, "Uncle Sam" does not own GS so they cannot impose direct trading restrictions. They can ask for liquidity margins, but at the moment they cannot say: at the structured products desk you need to reduce your overall leverage ratio 30->25. Same logic applies to all the other banks...

Correct. This is the main source of frustration/stress/anxiety for H1-B workers. If you are in the financial sector, I would tend to say there is little job security on average. 6 years means at least one major downturn which leads to some major job cuts. So many of these guys might not survive...

Well the whole idea of illegal workers is that employer doesn't abide the law. So they can pay under $7.25 if there are people willing to work ...

It depends. Not too many would rush to wash dishes for 5, 6 bucks an hour.

Ironically, politicians are more reluctant to improve the legal immigration process than accept millions of illegal immigrants. The law matters little compared to the level of competition. Most illegal immigrants have "non-qualified" jobs that have become indispensable, U.S. citizens may not...

Your statement can be found on any MFE website.:) In other words, it is a wish rather than a fact. Personally I have an excellent image for NYU-Courant (not including Poly) and I consider it high in rankings, but since I don't have a metric, there is not much I can argue ...

The fallacy of your argumentation is around who decides competence. Is it Labor Department? Is it the institution/company where person is employed? Since there is no absolute ranking overall for workers between companies, I would tend to say that the company is best positioned to decide. Labor...

Research is a decisive factor for a PhD. That is purely academical, the goal is to find a research area as quickly as possible and work with top names in that area. MFE is a professional degree, the end goal is to find the "best" job possible. This means teaching and practical side are much more...

Many comments, but two things are certain: - few people agree with illegal immigration - GreenCard process is confusing to say the least I agree with both. The second item can be resolved relatively easy, but there is no "political will". A ranking system that requires a certain work experience...

It is as close to 24 hours as you can get on average in the year. More specifically, it is about 20 weekday, 22 week-end:) Times Square is popular for tourists, not so much with regular New Yorkers. If you go on a Monday night at a bar in East Village or Upper West Side or even in other...

Relax, take a deep breath. If you want an order of magnitude for revenue, then it is hundreds of millions/year for "big players". Take the earnings from trading divisions of different banks. A significant percentage from that is from proprietary trading which is based on some quantitative...

You have a limited view on the market. Nobody can predict exactly the price at right time of financial instruments. If he/she would, then with right leverage, you would make billions in few days. Pure prediction is not the job of quantitative finance. This is not black magic. Quantitative...

From the curriculum, I see that a couple of courses are relevant to an MFE program. Core direction seems to be econometrics and microeconomics. Econometrics is useful in financial modeling and it builds a strong statistical foundation that you can apply for calibration or data analysis. Good...

Question is too generic. Depends on the instruments, strategy, risk factors, volume etc.

Happy birthday Alain!

As usual, I will play the "contrarian". Betting on life extension is something that sounds appalling when it is done by traders. However insurance companies may do that when they will charge large premium for life insurance. Or, health insurance companies may try to find any loophole to avoid...

Now that is an idea!=D>

Well if you look back to the market last year, the picture fits well. I was just anticipating Lehman collapse ;)

There are 2 Beer Gardens Traditional place is the one that Doug is refering. It is very large, Astoria Blvd stop. A month ago they've opened a "trendier" place called Studio Square. This is 36ave stop (3rd stop from 59 and Lexington). It is smaller, louder music, similar setup. Even though I...

Vectors of vectors provides very slow access time. It has also storage limitations. Fastest solution is to use a simple array. This provides quick access (continous memory), optimal storage (no fragmentation). The downside is that you need to do some work to write all functions needed for a...

As Al Capone said: "Sometimes we laugh because it's funny, sometimes it's true"

I tend to agree. Still many funds are in the process of massive client redemption. This takes months due to different restrictions. Also, we cannot ignore the loss of confidence in some markets which lead to a flight of investors/capital. Zero sum game applies in some cases but not all. Private...

Self-education is an important part. However graduate level studies are also necessary in most cases. They impose a certain structure, a starting point to delve in certain areas of interest. As I mentioned, there is really no recipe. Start building a strong mathematical foundation and a good...

You can enter quantitative finance from different directions. MFE is just one of them. Applied Math or Finance are others. It all depends on the curriculum of each program and the self-education portion. In this market, there is no "winning/unique recipe" for quant position.

If you want an objective opinion you cannot find it at Glen Beck - Fox. This doesn't mean it is bad or wrong, it just means that it has no value on this forum.

I am taking 9700 (Modern Regression Analysis) this semester. I wanted to take 9701, but there is a conflict schedule with another course. There is time to take it next year ;) https://www.quantnet.com/threads/what-classes-do-you-plan-to-take-next-semester.187/

Look on this thread, post 08-04-2008 05:38 PM Yet another attempt at MFE ranking

Happy Birthday Doug! =D>

Another article that will enrage the "wolves" on the forum :) Commonsense: Don't Hate Goldman For Making Money The Wall Street Journal - 22 Jul 2009 - By James B. Stewart (Copyright (c) 2009, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) Given the public outcry to news of Goldman Sachs's recent record...

Funny, I have the same feeling when reading Taibbi's articles :) Who knows where the truth lies ...

Opinion: Resist The Urge To Punish Success Washington Post - 19 Jul 2009 - By Mark Gimein Copyright 2009, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved Money can't buy love? For proof, look no further than Goldman Sachs. Last week, the firm reported a spectacular quarterly profit -- close to...

Nice article, but I don't see new information. There is a reference about total GS exposure to AIG of 13bn, however there is no mention about the percentage of collateral out of this sum. Without this number, it is impossible to say the immediate impact of AIG bankruptcy. Definitely the wave...

If I remember correctly from David Viniar's conference call, the collateral that GS already had, covered most of the counter-party exposure. I am not sure where you got 10 billion. You may have more information than others. ;) By the way, 10bn loss will not bring down a company that made...

Arguments that I read in these articles are questionable and some of them clearly irrelevant. It is interesting that all of them are personal, subjective. Even more interesting is that they came from people reading about markets from a paper. By the way, GS had a large collateral on the...

I have a different opinion here. First of all there is no evidence that GS or MS would have gone bankrupt. The capital injection in both was not relevant by the amount, but by the government support. The question those days was about counter-party (systemic) risk and confidence. Systemic risk...

It is very difficult to evaluate "what-if" statements. There was tremendous pressure after Lehmann collapsed, it is hard to say what could have happened. One thing is for certain: the investment bank model is working fine. The core of the panic was around the idea that investment banks are...

Each bank has a certain guideline for greencard approval. They are generic, hence many exceptions. Usually you need to wait around 2 years at least. With this market, the banks are even more reluctant to support for greencard.

Old rules, before 07, were uniform for all companies. H1-B visa requires that employer to show that U.S. citizens cannot be found to furfill same technical requirements. However it is somewhat of a generic statement, there is no process to prove it. For instance, for green-card this is much more...

I work at GS - Technology Infrastructure and I am not aware of a change in H1-B hiring. However there may be more flexibility in certain divisions.

Article is 100% subjective, classical political activism. This follows the style of the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi Some facts are presented in the framework of inquisition. Everyone knows 90% of the events in the article, the author does not bring anything new. Only thing...