Advise for a student from a Liberal Arts College

[Sidharth Moktan]

I am currently a junior double majoring in Mathematics and Economics. I am interested in working in the field of finance and I feel that I would be particularly well suited to working in quantitative finance due to my mathematical background. However, I do not know what I need to be doing, in terms of academics or internships, to prepare myself for a career as a Quant. I would greatly appreciate your advise since our school does not have teachers who are well versed in finance.

Here is a list of classes that I have taken and computer languages that I know. Please let me know what I should be trying to learn next.

Cumulative GPA: 3.7; Major GPA:3.9

Classes completed so far:

Partial Differential Eq
Ordinary Differential Eq
Probability Theory
Numerical Analysis
Linear Algebra
Multivariate Calculus
Number Theory
Advanced Econometrics

Classes that I plan on taking before graduation:

Real Analysis 1
Mathematical Statistics
Stochastic Calculus

Computer Languages: STATA, SAS, Python, VBA for Excel and Mathematica

What kinds of internships should I be applying to for the upcoming summer? Given the information above, do you think I have a shot at getting one of these internships? Also, do people generally get an MFE straight out of undergrad or is it possible to work as a Quant without the MFE?

 

[Jay YK Kim]

You seem to have very good mathematical and programming background to start MSFE. A lot of my classmates and me came to MSFE right after finishing undergraduate, and it didn't seem like other universities were very different. I'm not really sure about the second part though. It would be awesome if you have internship from any kinds of banks but I don't think you really need one if your goal right now is to get admission from MSFE.

Working on R and Matlab might be helpful.