An ex Risk Trader seeking advice on career matters

[niket]

It is a very informative site for Quant aspirants, but the only hitch is , aspirants are active and I guess once they are in the industry they do not give a clear picture of the placement senario.
After nearly spending a week reading through the post I have gathered a lot , but some queries are yet to be answered. Hope the forum will be generous in answering the queries :
Country National : Indian
Graduation : Bachelors in Engineering (Electronics)
Post Graduation : MBA Finance
First Job : TCS (Worked as a Business Analyst in the alogorithmic trading product division for a year)
Second Job : Quant Risk Trader employing basic quant strategies such as statistical arbitrague , long short crossovers for 2 years (Excelent in VBA Excel and basic MATLAB)
Third Job : Manufacturing Industry (Joined Family business due to personal reasons and am working here for 4 years)

I m also a visiting faculty teaching Financial Management in my alumnus. My love for finance and quants has now convinced me to take a strong stand to return back to my quant industry. And to do that after a gap of 4 years is difficult , hence I plan to arm myself with a more specialized degree

I m looking for advice on the following :

• Can we have a percentage to the placements in the top 25 Universities in US offering MFE?
• Can we have a percentage to the NTU , NUS and SMU offering MFE
  
• I m already 30 and going for it would mean a lot of investment and I ll be completing the course maybe when I m 33-34, I have always tried to quantify risk , and I m unable to do so in this case

Thanks and Regards,

 

[ygmwy]

You don't need an MFE. You will be wasting your time and money. As you said, it's a big investment, and it might not have much risk (besides losing almost $100K in tuition money) but there is almost no marginal benefit given your background. I'm sure you'll get in, but most people that hire from MFE programs are not looking for experienced hires, and you will probably want a more senior quant role after graduation. Thus, you should be willing to take a few steps back in pay/position, or do what I think you should do: don't be lazy and just apply for jobs!

One alternative if you really want to do classes though, is to do a certificate program (a non-degree program) where you take a few classes (possibly remotely). I know Columbia has a good program, but not sure about others. With your background, it shouldn't be a problem. Another thing to note is that what is learned in MFE programs is 90% useless in practice.