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CMU MSCF CMU Undergraduate Computational Finance

NickTri

NickTri

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Joined
9/28/09
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Hey Quantnet forum,

I was recently accepted into the CMU - Mellon College of Science and I am planning on majoring in Computational Finance and maybe minoring in business or computer science.

I just wanted to know how CMU's undergraduate program is regarded by employers and if it is a good choice for an aspiring quant.

I appreciate your comments :)

Thanks,

Nick
 
My personal opinion : CMU's program is probably the best one in this field. If you would like to become a quant. I don't think you can go wrong with CMU !! Congrats on the admin.
 
CMU is a good school, congrats.

My concern is limiting factor of computational finance. Can you get a job outside of finance with it?? Thus I would recommend the minor in computer science because it compliments computational finance but also broadens your range of skills for other potential jobs.
 
Where did you read this?

Avgasian said:
A lot of reading around the internet makes it seem like the only way to grab a high-quality trading position is the highly-coveted BSCF program and thus, I'm kinda worried about that 10 student cap per year...
Click to expand...
 
Avgasian said:
wallstreetoasis I think. Maybe it was just some ranting IBanker...
Click to expand...

If the program has a cap of 10 students a year.. there are a lot of people doing S&T, so the rest had to come from somewhere.

You probably don't want to limit / pigeon-hole yourself by doing a CF bachelors, because you may be interested in other things four or five years down the line.
 
Thanks for the reply! True, at the moment I have my heart set on finance but I'm torn between banking and trading, which I understand are two entirely different beasts. What would you suggest instead for a degree that demonstrates a desire to succeed while maintaining flexibility?

Some choices I'm looking at:

BSBA + computer science minor <-(this looks the most attractive to me, as SCS is AMAZING)
BSBA + computational finance minor
BSBA only along the Finance track
 
I would question the BSBA. Business Administration without a concentration isn't very useful for anything in my opinion, and a degree in Finance-only doesn't make you very competitive.

You should ultimately study something that interests you, but I will say in my opinion business overall (finance, marketing, operations, etc) has become more quantitative and is likely to only become more so.
 
why would an undergraduate degree in computational finance be bad? doesn't it get you the same placement the master program would? i guess you could argue that you would have less options if you didn't enjoy the computational finance work, but i don't think that would stop me personally.
 
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