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Considering my options, advice?

RiskyTerp

Joined
10/13/12
Messages
3
Points
11
Hello Guys, I'm new to this forum and am looking for some advice/recommendations. Currently I am a market risk analyst at a forex technology company. The company is evolving and my position is becoming a quant like position, automated trading and such. This is my first job out of college. Have a BS in Math from a tier 1 university with a 2.7 gpa and 3 actuarial exams (including financial economics). I'm working on bringing that up with part time classes. In a couple years I would like to be able to be able to get into a good mathematical finance program.

The goal is that I will have work experience and good recommendations from established quants, one MIT grad. Also my quant gre was a 165 which I want to bring up. What kind of advice can you guys give me? As you can see my gpa is low but I have some other stuff in my favor. Also I do have programming skills.
 
After reading through the QuantNet Guide I'm thinking I am going to take a couple programming courses to boost my gpa a bit and become a more efficient programmer. In your opinion, would getting my ASA, associate of the society of actuaries, be helpful to get into grad school? I am not too far away and could have it by the end of 2013.
 
Given your handle, I suspect we have our B.S. Math from the same institution. (Mine was long ago, but along with homegrown wizardly APL it cleared a path for me into quant, albeit pre-MFE.)

Given your circumstances & background, I'd suggest you might do well to recalibrate your path: rather than MFE, you can build on your experience with data science & stats/machine learning (and yes more programming), and take the CFA route to cover finance.
 
That is an interesting idea which I have been pondering for a while. Originally I was thinking about getting an MS in finance instead of financial engineering. Getting a CFA would be easy relative to my ASA I am planning to get. Have you seen people get jobs as quants with a B.S. and a CFA?

I personally like school, though I get poor grades in easy courses in challenging courses I do well. I like to eventually get a doctorate which is the reason for wanting to complete a masters degree first.
 
I got by on B.S. and on-the-job self-training but those were different times (CFA was new, I didn't bother).
But you're positioned to benefit both from work experience (evolving with it) and from outside study; CFA rec was specific to your ASA endeavor. MS in engineering or suchlike (with big data getting bigger) + programming chops + CFA demonstrates the necessary skillsets (broader range but less integrated than MFE; but in this environment you got to differentiate yourself ;) )
 
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