• C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
    Highly recommended by thousands of MFE students. Covers essential C++ topics with applications to financial engineering. Learn more Join!
    Python for Finance with Intro to Data Science
    Gain practical understanding of Python to read, understand, and write professional Python code for your first day on the job. Learn more Join!
    An Intuition-Based Options Primer for FE
    Ideal for entry level positions interviews and graduate studies, specializing in options trading arbitrage and options valuation models. Learn more Join!

Difference between OR and FE?

Joined
4/5/11
Messages
78
Points
18
Hi all, I have seen some people getting a degree in OR instead of FE. I personally don't know much about OR. So I was wondering what the difference is and what career paths a OR graduate can choose? Any input would be greatly appreciated!
 
Operations Research is a much broader field than Financial Engineering, which is often considered a subdiscipline of O.R.

O.R. is also sometimes referred to as, and overlaps with, "Management Science" and "Decision Science".

You can learn more about O.R. from the website of the main professional association for that field, http://www.informs.org/ , which markets the field as "The Science of Better" :
http://www.scienceofbetter.org/what/index.htm
http://www.scienceofbetter.org/or_executive_guide.pdf

The foremost concept in O.R. is that of optimization, which was pioneered by the late George Dantzig, who invented the Simplex Algorithm which is the key to Linear Programming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm

At some leading universities such as Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton, the Financial Engineering program is run by Operations Research department:
http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/
http://www.orie.cornell.edu/
http://www.orfe.princeton.edu/

With a degree in O.R., you could perhaps get a job at a firm like Google, helping optimize their search functionality or figuring out how to target online advertisements (for example.) With a financial engineering degree, you would more likely obtain a job in a financial institution or in a financial software company.

The key distinction is that an O.R. degree is very broad, with lots of applications outside of finance, while an F.E. degree is much more specialized.

I hope this helps.
 
Back
Top