Education Forethought: Oper. Research / Finance / Mathematics / Comp Sci

[Dustin]

Hey Everyone,

First off, I'd like to thank all of you for this place to soak in invaluable information. I've been a lurker for a few weeks now as I've somewhat recently become infatuated with this line of work. I finally decided to request some insight into your opinions on grad school if you'll be so kind as to aid me. I'm still finishing up my undergrad and trying to look ahead to prepare myself.

UW-Milwaukee: Double Major
-Computational Mathematics
-Applied Mathematics & Computer Science

Pentair: ERP Programmer Analyst Co-Op

Programming:
-Java
-C, C++, C#
-SQL
-Python
-MatLab
-Little bit of R
​

Enough about my background, here is the question at hand.

​

There are the options I have been looking at:

Operations Research / Finance / Mathematics / Comp Sci​

What benefits would each degree bring uniquely, which would you suggest, and why?

(I apologize if I'm reiterating a question that has been answered to someone of seemingly similar circumstances. Any advice or direction you can give me will be greatly appreciated.)

Thanks,

Dustin

 

[SadKillarrious]

Hey Dustin,

No one can really answer this for you. All comes down to what you like doing. As far as salary after a masters, I would say all our within a fairly decent range 70k-120k. Obviously if your the top 1%, you can make a lot more in finance, but given your school (im not judging, my undergrad was uw-mil too) I would say that making 200k/yr as a quant is still more of a dream even at your point in school. I would say do what makes your happy. Me personally, I was a finance undergrad and now I'm getting masters in applied math from UIUC. My senior year I realized that I was going contribute nothing to society besides making rich people richer, and that did not sit well with me. I think I found a love with CFD thankfully.

 

[Dustin]

Ok, that helps to answer my question in whether there is a benefit/disadvantage to traveling down a certain path. I've got a little payoff matrix in my head combining enjoyment/career progress essentially. I completely understand the comment about UW-Milwaukee though. I'm not exactly proud when I list it, but it came to the choice of transferring for one degree from a more prestigious school or two from Milwaukee in four/five years. I've got to prove myself a bit more than from another school, but I think I'm coming out with more knowledge in the long run.

Thanks for your input and I hope everything works out for you at UIUC!

 

[SadKillarrious]

Yeah I mean why spend 200k at an ivy when you can get your grad degree there for 50k-60k. A lot of the programs you mentioned are pretty closely related, so imagine you could even take a blend of classes. I know OR MFE and applied math all deal with performing numerical analysis and if you choose stochastic modeling. The CS will be more concerned with designing and understanding systems. Good luck though man.

If you get residency in Wisconsin UW-Madison would be cheap and a strong program plus 1A football