Well here's an update...since I applied to Stony Brook's applied math/stat a month late for the PhD program, I got shot down, so no grad school for me.
I'm first in line for a stat-arb trading position at Echo Trade (should one become available). A senior equity trader VP came by to our school looking specifically for the "quants" (VWA-HA!...actually, there is a PhD quant in the class...my favorite professor's jewel PhD student...she's a really wonderful lady and just heart-warming to be around.), and I was the only one that met him from the quant end of the university, along with 3 other people from the business school. Three of us got treated to dinner, we had a great talk, and so, I'm first in line from the entire university for any stat-arb positions.
Of course, I'm also looking into the Japanese auto manufacturers for any positions which could benefit from OR. Vanilla finance puts me to sleep and there's no way I can work xty hour days simply grinding along. I need to do something intellectually challenging or I get irritated too quickly.
Also...in case I literally get nothing, I'm at least keeping a daily blog (
http://ikquant.wordpress.com) to keep busy. Thank goodness for tenth grade writing abilities which got me out of a year of English of college.
Oh, and then there's the 60th anniversary of the OR department coming up in six days, where I'll present some undergrad QF research that I currently have going.
Also, I'll communicate more often through the blog, because most of the time, I get a "all servers are busy" or timeout here on QN when trying to access my account for the most part, so...yeah.