Interview with Baruch MFE's Dan Stefanica and Jim Gatheral

Risk.net interviews Dan Stefanica, director of Baruch MFE program and Jim Gatheral, presidential professor about the program's success and how it is evolving with the changing technology. They discuss how large language models (LLMs) are already being integrated: students are encouraged to use them for coding, reflecting a shift where “every quant has become a better coder.”
According to Gatheral, coding is now central to every assignment: “We don’t teach coding but every assignment we give involves coding.”

Quantcast Master’s Series: Dan Stefanica and Jim Gatheral - Risk.net

Baruch College leaders on how they manage the top-ranked quant finance master’s programme

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[xeusclay]

This is really insightful and exciting! Thank you for sharing

 

[Andy Nguyen]

For those applying to Baruch MFE, this kind of high-level insights can be extremely valuable as you can learn about their admission strategies, criteria for picking candidates, career path, etc.

 

[rajivp]

"if you can’t code, it’s pretty hopeless" - Stuff like that has made me feel like coding has become a core part of the game now, you can’t really just ride the ‘I’m good at math’ bus anymore and expect to get far.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

"if you can’t code, it’s pretty hopeless" - Stuff like that has made me feel like coding has become a core part of the game now, you can’t really just ride the ‘I’m good at math’ bus anymore and expect to get far.

It may be the first time you hear it from the horse's mouth who put it very bluntly but it's been the name of the game for as long as I remember. Lot of people think I'm good at math so I'm going to kill it. The reality is that on the first day they will be asked to make things work, get it better, fix broken things. This would involve knowing how to code, debug code, run sql, learn technical skills very fast.
There is no whiteboard with stochastic calculus for you to solve there.
It would be a disservice for programs not to state this more blatantly to applicants. But again, Baruch MFE is not your typical program.

 

[rajivp]

Could not agree more