Hello everyone.
A little bit about myself: I have one year towards a PhD in Statistics from a program that ranks ~20. Before that I completed a masters in financial mathematics from a top 3 program. GPA 4.0/4.0 from both (if that matters), and I will have three publications when graduating, in good journals.
My research has revolved around mathematical finance (option pricing and model calibration), and my "areas of expertise" would be stochastic calculus and probability. I have also done a lot of coursework related to financial math, simulation, programming, etc.
I have no internship experience.
My goal is to land an internship or a full time position starting in summer/fall 2015. To give an idea about the kind of position I am looking for, my dream position would be a research quant at Goldman Sachs.
I would basically like to start preparing today, and I have a few questions:
-I will start practicing brain teasers and other typical interview questions. Is Heard on the street a good starting point for that?
-Due to my research, I have not had too much time to follow financial markets and the world economy.
I feel like I should be on top of those things before interviewing. However, I don't want to waste time reading news articles and blogs that basically is nothing but "noise", so I'm wondering how to consume the most relevant information? Should I simply subscribe to the economist and look at Bloomberg? Any newsletters that I should subscribe to?
-I would like to read a bit about financial markets and how they operate, is that a waste of time? I have some knowledge about it from my research, i.e. I know about the limit order book, market orders, limit orders, etc. and I understand concepts like liquidity and latency. Is that basically sufficient? I was thinking about books like the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Excha...re-Practitioners/dp/0195144708/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/Empirical-Mar...ns-Econometrics/dp/0195301641/ref=pd_sim_b_15
-Programming: I am not one of the guys who have been programming since they were kids, but I have taken nightmarish C++ and java courses that involved programming for 30 hours per week. Matlab is sufficient for my research work so I have not been using those programming languages, but I am going to brush of my C++/Java skills and maybe try to learn a little about the more advanced features of C++.
-I feel like my masters degree is going to help me to some extent. It helps having the name of that institution on my resume, and it give me access to some employment opportunities that are only open to their students. However, I sometimes wonder whether it is going to hurt my chances to have a PhD from a lesser institution? It essentially looks like I was not good enough to get into the better PhD program. The truth is that after working my socks of in the masters program, I applied for the PhD program, was waitlisted and then eventually admitted in April, but without secure funding for the first year. By that time I had already accepted an offer from a university that showed much interest in having me and offered me a fellowship. I thought that was something I should appreciate and decided to go there. I guess there is nothing I can do about this now, but is it something that I should be worrying about?
-My preferred destinations are NY/SF/Chicago, but I would also consider places like London and Switzerland (I'm European). Im just wondering, is Hong Kong a realistic option for someone like me that has never been to Asia and is looking for an entry level position?
This post ended up being a little longer than I anticipated, but I would greatly appreciate any advice you can give me and let me know if anything is unclear. What I am trying to do is simply to prepare as well as possible and maximize my chances of landing a job.
A little bit about myself: I have one year towards a PhD in Statistics from a program that ranks ~20. Before that I completed a masters in financial mathematics from a top 3 program. GPA 4.0/4.0 from both (if that matters), and I will have three publications when graduating, in good journals.
My research has revolved around mathematical finance (option pricing and model calibration), and my "areas of expertise" would be stochastic calculus and probability. I have also done a lot of coursework related to financial math, simulation, programming, etc.
I have no internship experience.
My goal is to land an internship or a full time position starting in summer/fall 2015. To give an idea about the kind of position I am looking for, my dream position would be a research quant at Goldman Sachs.
I would basically like to start preparing today, and I have a few questions:
-I will start practicing brain teasers and other typical interview questions. Is Heard on the street a good starting point for that?
-Due to my research, I have not had too much time to follow financial markets and the world economy.
I feel like I should be on top of those things before interviewing. However, I don't want to waste time reading news articles and blogs that basically is nothing but "noise", so I'm wondering how to consume the most relevant information? Should I simply subscribe to the economist and look at Bloomberg? Any newsletters that I should subscribe to?
-I would like to read a bit about financial markets and how they operate, is that a waste of time? I have some knowledge about it from my research, i.e. I know about the limit order book, market orders, limit orders, etc. and I understand concepts like liquidity and latency. Is that basically sufficient? I was thinking about books like the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Excha...re-Practitioners/dp/0195144708/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/Empirical-Mar...ns-Econometrics/dp/0195301641/ref=pd_sim_b_15
-Programming: I am not one of the guys who have been programming since they were kids, but I have taken nightmarish C++ and java courses that involved programming for 30 hours per week. Matlab is sufficient for my research work so I have not been using those programming languages, but I am going to brush of my C++/Java skills and maybe try to learn a little about the more advanced features of C++.
-I feel like my masters degree is going to help me to some extent. It helps having the name of that institution on my resume, and it give me access to some employment opportunities that are only open to their students. However, I sometimes wonder whether it is going to hurt my chances to have a PhD from a lesser institution? It essentially looks like I was not good enough to get into the better PhD program. The truth is that after working my socks of in the masters program, I applied for the PhD program, was waitlisted and then eventually admitted in April, but without secure funding for the first year. By that time I had already accepted an offer from a university that showed much interest in having me and offered me a fellowship. I thought that was something I should appreciate and decided to go there. I guess there is nothing I can do about this now, but is it something that I should be worrying about?
-My preferred destinations are NY/SF/Chicago, but I would also consider places like London and Switzerland (I'm European). Im just wondering, is Hong Kong a realistic option for someone like me that has never been to Asia and is looking for an entry level position?
This post ended up being a little longer than I anticipated, but I would greatly appreciate any advice you can give me and let me know if anything is unclear. What I am trying to do is simply to prepare as well as possible and maximize my chances of landing a job.
