I am looking at a change in career. I have been a financial auditor for 4 years (I'm 26) and I'm bored with the lack of brain power it requires. I have been researching different careers for the past couple of months and I think quantitative finance could be a good fit for me. I have two bachelor's degrees (finance + accounting) and I know a decent level of programming in R and Python already (trying to refresh my knowledge currently). I am now looking into my options of schooling to potentially make a quantitative career a reality. The side of being a quant that I would most enjoy would be math/stats/modeling aspects so I think I would want to learn these subjects well. I haven't taken math since business calc, 8 years ago, so I feel that I'd be miles behind on math knowledge if I went straight into a masters program. What options would I reasonably have to go down this road? These are currently my thoughts of options:
- Apply to masters programs and try my best to keep up with the math? This would likely be a mid tier program but overall the quickest into the field. I do worry about job prospects without really good math knowledge and likely coming from a mediocre school.
- Stay in my job another year or so and take some calc and linear algebra etc. classes at my local community college? Would allow me to save up to cover most of the cost of the program and get me somewhat up to speed on the necessary math.
- Go and get a bachelor's degree in math to then be in much better standing when applying for masters programs? This would likely look like doing a year of community college for lower division classes then transfering to a 4 year college to finish the degree. Again, I would get time to save up for the costs of education. I would have significantly better knowledge of math/stats and likely have a significantly better shot at getting into a target school. I also think this could be the most personally rewarding path. I don't know if this is way too much time, money and effort for what is actually needed as I haven't heard of too many other people having done the same thing.
For what it's worth, I am a good learning and was always good at math so my lack of math background doesn't feel inhibitive to learning it, I just need the time to learn it.
Any thoughts and insights would be massively appreciated. Thank you in advance.
- Apply to masters programs and try my best to keep up with the math? This would likely be a mid tier program but overall the quickest into the field. I do worry about job prospects without really good math knowledge and likely coming from a mediocre school.
- Stay in my job another year or so and take some calc and linear algebra etc. classes at my local community college? Would allow me to save up to cover most of the cost of the program and get me somewhat up to speed on the necessary math.
- Go and get a bachelor's degree in math to then be in much better standing when applying for masters programs? This would likely look like doing a year of community college for lower division classes then transfering to a 4 year college to finish the degree. Again, I would get time to save up for the costs of education. I would have significantly better knowledge of math/stats and likely have a significantly better shot at getting into a target school. I also think this could be the most personally rewarding path. I don't know if this is way too much time, money and effort for what is actually needed as I haven't heard of too many other people having done the same thing.
For what it's worth, I am a good learning and was always good at math so my lack of math background doesn't feel inhibitive to learning it, I just need the time to learn it.
Any thoughts and insights would be massively appreciated. Thank you in advance.
