Opportunities After MFE

[wshopeful]

What opportunities do you have after graduating from a top level MFE school (think Columbia, NYU, Carnegie, etc.)? Most research roles are reserved for PhDs and a lot of MFE graduates become Quant Developers, but I do not want to code for a career. Can anyone clarify the opportunities? Thanks.

 

[Lyosha]

If you don't want to "code for a career", you're in the wrong field. Most quants spend >50% of their time writing code.

Probably the lightest in coding terms is risk management, but even there most of the risk managers I know write significant code (and trust me, if you hate coding in a real language, you'll HATE doing it in VBA...)

 

[Andy Nguyen]

What jobs available to you depend on a lot of things: your prior background, your interview skills, the career services network, timing.
You said you do not want to code but do you know what you want to do for a career? How would you know it's the right choice?

 

[roni]

If you don't have a CS degree, most likely you won't be a developer after an MFE program (Even if you want it)... only few programs (CMU and Baruch I think) will really help you obtain good coding skills... yet, CS majors probably have better programming skills (1.5 year VS at least 4 years of programming)... at least that's the impression I got from employers at our technical career fair.
If you don't want to be a developer, you can probably go into risk management or trading... but neither of these jobs require an MFE degree...they hire technical people, though.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

only few programs (CMU and Baruch I think) will really help you obtain good coding skills...

My guess is that they know that coding skill will get their students job during good or bad time, given that every other MFE programs are teaching the same thing.
When all the exotic structuring, derivatives, prop trading are fading, banks still need people to maintain their models, data still need to be processed everyday, and we have all the MFE aspirants looking to be the next big trader for GS and look down on jobs in risk management, it's something to keep in mind.

Mr. Ken Abbott would have much more to say on this alternative career in risk management.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

You don't want to code for a career? How do you think you're going to do any work? How will you read in data, perform calculations, etc. etc. etc.?

Even if you're doing "research", which I actually currently am at home, you're going to be coding. In fact, I'll put it to you this way:

It's the 21st century. How exactly do you expect to be able to do anything scientific/technological/engineering/mathematics related without giving a computer instruction? In order to give a computer instruction, you have to write code in almost all cases.

 

[Yang_Pop]

My guess is that they know that coding skill will get their students job during good or bad time, given that every other MFE programs are teaching the same thing.
When all the exotic structuring, derivatives, prop trading are fading, banks still need people to maintain their models, data still need to be processed everyday, and we have all the MFE aspirants looking to be the next big trader for GS and look down on jobs in risk management, it's something to keep in mind.

Mr. Ken Abbott would have much more to say on this alternative career in risk management.

Hi, Andy:

I thinks you're right about this. But what if I want to be a trader? What's the career path of a trader, and how MFE program gonna help?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I wish I know a blueprint to become a trader after MFE. It seems everyone wants to be a trader these days.
Why not open a trading account and try to make money off your personal money first? If you can do that, well, becoming a trader is at least something you experience first hand.