Hello all,
I'm contemplating several options and anyones opinion will be appreciated.
Disclaimer - Long and boring life story, jump to the end for the actual questions
.
Background:
I grew up in a house where the Stock Market was the talk of the day, my father used to have a small company where he managed the stock portfolio of his clients. He is now retired but still invest in the markets and manage peoples portfolios.
When I went to school for my undergrad (2004-2008, Electrical Engineering) the High-Tech world still seemed to be a good option where one can work in an interesting field and still have the option to make big bucks. Later on I reveled this to be quite far-fetched from reality , the size of the capital you need to have to make it is quite large and mostly unfeasible.
Post Undergrad:
I finished my B.Sc EE at around July 2008 , right in time for the huge crisis
There was no jobs on the market and everyone was firing like crazy, by that time I already understood that if one want to make a good living than the shortest path to money is by working with money. This is when I started to hear about Financial Engineering as the root of the crisis and I fell in love with the notion of using what I learned and loved in Engineering to make money, instead of doing the long and extrusive route from idea->prototype->product->marketing->sales->money that a regular EE take, this was very charming to me, no bullshit, aiming for the end goal right from the beginning.
I started looking for MFE programs and discovered that there are none in Israel, out of Israel was contemplated but wasn't really an option due to the immense cost and post crisis financial situation.
Going back to school:
Finally I decided to continue in the route of EE and started a M.Sc here in Israel. I'm about to finish it, I'm quite disappointed , my advisors turned out to be really useless and clueless which was quite a surprise considering they each have ~200 publications and one of them is truly a master in his field.
Conclusions:
*The academia is overrated, most of the Professors and researches I have seen are far from impressive.
*All the degrees in the world won't make up for making too little money and being broke.
*Choose your degree not solely on the basis of interest , availability etc. Put a large emphasis on career choices and salary since this is what you'll be stuck with for decades after you finish the degree.
The questions:
1.PhD vs MFE:
1.1.Are there any PhD program in Financial Engineering?
1.2.Considering the answer to 1 is no, what would be the closet thing? Statistics? Finance?
1.3.How does the job market treat for example PhD in Statistics VS MFE ? In terms of positions, salary, number of available jobs?
2.USA vs the world:
2.1.I'm contemplating whether to do a PhD/MFE in the US or not, the biggest factor going for the USA is the connections, I assume that studying in a class where some students/professors are already employed where you want is an obvious huge advantage.
2.2.Price, USA tuition , housing etc is more expensive than most of the world so saving this large expense is obviously important.
2.3.Brand name, as we all know, places like Harvard , MIT etc are super-brand-names world wide. The question is how narrow minded companies are? For example, Israel is quite known for having large amount of patents and other ground-breaking research come out of it yet the universities here are somewhere around the top 100 world wide (which I think is underrated) probably due to political reasons amongst other subjective criteria by the rating bodies.
Will a Barclays HR throw away a PhD from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem university simply due to him not hearing of it or will they consider these places as a valid recruiting groud?
3.Getting a job in the US/UK.
3.1.One of the major advantages to doing a degree in the US/UK is that you get to stay and work there which is a huge plus. The salaries are much bigger and FE is much more developed there than here.
4.Admissions.
4.1.Most US institutes require GMAT/GRE etc , I haven't done these since here we have different local exams. Doing these and all the other huge amount of bureaucratic paper work that require to apply to a US school will probably take a year which I can use here to finish ~20% of a degree.
I think this is a long enough post
I'm contemplating several options and anyones opinion will be appreciated.
Disclaimer - Long and boring life story, jump to the end for the actual questions
.Background:
I grew up in a house where the Stock Market was the talk of the day, my father used to have a small company where he managed the stock portfolio of his clients. He is now retired but still invest in the markets and manage peoples portfolios.
When I went to school for my undergrad (2004-2008, Electrical Engineering) the High-Tech world still seemed to be a good option where one can work in an interesting field and still have the option to make big bucks. Later on I reveled this to be quite far-fetched from reality , the size of the capital you need to have to make it is quite large and mostly unfeasible.
Post Undergrad:
I finished my B.Sc EE at around July 2008 , right in time for the huge crisis
There was no jobs on the market and everyone was firing like crazy, by that time I already understood that if one want to make a good living than the shortest path to money is by working with money. This is when I started to hear about Financial Engineering as the root of the crisis and I fell in love with the notion of using what I learned and loved in Engineering to make money, instead of doing the long and extrusive route from idea->prototype->product->marketing->sales->money that a regular EE take, this was very charming to me, no bullshit, aiming for the end goal right from the beginning.
I started looking for MFE programs and discovered that there are none in Israel, out of Israel was contemplated but wasn't really an option due to the immense cost and post crisis financial situation.
Going back to school:
Finally I decided to continue in the route of EE and started a M.Sc here in Israel. I'm about to finish it, I'm quite disappointed , my advisors turned out to be really useless and clueless which was quite a surprise considering they each have ~200 publications and one of them is truly a master in his field.
Conclusions:
*The academia is overrated, most of the Professors and researches I have seen are far from impressive.
*All the degrees in the world won't make up for making too little money and being broke.
*Choose your degree not solely on the basis of interest , availability etc. Put a large emphasis on career choices and salary since this is what you'll be stuck with for decades after you finish the degree.
The questions:
1.PhD vs MFE:
1.1.Are there any PhD program in Financial Engineering?
1.2.Considering the answer to 1 is no, what would be the closet thing? Statistics? Finance?
1.3.How does the job market treat for example PhD in Statistics VS MFE ? In terms of positions, salary, number of available jobs?
2.USA vs the world:
2.1.I'm contemplating whether to do a PhD/MFE in the US or not, the biggest factor going for the USA is the connections, I assume that studying in a class where some students/professors are already employed where you want is an obvious huge advantage.
2.2.Price, USA tuition , housing etc is more expensive than most of the world so saving this large expense is obviously important.
2.3.Brand name, as we all know, places like Harvard , MIT etc are super-brand-names world wide. The question is how narrow minded companies are? For example, Israel is quite known for having large amount of patents and other ground-breaking research come out of it yet the universities here are somewhere around the top 100 world wide (which I think is underrated) probably due to political reasons amongst other subjective criteria by the rating bodies.
Will a Barclays HR throw away a PhD from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem university simply due to him not hearing of it or will they consider these places as a valid recruiting groud?
3.Getting a job in the US/UK.
3.1.One of the major advantages to doing a degree in the US/UK is that you get to stay and work there which is a huge plus. The salaries are much bigger and FE is much more developed there than here.
4.Admissions.
4.1.Most US institutes require GMAT/GRE etc , I haven't done these since here we have different local exams. Doing these and all the other huge amount of bureaucratic paper work that require to apply to a US school will probably take a year which I can use here to finish ~20% of a degree.
I think this is a long enough post
