Hi everyone! I would like to say that this is a great resource on financial engineering and is helpful in discovering some of the key concepts to learn in order to become a 'quant'.
I just recently graduated from the University of Central Florida with a 3.4 in Actuarial Science and a minor in mathematics. So I took courses like finance, calculus, accounting, statistics, linear algebra, C programming, numerical calculus, time series, regression and time value of money. I did well in one of my professor's courses so he allowed me to take the graduate course on derivatives which covered the entire McDonald book. Basically Black-Scholes, brownian motion, Ito's Lemma, mean reversion, arithmetic, geometric, BDT, the greeks, binomial trees, interest rate caplets / caps, sharpe ratios, etc etc. I also did some projects on Principle Component Analysis, ruin theory and logistic regression. Basically a solid base to start with.
I am finding actuarial work to be boring and slow (I am at an internship for the summer). I really want to get a jump into an asset liability manager / portfolio manager role and see no quick way of getting there. I have already passed the first two SOA exams and possibly the models financial engineering one as well. First exam = probability w/ calculus, set theory, permuations, combinations, multivariate and univariate probability distributions. Second exam = time value of money, basic hedging, arbitrage, puts, calls, futures, swaps, futures, forwards.
Glancing over the list of this year's Baruch program members. It seems that I am slightly outclassed by everyone there... Several PhDs, multiple masters on masters and all crazy high GPAs. I think my problem is that throughout my schooling I have never really been challenged. I could attend class, not do the homework, study a little bit before test day (usually on test day) and pass the tests. I didn't care too much if I got the B or an A.
I am just trying to find the quickest way into a more financial position that deals with financial derivatives and based on what I have seen from these programs is that I am about 2-4 years out from being able to be accepted. In the meantime I am either getting the Hull book or Fabozzi's and going to work on MBS.
p.s. How much different is C++ from C?
I just recently graduated from the University of Central Florida with a 3.4 in Actuarial Science and a minor in mathematics. So I took courses like finance, calculus, accounting, statistics, linear algebra, C programming, numerical calculus, time series, regression and time value of money. I did well in one of my professor's courses so he allowed me to take the graduate course on derivatives which covered the entire McDonald book. Basically Black-Scholes, brownian motion, Ito's Lemma, mean reversion, arithmetic, geometric, BDT, the greeks, binomial trees, interest rate caplets / caps, sharpe ratios, etc etc. I also did some projects on Principle Component Analysis, ruin theory and logistic regression. Basically a solid base to start with.
I am finding actuarial work to be boring and slow (I am at an internship for the summer). I really want to get a jump into an asset liability manager / portfolio manager role and see no quick way of getting there. I have already passed the first two SOA exams and possibly the models financial engineering one as well. First exam = probability w/ calculus, set theory, permuations, combinations, multivariate and univariate probability distributions. Second exam = time value of money, basic hedging, arbitrage, puts, calls, futures, swaps, futures, forwards.
Glancing over the list of this year's Baruch program members. It seems that I am slightly outclassed by everyone there... Several PhDs, multiple masters on masters and all crazy high GPAs. I think my problem is that throughout my schooling I have never really been challenged. I could attend class, not do the homework, study a little bit before test day (usually on test day) and pass the tests. I didn't care too much if I got the B or an A.
I am just trying to find the quickest way into a more financial position that deals with financial derivatives and based on what I have seen from these programs is that I am about 2-4 years out from being able to be accepted. In the meantime I am either getting the Hull book or Fabozzi's and going to work on MBS.
p.s. How much different is C++ from C?