Recent Grad Looking For Advice

[EvanMcM]

So, as the title says, I'm a recent grad (undergraduate) with a degree in finance from a very small private university in the midwest.

I'm having an insanely hard time trying to break into the industry, and prospects are not looking good. My goal is to end up as a trader, buy or sell-side. That was my goal going into school but for many reasons, it's been nearly impossible for me to make any real progress.

I hesitate to write my whole story out, although I know I'll get the typical questions. Prefer to answer them as they come to avoid a wall of text.

After speaking to several people in the industry, and doing a ton of research, I'm wondering if an MFE would be something I should consider. I'm not scared of the work at all. My biggest concern is getting into a program, hopefully something in the top 15. I've started prepping for the GRE, and have started speaking with professors at my undergrad university about perhaps going back to take some prep courses. Also, I've been reaching out to faculty members at various programs to learn as much as I can. However, I know that ultimately my transcript and GPA are going to hold me back.

What I'm mostly wondering is how much will my undergrad record pull me back given an extremely high GRE and great letters of recommendation? Without trying to sound arrogant, GRE material doesn't worry me in the least. I've had exceptional reading and writing skills my whole life. and GRE math doesn't seem difficult either, especially not with some solid prep work. I believe I could, with work, obtain a very, very high GRE score. Apart from that, continuing to reach out to program faculty seems like a good idea as well.

Thanks so much in advance for any advice.

 

[Ian Kaplan]

If you GPA was not that good undergrad do you think that you're ready for the commitment that will be required for graduate level work in a Masters program? The difficulty of graduate classes is much higher than undergrad classes.

 

[mhy]

Have you taken all the math/programming classes listed as requirements on MFE programs' admission websites? (Example-for CMU: http://tepper.cmu.edu/prospective-students/masters/masters-in-computational-finance/admissions)

Almost everyone in an MFE program has a (nearly) perfect score in the quantitative section of the GRE so you should view that as a given. Believe me, once you start taking MFE courses, you will wish you could go back to the GRE. A high verbal score will help but not much.

Also, have you considered going for a MFin (Masters in Finance)? It is somewhat less technical and falls somewhere in between an MBA in Finance and an MFE.

 

[EvanMcM]

I had a feeling my academic abilities would be called into question, and that's absolutely fair.

My best answer is this:

My overall GPA is 3.12. Much of this is due to an extreme bout with illness during my junior year that basically knocked me down to the point where I was barely able to pass several classes. Unfortunately, you can't see that just looking at a GPA, but it is the case. The rest of my low GPA came not from my inability to do coursework, or lack of intelligence. Mostly, it was due to the fact that I became incredibly bored with the largely liberal arts education I was trying to complete. As a finance major, for example, I had one class total on derivatives, and I had to fight the faculty to allow it to count for major credit instead of a generally required international finance class. I had more management/leadership classes as a part of my curriculum than actual finance classes. About everything I know about options, derivatives, market theory, portfolio theory, modeling, etc...all self taught. And also just about all my stats and math skills as well. I think if I have proven one thing to myself, it's that I have a very deep desire to know the material and I frankly would be quite happy to teach myself everything if I thought that it would get me into an interview. However, that's of course not realistic.

Since my senior year, when I finally found the information I needed on the financial industry (career-wise)...I've been trying to teach myself everything I can. Brushing up on math, stats, teaching myself Python, trying to learn Matlab, C++, studying Wilmott's material (as well as others, Hull, etc), basically giving myself the education I wish I had. Again, I can put this all in a cover letter or resume, however so far that hasn't worked and I didn't really expect it to.

So, that's about where I'm at. I'm perfectly fine to do everything on my own, but I just want to make sure I'm doing the right things. That's the biggest worry I have. I have looked into MFin programs, but I see conflicting info when I research the best course of action. I am quite attracted to the material in an MFE program, but of course my ultimate goal is to get the right degree for the job I want. I am looking to go back to school and take some preparatory courses as well to ensure I'm ready for whatever I need to do. Difficulty doesn't worry me, just the course of action. Want to set myself up for success.

Thanks so much for the advice so far, sorry for the dense reply.

 

[mathemagician]

Have you taken any ODE, Math Modeling, calculus-based probability classes?

Look at the wikipedia page for the Black-Scholes PDE: if you can't make sense of any of it then you really need to put more rigor into maths.

Because systems of ODEs can be "looked as" as systems of equations, good knowledge of linear algebra topics is also a good suggestion.

These are all higher-level math courses that require (to some extent) "purist" constructs like mathematical proofs

 

[CasanovaJ]

Being really smart in general and doing well on the GRE doesn't prepare you for an MFE program. To echo the last guy, if you haven't taken (at very least) ODE and a calc-based probability course, it would be like starting a chemistry PhD having never seen a Periodic Table... it won't go well.

 

[C S]

There are quantitative finance master's programs that aren't really that mathematical as compared to some. I suggest looking into those. If you turn out to have a real bent for mathematics, you can shine in such a program, whereas if you don't have mathematical maturity, you can at least do ok.

One comment about formal coursework. People below a certain mathematical maturity level tend to spend a lot of time in these formal courses struggling with the formalities, rather than the intuition, which they grasp nowhere fully. As an example, I observed quite a few students (with good mathematical backgrounds on paper) struggle with concepts like Brownian motion, simply because they had never thought that hard about sequences of coin tosses. This is something that someone can understand well with some hard thinking and either the right maturity or guidance. And that knowledge would go a lot further than the kind of shoddy calculus background many students have (even the ones that get A's in multivariable calculus).

 

[CasanovaJ]

I think it kind of depends on which MFE-level math we're talking about here. I don't come from a pure math background either and have generally managed to understand Brownian motion fine, but being expected to compute spectral density representations of ARIMA processes in my time series class last week having never taken Fourier analysis got a bit rocky...

 

[Jordan Platts]

I was in a very similar situation a few years ago to the one you are in now. My current profile is listed https://www.quantnet.com/threads/profile-evaluation-for-cmu-mscf.18573/. The decision I made at the time was to continue with my formal education with a minor is CS. I ended up liking CS so much that I got a degree in it. This opened up several opportunities from big tech companies to the back office at bulge brackets to small buy side shops. Now I'm looking at my prospects again and I'm worried about my math skills. The three main opinions I've received are:
Professors - I need to take stat theory 2 and ODE.
Current student - I don't need any more formal education but I need to show competency in the subjects.
@CasanovaJ - I should take ODE.

I don't know your current math or CS background but if it's anything like my University's finance program your probably missing several of those classes. I personally think you should go back and get a minor in math with a few CS classes.

 

[CasanovaJ]

People aren't exactly going out on much of a limb with the ODE suggestions... pretty much every decent program tends to consider it a prerequisite (often along with PDE also).

http://tepper.cmu.edu/prospective-students/masters/masters-in-computational-finance/admissions

• Have taken, at a minimum, two full semesters of study in differential and integral calculus, the caliber of which is required of engineering, math or science majors as well as ordinary differential equations, linear algebra, and a calculus based probability course.

 

[mathemagician]

As an example, I observed quite a few students (with good mathematical backgrounds on paper) struggle with concepts like Brownian motion, simply because they had never thought that hard about sequences of coin tosses. This is something that someone can understand well with some hard thinking and either the right maturity or guidance. And that knowledge would go a lot further than the kind of shoddy calculus background many students have (even the ones that get A's in multivariable calculus).

Do you know any good resources that explain brownian motion? There's a requirement of a project for an ODE lab I'm currently taking and for the project I asked my professor to give me something in financing - he's having me do something with stochastic calculus and brownian motion, both concepts he is aware I have yet to be introduced to. I understand the essential concepts of stochastic calculus but have never heard about Brownian motion or geometric Brownian motion.

EDIT: sorry if I de-rail. To get back on topic, ODE is mathematical modeling - things like changes in populations over the course of time and whether the population can survive using the given parameters, and how to construct, "solve", and analyze the model. This is just one example - there are a LOT more models covered in a ODE course, as well as the theoretical stuff (existence and uniqueness of solutions of ODEs, 1st order, 2nd order, nth order DEs, systems of DEs, homogeneous vs nonhomogeneous DEs, etc). Jumping into higher-level ODEs without first understanding the concepts or basics is a very, very bad idea, assuming the professor assumes you already know the basics.

 

[EvanMcM]

Thanks for all the replies guys, really and truly appreciate it. Sorry it's taken me a bit of time to respond, sort of drifted away from this post for a couple weeks.

In regards to some of the questions - as many of you have probably figured out, my math background is not especially strong from an academic standpoint. Just the basic stuff that all business students had to take (Calc 1, linear algebra, basic stats) and that's about it. Having said that, I'm working hard to bolster myself in this area independently, and hoping I can really polish up my skills here.

Really my biggest goal at the end of whatever process I undertake is to find myself in a position where I could reasonably expect to get on a trading desk at either an HF or BB bank...maybe a prop shop. This is my ultimate goal, and I realize how insanely difficult it is to achieve. Just trying to make the best decisions possible in regards to that goal.

Even beyond that goal, I simply want to learn more. I'm not nearly satisfied with my total knowledge (as it currently sits) of finance, math, statistics, and programming. I'd like to improve all that, and since I'm also shooting for a career that would make heavy use of these things, I feel that it only makes sense to try to obtain more skills in these areas so I can leverage them in my favor career-wise.

One thing I have given much thought to is taking the UChicago MFE prep course as a sort of starting point, since they seem to be the only ones offering such a course. I spoke extensively to the previous director of the MFE program there about doing this, and he indicated that if I was to take the prep course and get letters of rec from every prof teaching the courses, as well as a knockout GRE score, I'd have an excellent chance of getting into the program. Being that this is also the closest program to where I'm currently located, this seems like a great idea.

Again, I realize that this is all very aspirational, however I do believe that I have a decent shot of getting somewhere near where I want to be. I just am trying to find out the best way to get there. Some have suggest MFin programs, however I was under the impression that these programs were more heavily oriented towards corp. finance skills, accounting, stuff like that? Not necessarily useful for someone looking to get into quantitative trading. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Thanks so much in advance for additional advice. Really appreciate all the contributions so far.

 

[EvanMcM]

Just thought I would bump this up to the top.

Thanks again for any advice/reply.

 

[CasanovaJ]

I'm in NY now, but I actually lived in Chicago too when I was applying. My general situation for admissions was that my resume in general was actually pretty sterling, but my undergraduate GPA was a complete disaster (even worse than yours it looks like) because despite being at an Ivy and starting off extremely strong, I totally collapsed over the last two years (as in, like, C average-- including math classes). I actually considered the UChicago prep thing too, but the deal-killer for me on that was that while you were allowed to either show up to campus in-person for the lectures or to just watch them by video, Hyde Park was absolutely impossible for me to get to from my job, and I had a pretty big problem paying $7500 just to watch lectures by video feed. At the end of the day I ended up re-taking all the MFE prereqs at the "School of Continuing Studies" at Northwestern (their night courses were at their downtown Chicago campus, not in Evanston so it was easy enough for me to get to from work), and it only cost about $1400 or so per course, which I thought was OK. I was actually pretty impressed/surprised with how good they were in terms of quality, and it generally ended up serving its purpose pretty well--

http://sps.northwestern.edu/program-areas/post-baccalaureate/index.php

I also did Calc-based probability through UIUC "NetMath," which was pretty surprisingly good also--

https://netmath.illinois.edu/node/25?stu=col

After doing that in combination with a few years of work experience, recommendation letters from the Northwestern math professors and my managers from work (one of whom was an MFE grad, the other a PhD in financial engineering so I'm assuming they were pretty good letters), passing 4 CFA/FRM exams, a convincing essay about how "things may have gone badly at the end of college, but then look at how hard I worked since then" and then also (I'm assuming) at least a bit of affirmative action for being one of the only domestic, English-speaking applicants these programs had, I ended up getting into every program I applied to (including University of Chicago) despite the ~3.0 undergrad GPA-- so it is indeed possible to pull off, but it takes a bit of effort.

 

[EvanMcM]

^Thanks so much for the reply, truly appreciate you taking the time to tell your story.

The price for the UC prep class is up to $10k in total now I think, so definitely a lot of money to pay for so little potential benefit.

The one reason I am inclined to chase after it is because of the conversation I had with a former faculty member who more or less implied that letters from faculty in that "program" were worth quite a bit to the adcom for the MFE program.

However, I will definitely check out the links you provided, looks like a great option as well. I also definitely have the "affirmative action" thing going for me, which was surprisingly something that came up more than once in my previous conversations with faculty members. White, domestic male with exceptional reading/writing skill. Guess that helps the smallest bit.

Just one question, what kind of work did you do between finishing undergrad and starting the MFE program? I've more or less resigned myself to the fact that I might have to settle for something almost entirely outside of my area of interest, or even industry at this point. However, I don't want to put a black mark on my resume (so to speak) that would show poorly on my ability to actually find and get a job in this industry. I've spoken with a few about how far I can stray off course, the answer always varies. I kind of figured that if you were able to hit a "reset" button with an MFE, your employment history might not matter as much, since presumably you're going into an entry level position anyway.

Thanks again. Really helpful.

 

[euroazn]

Try applying to the Chicago props; they are good firms, and don't care too much about GPA. Prepare to be grilled on interviews, though.

 

[EvanMcM]

Try applying to the Chicago props; they are good firms, and don't care too much about GPA. Prepare to be grilled on interviews, though.

I had some similar thoughts, but unfortunately I've been to almost all of them that seem to have more "relaxed" requirements...have not been able to even secure an interview, despite having my resume + cover letter gone over by several employees at these firms and even someone who works at a rather large Chicago hedge fund.

Hence why I am interested in going back to school. What I have under my belt right now - doesn't seem to be cutting it anywhere unfortunately. Appreciate your thoughts though.