Switching Interests From Medicine to Quantitative Finance

[Corny Poppy]

Like the title says, after a year of medical school I have come to the realization that it does not feel like the right application of my skillset, nor is it something that interests me. Quantitative finance has long been an interest of mine, though I did not take finance-specific classes as an undergrad; I double-majored in Mathematics (taking up to Partial Differential Equations II) and Biochemistry with a minor in CompSci.

Should I apply to specifically a quantitative finance Master's, or Master's programs that have finance tracks? If the latter, a QFE Master's after that, or going into the industry?

3.5 GPA, 170 qGRE

 

[AyeRasputinTheTasteful]

Congrats on making the decision after only the one year :^)

Based on your background, I would nudge you in the direction of a Quant Finance program. I have always held the belief that, for quant finance, a good background in math/stats/physics/compsci >> some general finance education. You can pick up the finance side of things (at least for school) pretty easily enough. In fact, there are quite a few members on my team who had zero finance background when they started; they are Physics or Math PhDs. I would recommend reading up on some basic financial theory - bonds (pricing, concepts of duration/convexity/callability), derivatives, interest rate theory, securitized products, etc.

If you have a good grasp of advanced statistics/probability theory, PDEs, and decent programming skills (especially in Python or C++/C# as these are pretty much the industry standards now), a quant finance path could certainly work out for you.

With all that said, I would definitely not get the MS in Finance and then go back to get a MSc in Quant Finance. That is crazy and would be a complete waste of time and money.

I should add too: many of the topics in Quant Finance programs aren't that advanced (you won't be studying applications of vine copulas for cross-asset aggregation, for example). Stochastic calculus might be the most "exotic" course you'll take.