I heard most of the courses in mmf are on Pass/Fail basis, I think they did this because the class is very diversed in background, some may have very deep knowledge in Maths but none in business and finance while other may have strong background in Finance but less in depth in Maths/stat. It is unfair if the courses are graded because those who already have the specialization in the field will tend to outperform. However I do not understand how someone with completely no knowledge in finance would be able to start working in this field with only a few weeks of training, perhaps they may have only a very brief understanding and then use the quant skills to solve some predefined problem.. I doubt they would be able to handle equity research which require deep understanding of finance