Many of the posts have been about the Masters
Computational Finance & Risk Management program (CFRM) so I thought I would add my experience coming from the online CFRM certificate program to the full-time MS-CFRM program. My background is engineering where I received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and have worked as an energy engineer for the past 5 years. I had always been interested in quantitative finance and decided to make the career move and attend the University of Washington to prepare me. I could not be happier with my decision.
My first interaction with staff and students of the program was at the
R/Finance conference in 2012. They were a sponsor of the conference and several students were at the conference as well. The staff I spoke with were very helpful answering my questions and the students had nothing but good things to say about the program. The R/Finance is a great opportunity to speak with folks in the finance industry as well as meet students and professors from the program.
I started the certificate program in Fall 2012 and completed it in Spring 2013. I completed the certificate program online while I was working full time. As an online student, I never felt like I was on an island or disconnected from the rest of the class. The lectures were streamed live as well as recorded so that students could watch the lectures at a later date. I watched some lectures live and was able to ask questions via a chat window which was a very helpful feature. The professors and teaching assistants were very accommodating to the online students and would hold office hours on evenings and over the weekends so that it did not interfere with work schedules. The TAs and professors were very active and engaged in the online discussion forums with students, which led to some excellent discussions that expanded on the material we learned in class through lectures and how some were applying it in practice in the industry.
The certificate program challenged me to develop a stronger understanding of the theoretical concepts and then apply that theory using sophisticated concepts and techniques in R using packages that are developed and used by industry practitioners. The applications in R programming included everything from time series modeling to modern portfolio optimization. Through the certificate program, I had the opportunity to participate in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and contribute to an R package developed for portfolio optimization called PortfolioAnalytics. My experience in GSoC far exceeded my expectations, I learned a lot from the project mentors about portfolio optimization using standard linear and quadratic programming solvers as well as using differential evolution and random portfolios to solve complex portfolio optimization problems. The project was mentored by two UW CFRM professors and an industry practitioner.
The certificate program did an excellent job teaching R. I was familiar with R before I started the program, but learned a lot in terms of good program design and how to use R for applications in quantitative finance. With a good foundation of R, I was able to understand basic C++ fairly quickly and even contributed a few articles to the
Rcpp gallery.
In Fall 2013, I left my full-time engineering job and moved to Seattle for the on campus MS-CFRM program. It has been a great move so far and I am enjoying the classes. The professors, teaching assistants, and students are very friendly and welcoming. I had some reservations about leaving my job to go back to school, but it is one of the best decisions I have made. The CFRM Certificate Program was an excellent stepping stone to prepare me for the full time MS-CFRM.
I'd be happy to answer any questions others may have.
