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COMPARE UConn MS in Applied Financial Mathematics vs FSU PhD in Financial Mathematics (Full Ride)

FairyTail

Joined
3/28/13
Messages
6
Points
11
Hi all, would you please help me to decide between the two programs ? For both of them, I have been offered TA and tuition waiver (FSU 17k, UConn : 20k) i.e I will get the degree without racking up 6 figs debt :) .

Here is the curriculum:

FSU:

http://www.math.fsu.edu/finmath/FinMathCourses.math

UConn:

http://www.math.uconn.edu/Graduate/MS_FinancialMath/requirements_ms_finmath.php

I am having a hard time to decide because PhD requires a strong commitment+huge opportunity cost. However FSU curriculum seems to be in-depth and has more programming in it.
 
Don't make a decision you will regret, it's costs and Benefits:

UConn is a Tier One University, the worlds leading Research Institute for Real Estate Finance and has relationships with UBS, RBS, and a myriad of Hedgefunds.

FSU in contrast is barely Tier One, has practically no reputation at all and has very little to offer for jobs, prestige or salary.

I would take the reputable, high paying, sub-ivy league school any day of the week, why study 8 times longer, loose eight years of salary and at best, make marginally more.

Think about it.
 
alain said:
as usual, when in doubt: https://www.freakonomicsexperiments.com/
Click to expand...

Thanks alain, I still have room for consideration before using your method :)

Connor Lyman said:
Don't make a decision you will regret, it's costs and Benefits:

UConn is a Tier One University, the worlds leading Research Institute for Real Estate Finance and has relationships with UBS, RBS, and a myriad of Hedgefunds.

FSU in contrast is barely Tier One, has practically no reputation at all and has very little to offer for jobs, prestige or salary.

I would take the reputable, high paying, sub-ivy league school any day of the week, why study 8 times longer, loose eight years of salary and at best, make marginally more.

Think about it.
Click to expand...

FSU seems to emphasize in programming and numerical method. I don't see that in UConn. Although I understand that I have to network very hard myself to gain a jobs in both schools. What I want is a good&affordable education providing me with skills which will help me to survive at work. If anybody have an insight to the curriculum at both schools, please share :) .
 
Now just to make the matter more fun, I received a letter of admission from Georgia Tech.:) 3 hrs ago.
 
The wisdom is that you should not do a PhD for the sole purpose of getting an industry job. Gone is the days where anyone with a quantitative PhD will easily find a quant job on Wall Street.
Fact: many PhD students in Physics/Math/etc are doing MFE to get their first job.
Fact: many PhD programs do not have a career services/connection with industry.

I would first look at where most graduates of these programs end up the last few years in term of geographic and job profile. Do they align with your career goal?
 
Andy : I appreciate you advice. :) .

For FSU, judging from the following (former student section of a professor) : http://www.math.fsu.edu/~kercheva/overview.html

Most of the students who successfully obtain PhD in Fin Math go to industry at NY, Chicago and Tallahassee ( FSU is at Tallahassee, and Tallahassee has some firms there) and get quant analyst positions, which is relevant to my goal. I have very little idea about the performance of the master students at FSU . By LinkedIn, one of the FSU alumni who had a master , is a VP at BoA, but I assume this case is an outlier.

For UConn, using a LinkedIn search for the alumni, it seems they has jobs , but jobs aren't related much to quant fin. Maybe, they are doing ok, since Conn has lots of hedge fund, so that they don't need to go to linkedin, vice versa.
 
Hello fairytail - I received the same offer for U Conn as yourself and I also was accepted to FSU though I applied to the masters program which offers no financial aid (being a resident makes it cheaper however) had many of the same concerns as yourself. I believe I am going to accept the U Conn offer (the official paper hasn't arrived yet) and I will try to share the reasons why in hopes that they may prove helpful to you.

1) From a strictly financial standpoint FSU is a bit more expensive than a simple comparison of their costs of attendence might suggest a friend of mine who got a degree Masters in Finance at the University of Florida, and ended up with a 100k job as an Analyst (not a Quant) on Wall Street for Citi immediately after told me that Connecticut was a far better choice because when he was searching for a job he had to fly to New York/Boston several times for interviews this was both expensive and very time consuming, with Connecticut on the other hand you can just drive in to town or hop on a train.

2) The Exit project required for a degree at U Conn can be something rather ambitious if you want to do the equivalent of a thesis with it you can, I plan to take advantage of this and do something rather big, I have already done a 100 page thesis which I worked on for about a year as a requirement for graduating at my undergraduate institution and given this experience I plan on trying to start my "Exit project" within a few months of arriving and I plan to work on it for at least a year, hopefully If I find myself with some compelling results I can try to publish them in a relevant journal. Doing it this way is also an excellent opportunity to network, the friend I mentioned earlier actually got his job because someone he interviewed in the process of writing his thesis remembered him and called him up a few months later to suggest he apply for a position they had open. I also intend that should the courses not prove to be computer oriented enough to make my project rather programming intensive, you could of course get this opportunity to from pursuing a PHD but my point is that you don't necessarily need to pursue the PHD to make the connections or make a contribution to the field

3) James Bridgeman the head of the program has a rather compelling resume here is the most recent thing he did before coming to U Conn

2001

ING Group, Atlanta GA/Hartford CT

Latin America Operations,

Chief Financial Officer and Chief Actuary

ING Aetna International Inc,
Chief Financial Officer
He took a math degree and turned it into becoming the CFO for some rather large companies seems to me like he would be a decent man to learn from and work for.

4) For me I actually like having the opportunity to deliver lectures that the TA from U Conn offers, as it helps me make sure that I am not just typecast as some backroom quant.

5) I figure if needed I can probably obtain a programming certificate some other way if necessary.

I hope this helps, by the way I did the same thing you did on linked in and I found that if I searched for Financial Mathematics as opposed to Applied Financial Mathematics I seemed to get more people doing Quant type jobs
 
eric: I have replied in message . Please check out. Can anybody comment more about FSU and UConn curriculum ?
 
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