WorldQuant University

[Andy Nguyen]

Anyone with more recent experience with them would like to share with our community? Would love to hear more about it.

 

[jfferreira]

I am enrolled in the WQU program, almost half through it at the moment.
My personal view is that, while the initiative to provide free education in Financial Engineering is very generous and a great idea, it will need more time and work to be recognized as a valid alternative to what exists today.

The curriculum is focused in alpha generation strategy design with topics like time series analysis, statistics and machine learning which I think are all very interesting and very relevant. There is, however, an absence of mathematically rigorous topics like derivatives pricing or risk modelling which is a negative factor in my opinion.

Courses run for about 6 weeks and the structure is very similar to what you'd encounter in Coursera or EDX: Read the lecture notes, watch the videos, answer a few quizzes and then work on a small programming project (usually in Python or R) or a case study. Student discussions are encouraged and, most of the time, participation is mandatory. The instructors usually provide good insight throughout these discussions and are available to answer questions. The books and material in general are good but the video lectures tend to be short/scarce.

The difficulty isn't very high but there are adjustments being made in this sense (for example, we used to be given two chances to submit answers to graded exams, now only one chance). The effort needed is comparable to going through a Coursera or EDX course (in my case, around 4-8 hrs a week).

In my personal opinion, the program is a very interesting experiment that is still in very early stages. If you are interested in learning fundamentals of the areas of Financial Engineering that the curriculum touches, I would highly recommend the program.
I wouldn't recommend yet relying on this program to acquire deep specialized knowledge or get a job (unless you already have a very good education/experience profile).

I can answer any questions you may have, based on my own personal experience.

 

[harshworld]

I'm getting a feeling that career services are not excellent for WorldQuant University. I am in my last year of a Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering and I have a software dev offer with a French investment bank. I plan to work there for a year before applying to a Financial Engineering Program in the States. Do you reckon that taking on the WorldQuant program beforehand might strengthen/weaken my profile when I do apply to a school?

PS: I have completed two Finance based internships and have completed the prescribed mathematics coursework.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mathchismo]

I'm getting a feeling that career services are not excellent for WorldQuant University. I am in my last year of a Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering and I have a software dev offer with a French investment bank. I plan to work there for a year before applying to a Financial Engineering Program in the States. Do you reckon that taking on the WorldQuant program beforehand might strengthen/weaken my profile when I do apply to a school?

PS: I have completed two Finance based internships and have completed the prescribed mathematics coursework.

Thanks in advance

A World Quant Masters will make 0 difference to your applications.

It could just show you are interested in finance that's it. It is as valuable to your applications to recruiters/hiring managers as saying you took online MOOCs.

 

[Shawn_P]

I am enrolled in the WQU program, almost half through it at the moment.
My personal view is that, while the initiative to provide free education in Financial Engineering is very generous and a great idea, it will need more time and work to be recognized as a valid alternative to what exists today.

The curriculum is focused in alpha generation strategy design with topics like time series analysis, statistics and machine learning which I think are all very interesting and very relevant. There is, however, an absence of mathematically rigorous topics like derivatives pricing or risk modelling which is a negative factor in my opinion.

Courses run for about 6 weeks and the structure is very similar to what you'd encounter in Coursera or EDX: Read the lecture notes, watch the videos, answer a few quizzes and then work on a small programming project (usually in Python or R) or a case study. Student discussions are encouraged and, most of the time, participation is mandatory. The instructors usually provide good insight throughout these discussions and are available to answer questions. The books and material in general are good but the video lectures tend to be short/scarce.

The difficulty isn't very high but there are adjustments being made in this sense (for example, we used to be given two chances to submit answers to graded exams, now only one chance). The effort needed is comparable to going through a Coursera or EDX course (in my case, around 4-8 hrs a week).

In my personal opinion, the program is a very interesting experiment that is still in very early stages. If you are interested in learning fundamentals of the areas of Financial Engineering that the curriculum touches, I would highly recommend the program.
I wouldn't recommend yet relying on this program to acquire deep specialized knowledge or get a job (unless you already have a very good education/experience profile).

I can answer any questions you may have, based on my own personal experience.

Now that you have probably completed your studies; and you have the benefit of looking back, what would be your advise?

 

[VPoneday]

I was the first batch who signed up in 2016. Ashamed to say i gave up at the 3rd course (python) cause i couldn't keep up with watching the videos while juggling a full-time job which requires many hours. I thought the course was quite hardand now more selective to get in, need to pass a test.

 

[Shawn_P]

I was the first batch who signed up in 2016. Ashamed to say i gave up at the 3rd course (python) cause i couldn't keep up with watching the videos while juggling a full-time job which requires many hours. I thought the course was quite hardand now more selective to get in, need to pass a test.

Thanks for sharing, I am preparing to the selection test, and I will attempt it this weekend. I will definitely give it my best shot.. Haven't done coding in decades .

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Thanks for sharing, I am preparing to the selection test, and I will attempt it this weekend. I will definitely give it my best shot.. Haven't done coding in decades .

There's a very good C++ course on Quantnet

 

[Ken Abbott]

Thanks for sharing, I am preparing to the selection test, and I will attempt it this weekend. I will definitely give it my best shot.. Haven't done coding in decades .

I'm on the faculty there. PM me if you want to discuss.

 

[longgamma]

They came to my campus with a representative. The "internship" opportunity they presented was essentially to develop trading algorithms from your own home, and submit it to them online. If they like it, they might extend you a job offer...or not.

I can only compare the rep's attitude towards the whole thing as comparable to someone who drank the pyramid scheme kool aid. Something was off.

What is wrong with developing something at your home? Isnt that similar to a take home assignments in Silicon valley?

 

[binomial-torrent]

coming up with a specific coding problem sure. developing monetizable trading algorithms...basically if you develop one that is good enough for them to hire you, why would they need to hire you at that point?

 

[kmonks]

I am enrolled in the MScFE program at WorldQuant University, done with almost 60% of it and I thought I could shed some light on it. First off, the course structure has undergone tremendous changes over the 4 years, from 2016. With that being said, the program now is extremely challenging, rigorous, and up-to-date. I've seen the FE course structure at Berkely and other schools that offer quantitative finance programs and the program at WQU is equally good, if not better (with the exception of CMU since it stresses a lot on data science and programming as well). At times, it can get very hard managing WQU coursework with a full-time job, which was my experience especially for the probability theory and stochastic calculus for finance modules (DTSP,CTSP). I initially planned to complete this program and enroll in a FE program at some other school but now, I'm giving up on that because 1) I'll spend 100K $ and end up learning nothing new, and 2) A more programming oriented course like machine learning/computer science/ data science will help me develop a more all-rounded profile for quant jobs.

IMHO, the only thing this course lacks is the brand name. I don't know how eager will recruiters be to let someone with a FE degree from WorldQuant university interview with them. I haven't received any calls yet, maybe because I'm not done with the program yet or maybe because this is India and here you can have 5 degrees and still get a reject for not enough experience. But the course and knowledge you gain from this program should make you a competitive candidate at interviews.

As far as the difficulty is concerned, I am not gonna lie, but the course can get really difficult, especially if you haven't dealt with abstract math before. Around 55% of the students who enroll finish the program.

 

[WorkofArt]

I am enrolled in the MScFE program at WorldQuant University, done with almost 60% of it and I thought I could shed some light on it. First off, the course structure has undergone tremendous changes over the 4 years, from 2016. With that being said, the program now is extremely challenging, rigorous, and up-to-date. I've seen the FE course structure at Berkely and other schools that offer quantitative finance programs and the program at WQU is equally good, if not better (with the exception of CMU since it stresses a lot on data science and programming as well). At times, it can get very hard managing WQU coursework with a full-time job, which was my experience especially for the probability theory and stochastic calculus for finance modules (DTSP,CTSP). I initially planned to complete this program and enroll in a FE program at some other school but now, I'm giving up on that because 1) I'll spend 100K $ and end up learning nothing new, and 2) A more programming oriented course like machine learning/computer science/ data science will help me develop a more all-rounded profile for quant jobs.

IMHO, the only thing this course lacks is the brand name. I don't know how eager will recruiters be to let someone with a FE degree from WorldQuant university interview with them. I haven't received any calls yet, maybe because I'm not done with the program yet or maybe because this is India and here you can have 5 degrees and still get a reject for not enough experience. But the course and knowledge you gain from this program should make you a competitive candidate at interviews.

As far as the difficulty is concerned, I am not gonna lie, but the course can get really difficult, especially if you haven't dealt with abstract math before. Around 55% of the students who enroll finish the program.

I was just about to reply to this thread but you took the words right out of my mouth. I think the coursework change was an important factor for me to enroll in the program. I don't want to reiterate anything you said, as it covers a lot of what I wanted to say too. I think we just differ in what we want from the program.
The course is an excellent introduction to Financial Engineering and can get you started on learning the relevant topics. I mentioned the courses done as a part of the program in my applications, I'm not sure if it helps but it shows interest and I have some relevant projects in some very important courses to show for it too. (Stochastic Calculus, Computational Finance, Machine Learning in Finance). It's slowly gaining traction afai, with the updated curriculum and rigor. I was pleasantly surprised when the CMU application recognized WorldQuant University as an institution.